An excerpt from a longer Islamic State production captures two young Islamic State fighters competing for the opportunity to drive the suicide vehicle into their enemy.

No matter what anyone says about the Islamic State and regardless of the terror the group inflicted throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world, no one will ever be able to say that these guys were not true believers in their cause. This video, which is a martyr reel excerpt from a longer Islamic State production, shows two young Islamic State fighters competing for the opportunity to literally blow themselves up in an attempt to slow the advance of their enemies.

If you're watching this video and thinking it feels a bit surreal, you're not alone. It's hard to imagine the state of mind someone must be in to celebrate being handed the keys to a suicide vehicle. War and conflict are already a terrifying enough place to be in, but the winner between these two genuinely seems elated that he was just tasked with dying for the cause of the Islamic State. That elation boils down to the undying commitment these guys had towards their, at the time, austere religious scholar and leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Islamic State fighters were promised paradise in their martyrdom. Anyone who heavily followed us during the peak of the Islamic State's short reign of chaos in the middle east is familiar with the austere religious speaking of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Even to this day, there are a large number of videos on our site similar to this one that feature his voice in the background as a young Islamic State fighters meets his demise. It wasn't uncommon for his religious sermons to be overlapped with clips of "martyrdom" in the media released by the Islamic State's media arm. In each of these clips, al-Baghdadi can be heard promising the Islamic State's youth eternal paradise should they fall fighting for the Islamic State's vision of a perfect Islamic Caliphate.

If you need a source for the above, all you need to do is search our extensive Islamic State archives here on the webpage. Will and I have chronicled and curated hundreds of clips from the Islamic State's media releases over the years. He and I have probably sat through more Islamic State propaganda than most DoD and HLS intelligence analysts. Funny thing is, Will and I aren't extremists. We just liked to cut out the "martyrdom" clips showing Islamic State fighters getting killed in dumb ways because Inshallah Warfare isn't a real tactic. Unfortunately for those guys the only virgins waiting on them in the afterlife probably want to play Magic: The Gathering.