ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam (19 page)

In fact, almost a third of those arrested and convicted of Islamic terrorism charges in the U.S. in recent years have reportedly been linked to two groups: ITS and Revolution Muslim (another NYC-based outfit, which disbanded in 2010).
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Which brings us back to the shoes. One of the reasons I was so concerned about ITS was that—other than a few stray skullcaps and a scattering of Islamic garb—these looked like the kind of young men found in any urban area of the United States or Western Europe. This was not a band of AK-47–waving mountain dwellers. It was a multi-ethnic mix that was clearly influenced by hip-hop culture. I could envision them selling their extremism to other urban young people in an appealing manner that, say, al Qaeda’s grizzled, Arabic-speaking leadership in the tribal regions of Pakistan could not.

It came as no surprise to me then, that, perusing ITS’s website in September 2014, I found the Thinkers strongly supported the caliphate, or “khilāfah,” established by the reigning trendsetters of “jihadi cool,” ISIS:

          
[The caliphate] has returned, and is a reality, a nightmare for the forces against Islam and those who wish to see the light being extinguished. If the current Islamic State is attacked and blown up into smithereens, with “Caliph Ibrahim” being assassinated, there will arise another Muslim who will take his place.

                
What has sparked off this new Islamic State cannot be stopped simply by carpet bombs and drones. It’s an idea that is carried in the hearts of millions if not billions of people around the world. It’s time for the elites such as the G-8 of this world to recognize that there is a new contender in the International Arena.

                
Perhaps it is time for the G8 Nations to re-think their corrupt International Policies. Capitalist economic practices and the puppet and dictatorial regimes employed by capitalist nations are, perhaps, at the end of their days. The Khilafah, the Jewel of Islam, has returned.

                
Only the spiritually and politically blind Muslims think that the Khilafah would come back and the status quo of the world would be unchanged. They are in error to think that the world would just simply accept an Islamic State while the tyrants still get to enjoy their throne. As if the world would shower the Khaleef with flowers and everyone would live happily ever after.
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Comforting sentiments, no doubt, for the NYPD’s counterterrorism unit to hear.

ITS has been linked to Anjem Choudary, a notorious, ISIS-supporting cleric based in London whom we’ll meet in
chapter six
. It has been alleged
that some of Choudary’s followers have traveled to Iraq and Syria to join the ISIS terror army.
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I’ve interviewed Choudary in person at length and seen his followers up close: like ITS, they are multi-ethnic, predominantly young, and clad in urban street-wear. If not for their accompanying Islamic-tinged garb and beards, more than a few would pass unnoticed on the streets of any major city in the West.

One of Choudary’s most infamous acolytes is former British light middleweight boxing champion Anthony Small. Small converted to Islam at age twenty-four, in the midst of a successful professional boxing career, and soon became radicalized. Now known as “Abdul Haqq,” he released a series of YouTube videos in September 2014 defending ISIS’s beheading of James Foley—which he justified as revenge for U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq—and referring to the slain American photojournalist as an “infidel.” According to the boxer,

          
We have to be objective and non-biased, that the beheading of James Foley, Mr. Beheaded infidel, not to be disrespectful to him or his family, I can’t remember his name, Mr Infidel, it wasn’t unprovoked.

                
I say the exact same thing I said about Lee Rigby: people getting heads removed is an abnormal situation. It needs to be prevented. But we have to be objective.

                
I don’t want to say unprovoked because they could say I’m glorifying terrorism, but it was a retaliation, from the own words of those who conducted it, they said, not me said, they said it’s a retaliation.
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Small blasted what he called the “United Snakes of America” and warned that the UK could be attacked by “sleeper cells” if it intervened militarily against ISIS. Lee Rigby, whom Small also referenced, was a British soldier killed, and nearly beheaded, by a pair of jihadists when they
attacked him with a meat cleaver and knives in broad daylight on a London street in May 2013.

One of those jihadists, a Nigerian Brit named Michael Adebolajo, had been linked to—surprise—Anjem Choudary (who boasted after the horrific murder that he was “very proud” of Adebolajo and that Rigby would “burn in hellfire”).
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Like Anthony Small, both of Rigby’s killers were raised Christian and later converted to Islam.

In the case of Small, one of the most striking aspects of his aforementioned YouTube rant was his appearance. His hair and beard closely cropped, Small—clad in a fashionably tight-fitting T-shirt—still looked every bit the strapping British sports figure that he had been during his boxing career, despite the Islamist bile coming out of his mouth.

Small’s video diatribe was an ingenious bit of jihadi marketing. For starters, curiosity seekers were interested to hear what a former British boxing champ had to say on a hot button issue. And how many young British kids and aspiring boxers, particularly from immigrant communities, have looked up to Small over the years for his ring work and viewed him as a role model? How many of these same impressionable young minds watched the videos and took what Small had to say seriously? If even a handful of them adopt Small’s beliefs, and their career paths lead not to the boxing ring but to ISIS’s waiting arms, the results could be horrific.

Small, Choudary, ITS, and their extended networks are already on board with the Islamic State’s vision. But ISIS is using social media and a highly sophisticated video and marketing campaign to broaden its appeal and reach young, untapped Muslims across the Western world—and old school Nikes fit right in.

“Chillin’ with my homie or what’s left of him.”

As “humor” goes, it doesn’t get much darker. Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary—the suspected beheader of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff—had taken to Twitter to post a photo of himself proudly holding the severed head of a Syrian regime soldier (hence, the “what’s left of him” quip).
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In doing so, Abdel Bary—a former London rapper who performed, variously, under the names Lyricist Jinny, L-Jinny, and L-Jinn—managed to combine three qualities that have helped make ISIS so attractive to disaffected young Muslims raised in the West: 1) social media savvy, 2) glorification of brutal violence, and 3) hip-hop slang and cocky irreverence.

For an attention-craving, “selfie”-obsessed Millennial generation weaned on ultra-violent video games, gangsta rap lyrics, and gleefully sadistic horror films, ISIS is a cruel beast whose time has come. It’s tough to shock this demographic—teens and twenty-somethings that have seen disturbingly realistic dismemberments and snuff film–like torture scenes flash across TV and movie screens for much of their young lives. Put a video game console in their hands and they can actually participate in the blood and gore, chopping, hacking, stabbing, and shooting into the wee hours of the night and then taunting their opponents online in 140 characters or less. It’s a generation long on in-your-face swagger and short on attention span—and ISIS has a strategy to reach them, particularly if they are second- and third-generation Muslims in the West who (albeit profoundly influenced by American popular culture) feel disconnected from their host societies and are looking for meaning and a place to belong.

ISIS is engaged in a virtual hashtag jihad aimed largely at these perpetually wired, tech-obsessed Millennials—indeed, Twitter has become the de facto voice of the Islamic State:

          
ISIS is online jihad 3.0. Dozens of Twitter accounts spread its message, and it has posted some major speeches in seven languages. Its videos borrow from Madison Avenue and Hollywood, from combat video games and cable television dramas, and its sensational dispatches are echoed and amplified on
social media. When its accounts are blocked, new ones appear immediately. It also uses services like JustPaste to publish battle summaries, SoundCloud to release audio reports, Instagram to share images and WhatsApp to spread graphics and videos. . . . British fighters have answered hundreds of questions about joining ISIS on Ask.fm, a website, including what type of shoes to bring and whether toothbrushes are available. When asked what to do upon arriving in Turkey or Syria, the fighters often casually reply, “Kik me,” referring to the instant messenger for smartphones, and continue the discussion in private.
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In June 2014, as ISIS was in the process of seizing Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, ISIS and its supporters worldwide posted nearly forty thousand tweets in one day alone. Want to get all the latest news on ISIS’s various conquests? Yep, there’s an app for that—it’s called “The Dawn of Glad Tidings” and is available for Android phones.
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Masters of propaganda and pop culture and keenly attuned to global political developments, ISIS’s online legions of “E-hadis” are filled with snarky, English-speaking Westerners who can easily relate to frustrated kids in London, New York, or Toronto.

In August 2014, ISIS and its supporters tweeted regularly during racially charged protests over the shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown by a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri. “So how is democracy treating you guys?” one ISIS tweet, clearly aimed at young African Americans, asked. Another mocked, “There are more blacks now than slaves before the Civil War. Are you truly free?” Black Americans were encouraged to rise up and embrace the caliphate, under hashtags such as #ISISinFerguson and #JihadinFerguson. To drive the point home, during one live CNN telecast from Ferguson a demonstrator was seen holding a large sign saying, “ISIS is Here.”
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Where this apparent supporter of the world’s most barbaric terror group moved on to after Ferguson is anyone’s guess.

The same month that Ferguson was dominating the headlines, ISIS minions used the trending hashtags #napaquake and #napaearthquake to
post pro-ISIS taunts and pictures of dead U.S. soldiers in the aftermath of the costly 6.0 Bay Area earthquake. ISIS’s hashtag hijacking meant that if you were a resident of northern California or had loved ones that were affected by the earthquake, there is a good chance your Twitter search for news updates resulted in a stream of ISIS propaganda.
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ISIS used a similar tactic during the 2014 World Cup, using the trending hashtag #WorldCup2014 while posting the latest news and photos from its brutal drive into Iraq. One tweet, showcasing ISIS’s trademark depravity, featured a photo of an Iraqi officer’s severed head with the caption: “This is our ball. It is made of skin. #WorldCup.”
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Likewise, in the days before an ISIS terrorist beheaded American journalist Steven Sotloff, ISIS used the hashtag #StevensHeadInObamasHands to spread taunts and threats against America on Twitter.
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One favorite tactic of ISIS supporters is to take pictures of themselves holding small ISIS flags or signs in front of Western landmarks. Their faces, shrewdly, are kept out of the shots. For example, a photo of an ISIS supporter in front of the Old Republic Building in Chicago created a stir when it was posted to Twitter in August 2014 (accompanied by the message “Soldiers of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria will pass from here soon”).
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Another pic of an Islamist, standing across the street from the White House, was posted that same month with the caption, “#AmessagefromUS toISIS we are here #America near our #target :) sooooooooooooon.”

The chilling photo—which emerged not long after an ISIS spokesman threatened to “raise the flag of Allah over the White House”
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—was then re-tweeted by two other sympathizers who gloated, “we are everywhere #AmessagefromISIStoUS,” and “#AmessagefromISIStoUS We are in your state We are in your cities We are in your streets You are our goals anywhere . . .”
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The grammar may be horrible, but it’s the message and means of delivery that count. The tweets not only show that ISIS supporters are indeed in American cities and in close proximity to major terror targets;
they’re delivered in a hip, “selfie” style with the kind of brash sarcasm that is so familiar in today’s youth culture.