The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS (46 page)
Read The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS Online
Authors: Robert Spencer
Tags: #Religion, #Islam, #History, #Political Science, #Terrorism, #Non-Fiction
Fabius and Kerry may have been intending to signal to ISIS leaders a calculated disrespect. But it was also
handy that calling the Islamic State “Daesh” among English speakers obscured the “Islamic” aspect of its name even more than calling it “ISIS” or “ISIL.”
THEY MEAN WHAT THEY SAY
In February 2015, the Islamic State showed that they meant business about being called the name they wanted; they gave a boy sixty lashes in public for referring to them as “Daesh.”
8
He was lucky not to have his tongue amputated—the prescribed penalty for his crime.
It is increasingly common journalistic practice to refer to the Islamic State simply as “Islamic State,” without the definite article, as if it were some Dantescan college sports team. This is not so much an attempt to demonstrate by shorthand that it is not Islamic as that it is not a state—and a group with illegitimate pretensions to both.
As if all these different names weren’t confusing enough, Egypt’s leading Islamic authority, Dar al-Ifta, announced that it would be calling the group “al-Qaeda Separatists in Iraq and Syria”: QSIS.
9
A group of imams in Britain called on British Prime Minister David Cameron to call it “the un-Islamic State.”
10
The Islamic State Laughs
The Islamic State has professed contempt and amusement over all this confusion and denial. In his September 21, 2014, address calling for strikes in the U.S. and Europe, Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad Adnani ridiculed John Kerry (“that uncircumcised old geezer”) and Barack Obama (“the mule of the jews”, Adnani’s capitalization) for declaring that the Islamic State was not Islamic—as if the American president and secretary of state were Islamic authorities:
The media portrayed the crusaders as good, merciful, noble, generous, honorable and passionate people who feared for Islam and the Muslims the “corruption and cruelty of the khawarij (a deviant, extremist sect) of the Islamic State” as they allege. To
the extent that Kerry, the uncircumcised old geezer, suddenly became an Islamic jurist, issuing a verdict to the people that the Islamic State was distorting Islam, that what it was doing was against Islamic teachings, and that the Islamic State was an enemy of Islam. And to the extent that Obama, the mule of the jews [sic], suddenly became a sheikh, mufti (Islamic scholar that issues verdicts), and an Islamic preacher, warning the people and preaching in defense of Islam, claiming that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam. This occurred during six different addresses he made in the span of a single month, all of them about the threat of the Islamic State.
11
The Western media has taken little notice of the Islamic State’s self-description and contempt for those who deny its Islamic character. A steady stream of articles by Muslim and non-Muslim academics and commentators maintains that, despite appearances to the contrary, ISIS has nothing to do with Islam.
However, this avalanche of reassurances only leaves us with an inexplicable mystery: If the Islamic State so brazenly violates the Qur’an and outrages Muhammad’s example, why is it so appealing to the most devout young Muslims that over twenty thousand Muslims from all over the world have now joined it in Iraq and Syria, with five thousand joining its Libyan wing?
12
The answer is not complicated, despite intense and ongoing efforts to complicate it.
OSTRICH ALERT
“It makes no sense to turn the ISIS threat into a fight about Islam.”
—Forbes,
February 26, 2015
13
The Islamic State’s theology is straightforward. While apologists for Islam in the West insist that the Qur’an’s words must not be taken at face value
and maintain that only a tiny minority of Muslims do take them literally, the Qur’anic justifications for the Islamic State’s actions are based on the plain words of the text. And the Islamic State’s appeal to tens of thousands of Muslims from all over the world testifies to the resonance of their literal reading of Islam’s holy book.
What Is It about ISIS and Lopping Off Heads?
It has been a seemingly endless parade, beginning just weeks after ISIS declared its new caliphate: public beheadings, lovingly filmed and included in slick propaganda videos appealing to Muslims around the world to join the Islamic State.
These very public beheadings have horrified the world; in large part, they were responsible for the wave of public concern about ISIS in America that led to the U.S.-led airstrikes against the Islamic State. Many have taken them as a sign that for all its vaunted media savvy, the Islamic State will ultimately be undone by its own savagery, as the world will ultimately have had enough of this horror and will move to destroy ISIS once and for all.
Why, then, does the Islamic State behead anyone at all, much less film the beheadings and post them on social media? Because from their standpoint, beheadings are a recruitment tool—one that is rooted in the Qur’an. The Muslim holy book says straightforwardly, “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (47:4).
The Islamic State knows that young Muslims who are aware of that verse will not recoil in horror and disgust from their beheading videos, but rather realize that the Islamic State is acting in fidelity with the Qur’an. Thus the beheadings will bolster the Islamic State’s claim to constitute the new caliphate.
The beheading videos also “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah”—another Qur’anic imperative (8:60). Thus, as far as the jihadis of the Islamic State are concerned, the world’s revulsion and disgust at their beheading videos are only confirmation that they’re on the right track.
Victims of Islamic State Beheadings: A Partial List
SYRIAN SOLDIERS: On July 25, 2014, Islamic State supporters posted to social media photos of soldiers of the Assad regime beheaded in Raqqa—one ISIS supporter said seventy-five soldiers had been beheaded. |
JAMES FOLEY: The Islamic State posted video of the beheading of American journalist Foley on August 20, 2014. |
ALI AL-SAYYED: Eight days later, on August 28, 2014, the Islamic State posted photos of the beheading of Lebanese Army Sergeant al-Sayyed on social media. |
STEVEN SOTLOFF: The beheading video of Israeli-American journalist Sotloff was published September 2, 2014. |
DAVID HAINES: British humanitarian aid worker Haines’s beheading video was published on September 13, 2014. |
15 RELATIVES OF POLICE OFFICERS IN AFGHANISTAN: On September 20, 2014, masked men calling themselves soldiers of the Islamic State beheaded fifteen family members of Afghan police officers. |
HERVÉ GOURDEL: A French mountaineering guide, Gourdel was kidnapped in Algeria. The Algerian Islamic State affiliate Jund al-Khilafah (Soldiers of the Caliphate) released a video showing his beheading, “A Message of Blood for the French Government,” on September 24, 2014. |
ALAN HENNING: The Islamic State released the beheading video of British humanitarian aid worker Henning on October 3, 2014. |
PETER KASSIG: American humanitarian aid worker Kassig converted to Islam while in captivity, taking the name Abdul-Rahman. His conversion did not save him, as he had served in the U.S. military in Iraq, and thus as far as the Islamic State was concerned had to be punished as a “Crusader.” |
HARUNA YUKAWA AND KENJI GOTO: The Islamic State released the beheading video of Yukawa in January 2015, after the Japanese government did not pay the demanded ransom of $200 million. Shortly thereafter, after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made it clear that he was not going to accede to the Islamic State’s demands, Goto’s beheading video was released as well. |
21 EGYPTIAN CHRISTIANS: On February 15, 2015, the Islamic State posted a video entitled, “A Message Signed with Blood to the Nation of the Cross.” It showed the Islamic State’s Libya affiliate beheading twenty-one Coptic Christians from Egypt who had gone to Libya to find work. |
WHY ARE THE VICTIMS SO CALM?
One curious feature of the Islamic State’s beheading videos is that they include propaganda statements from the hostages who are about to be executed. These hostages are invariably quite calm, reading the statements prepared for them clearly and without hesitation. This anomaly has let some to speculate that the hostages in ISIS beheading videos are drugged—and even that the videos are entirely fake. Fueling this speculation is the fact that we know that many of the Islamic State hostages were extensively tortured: James Foley, for instance, was beaten, waterboarded, and made to go through mock executions. Islamic State hostages have been kept in a general state of terror and deprivation, with no blankets or mattresses and very little food. They have often been confined in darkness for days on end. ISIS has shown gruesome footage—victims’ heads are typically sawn off with relatively small knives, a process that takes some time—of the execution of hostages to the terrified survivors.
26
After all this, the moment of a hostage’s own execution would be the crowning horror, and calm would be the last reaction we would expect from the hostages. A defector from the Islamic State has explained the mystery. It was his job, he says, to make sure that the hostages did not panic. For this reason, the beheadings are extensively rehearsed. According to the defector, the jihadist doing the beheading “would say to me, ‘Say to them, no problem, only video, we don’t kill you, we want from your government [to] stop attacking Syria. We don’t have any problem with you; you are only our visitors.’ So they don’t worry. Always I say to them, ‘Don’t worry, doesn’t matter, nothing dangerous for you.’ But at the end I was sure [they would die].” In the same way, the Islamic State jihadi preparing to behead his victim would say to him, “It’s a rehearsal, don’t [be] afraid.” He would instruct the hostages to say, “I’m living in ISIS and will stay and continue.” The hostages were given Arabic names to reassure them further. Japanese hostage Kenji Goto was renamed “Abu Saad” and told: “You should be Muslim and come with us.”
27
In the end, they killed him.