In this article, the author submits that the push for moderation and social cohesion through deradicalization is an inadequate response to violence inspired by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) because it elides the political disaffections to which the group speaks. In advancing this argument, the author suggests that the rhetoric of ISIS can be seen as a form of public pedagogy that seeks to educate Muslims who experience oppression in various contexts on both the causes of their suffering, and the solutions to it. This paper offers a brief account of the emergence of ISIS as a geopolitical phenomenon, outlines the concept of public pedagogy, and demonstrates how Ernesto Laclau's theory of populism can provide a useful analytic frame for explaining how the rhetoric of ISIS operates as a form of public pedagogy. The author draws on a close reading of the sermon originally delivered by al-Baghdadi in Arabic at the Grand Mosque in Mosul, Iraq. Using the discourse theory of populism advanced by Ernesto Laclau and others as an analytical frame, the author argues that the rhetoric of ISIS as exemplified by al-Baghdadi's sermon seeks to actively construct a new public from a diverse global population of Muslims who may feel dislocated from the public spheres where they reside for different reasons.