The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS (5 page)

SEPTEMBER

President Obama tells the American people, “We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.” Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad Adnani calls Muslims living in the West to mount jihad attacks in their home countries.

OCTOBER

The FBI detains three Denver teenagers on their way to the Islamic State, presumably to become jihadi brides.
⁹
“Lone wolf” jihadi Zale Thompson, apparently inspired by the urgings of ISIS, attacks four police officers with a hatchet in Queens, New York.

2015

JANUARY

Said and Cherif Kouachi, affiliates of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, murder twelve people in Paris at the offices of the satirical magazine
Charlie Hebdo,
which has published cartoons of Muhammad. Two days later, in an attack coordinated with the Kouachis (who by this time are cornered with a hostage at a printing shop outside Paris), their associate Amedy Coulibaly, an Islamic State supporter, takes hostages at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris and murders four Jewish men there. On January 27, the ISIS siege of Kobani is broken by Kurdish forces and U.S. airstrikes.

MARCH

Boko Haram pledges allegiance to the Islamic State.

MAY

Jihadis attack a Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas; the Islamic State takes credit and vows to kill contest sponsor Pamela Geller and anyone who harbors her. ISIS seizes Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar Province, and the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria and launches a surprise offensive in Syria’s Aleppo Province. A United Nations report reveals that more than twenty-five thousand jihadis, from over half the countries in the world, have flocked to join either al-Qaeda or the Islamic State—and the numbers are rising “sharply.”
¹⁰
An article in the Islamic State’s online magazine
Dabiq
suggests that ISIS may be able to acquire a nuclear weapon from Pakistan in the next year.
¹¹
And the Pentagon acknowledges that, for lack of ground intelligence on targets, approximately 75 percent of bombing runs against ISIS return without dropping a bomb.

JUNE

President Obama admits that “we don’t yet have a complete strategy” for defeating the Islamic State.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I
n December 2014, ISIS issued a list of rules for Christians living in the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria. Those who dare disobey risk calling down on themselves the full force of the Islamic State’s brutal enforcement mechanisms—as inhabitants of that tortured city are well aware, accustomed as they have become to public beheadings and crucifixions; the torture of women who are found insufficiently covered or breastfeeding in public; and the stoning of homosexuals (if, that is, they survive being thrown from rooftops). In the ISIS rules, Christians are forbidden to worship in public and to build or repair churches. They are not allowed to pray where Muslims can hear them, to display the cross, or to ring bells. They are not allowed to prevent anyone from converting to Islam. They must not aid the Islamic State’s enemies.

One more thing is absolutely forbidden in the capital of the Islamic State: mocking Muslims or Islam.

And on May 3, 2015, jihadis loyal to ISIS attempted to impose the death penalty on offenders against that rule—including some Christians, a Jewish woman, and an atheist—who had dared to mock Islam and its Prophet. But the criminals who were guilty of flouting the absolute respect that the Islamic State demands for their religion on pain of death were not in Raqqa. We were in Garland, Texas—as were our would-be executioners.

Just four days after I submitted the manuscript of this book to the publisher, I was with Pamela Geller at the American Freedom Defense Initiative/Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest when two jihadis, one of whom had formally pledged allegiance to ISIS, traveled from Phoenix to enforce the respect they demand for Islam, and opened fire outside the venue for our event. Fortunately, thanks to the clear-headed and courageous actions of the security team, the only people killed were the jihad attackers.

Their terror masters in the Islamic State, however, followed up the attack with a chilling promise:

           
The attack by the Islamic State in America is only the beginning of our efforts to establish a wiliyah [actually wilayah, administrative district] in the heart of our enemy. Our aim was the khanzeer [pig] Pamela Geller and to show her that we don’t care what land she hides in or what sky shields her; we will send all our Lions to achieve her slaughter. This will heal the hearts of our brothers and disperse the ones behind her. To those who protect her: this will be your only warning of housing this woman and her circus show. Everyone who houses her events, gives her a platform to spill her filth are legitimate targets. We have been watching closely who was present at this event and the shooter of our brothers. We knew that the target was protected. Our
intention was to show how easy we give our lives for the Sake of Allah.

Ultimately, the justification for the cartoon contest in Garland, as well as for the quixotic idea of writing a breezy book about a group devoted to mass murder, rape, slavery, and other far-from-light-hearted topics, is this: in the face of evil, especially evil that demands respect and obeisance at the point of a gun, mockery is not only justified, but required.

Thomas More said, “The devil . . . the proud spirit . . . cannot endure to be mocked.” But the lovers of life, and of humanity, and of freedom must mock humorless evil—and its enablers in our willfully blind intelligentsia and political leadership—for not to do so would be to leave unpunctured its pride, its hubris, its arrogance, its hatred of all that is good, decent, vibrant, and alive. It would be to grant evil the victory, to concede that death will overcome life.

It will not. Life will overcome death. And it will triumph with a laugh.