Read The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS Online
Authors: Robert Spencer
Tags: #Religion, #Islam, #History, #Political Science, #Terrorism, #Non-Fiction
Bilardi realized, however, that if he tried to assemble all the necessary material for such an attack, he would attract the attention of the authorities. And then, unexpectedly and in a way he declines to explain so as to refrain from “revealing any sensitive information,” he found a way to get to the Islamic State. Once there, “I felt a joy I had never experienced before, the first time my eyes spotted the banner of tawheed [Islamic monotheism] fluttering above the city, everything felt surreal, I was finally in the Khilafah. . . . I guess I was always destined to stand here as a soldier in the army of Shaykh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (May Allah have mercy upon him) considering the great respect I had for him even before I entered Islam. May Allah accept him among the best of shuhadah [martyrs] and allow me to sit with him in the highest ranks of Jannah [Paradise].”
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Once happily in the caliphate, al-Australi issued a series of threats to his infidel homeland: “What we have in store for you dogs will make 9/11 look like child’s play. . . . Martin place was just the beginning for you dogs.”
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Martin Place in Sydney was the site of a jihad terror attack in December 2014. A Muslim who went by the name Man Haron Monis and declared that he was a supporter of the Islamic State took customers and employees hostage at the Lindt Chocolat Café there; two people were killed.
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As far as Abdullah al-Australi was concerned, that was just an appetizer.
However, it will not be he who makes good on these threats. Although it has been impossible to identify him conclusively, Jake Bilardi, who says that he found truth, happiness, and peace as Abdullah al-Australi, apparently killed himself in a jihad-martyrdom suicide attack in the Islamic State in March 2015.
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Shannon Maureen Conley: “One of the Brightest Kids”
The transition of the young charity founder Jake Bilardi into a traitor who gleefully predicted blood and death for his own nation and people has been repeated again and again by Muslims who succumbed to the lure of the Islamic State.
Shannon Maureen Conley was “one of the brightest kids” at Arvada West High School in Arvada, Colorado, according to Arvada West Principal Rob Bishop.
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But that was before she converted to Islam, adopted the name Halima, and began describing herself as a “slave to Allah.”
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Her parents were not initially all that concerned—and anyone who might have warned them had long since been demonized as a “racist” and “bigot.”
Wearing traditional Muslim garb, Halima started to show up regularly at Arvada’s Faith Bible Church. Asked by church leaders if she was interested in converting to Christianity, she responded that she was a Muslim and was only there to do “research.”
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She began taking notes during church classes and worship services, explaining that she was hoping to “alarm” church members and adding: “If they think I’m a terrorist, I’ll give them something to think I am.”
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When church members asked her about her notes, she responded, “Why is the church worried about a terrorist attack?”
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Authorities later asked her why she was frequenting the church; she replied, “I hate those people.”
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Halima Conley made contact online with Islamic jihadists, and joined the U.S. Army Explorers, which gives young people a taste of what it is like to be in the U.S. military. She explained that she didn’t join up out of patriotism or interest in a military career, but because she hoped to learn American military tactics that she could then explain to the jihad terrorists of the Islamic State.
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Eventually Conley made online contact with a Tunisian Muslim who persuaded her to travel to the Islamic State to meet and marry him, as well
as to wage jihad herself.
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“Jihad must be waged to protect Muslim nations,” she later explained, saying that she hoped, once she reached the Islamic State, that she “would be defending Muslims on the Muslim homeland against people who are trying to kill them.” When asked if she would engage in jihad fighting herself, she answered: “If it was absolutely necessary, then yes. I wouldn’t like it . . . but I would do it.” However, she said her Islamic State fiancé was “the man, he should be doing the fighting.”
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Conley was arrested at the Denver International Airport as she made the attempt to go meet him in person for the first time.
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She later pleaded guilty to aiding a foreign terrorist organization and was sentenced to four years in prison.
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Her arrest, guilty plea, and sentencing did nothing to dim her Islamic fervor; as she prepared to enter prison, she changed her name yet again to Amatullah—“servant of Allah.”
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“Jihad Shannon,” as she came to be known, was widely written off as a confused young girl whose head had been turned by the much older Tunisian who courted her online—she was nineteen, he was thirty-two.
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But Shannon/Halima/Amatullah was by no means the only convert to take conversion to Islam as a call to commit treason and join the Islamic State, and it was not so easy to write off some of the others as confused youths befuddled by romance.
Pugh and Edmonds: From the U.S. Military to the Islamic State
Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh served in the United States Air Force from 1986 to 1990. He was an avionics instrument specialist, trained to repair and maintain airplane engines.
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In 1998 he converted to Islam, and by September 11, 2001, when he was working for American Airlines as an airplane mechanic, he had turned against the country of his birth, in whose military he had served, so completely that he alarmed his coworkers with his open hatred for America and support for Osama bin Laden.
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By January 2015, Pugh had been living outside the United States for years, and he had his eye on a new place to live: the Islamic State. He tried to enter the Islamic State through Turkey, but Turkish officials wouldn’t let him into the country. Pugh had flown to Turkey from Egypt, and upon his return to that country he was sent back to the United States. FBI agents seized his laptop and discovered that he had conducted internet searches for “borders controlled by Islamic state” and “kobani border crossing.” Kobani is a town on the Syrian border with Turkey that the Islamic State had tried and failed to seize from Bashar Assad’s forces.
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We’ve already seen how U.S. Army National Guard Specialist Hasan Edmonds was arrested on March 25, 2015, at Chicago’s Midway Airport for planning to join the Islamic State.
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The plan he and his cousin, Jonas “Yunus” Edmonds, who was arrested as well, had put together involved Yunus storming the Joliet Armory, where Hasan had trained, with hand grenades and rifles—in a jihad attack emulating that of Major Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood in November 2009. Nidal Hasan murdered thirteen people and injured thirty-two.
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Half the World
“More than half the world’s countries are now producing jihadists to fill the ranks of violent sunni terrorist organisations in the Middle East.” In May 2015 the
Financial Times
reported those findings from the United Nations Security Council’s Special Permanent Committee for Monitoring Violent Islamism. The UN put the total number of jihadis who have flocked from around the world to join al-Qaeda and ISIS at twenty-five thousand. And that number is going up rapidly, as is the number of different countries from which they are originating. Meanwhile, ISIS is doing a much better job of assimilating foreigners than al-Qaeda did in Afghanistan. “‘Those who eat together and bond together can bomb together,’ [the report] notes: unlike in Afghanistan, where foreign fighters tended to stick together in
their own ethnic groups, in Syria and Iraq jihadists are far more closely integrated into more developed and sophisticated networks.”
Mehdi Masroor Biswas, a twenty-four-year-old manufacturing executive at ITC Foods, a massive packaged foods conglomerate in India, was almost one of them. His friends and family were stunned when police swooped down on Biswas’s apartment in North Bangalore and arrested him on December 13, 2014.
Biswas, as it turned out, was leading a double life. By day he worked at ITC Foods, but by night he would take to Twitter as
@shamiwitness
(Syrian witness), a propagandist for the Islamic State.
Police said that Biswas was “very emotionally invested in the cause of Islam”—so much so that “the
@shamiwitness
account seemed to have become his main cause in life. He was so consumed by it that he did not have much of a life beyond his work and the Internet. He was however probably only a major sympathiser of the Islamic State and did not take any concrete measures to join the outfit.”
Bangalore police commissioner M. N. Reddi stated that Biswas “was not directly involved with the Islamic State but he was also not a mere sympathizer.” A police spokesman added, “He was particularly close to English-speaking terrorists of ISIS and became a source of incitement and information for the new recruits trying to join ISIS. Through his social media propaganda he abetted ISIS in its agenda to wage war against the Asiatic powers.”
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“Our son is a devout Muslim,” said Biswas’s father. “He had learnt the Quran Sharif [Noble Quran] by heart, and would often give me and my wife lessons from the Holy Book.”
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He seems to have taken many of those lessons to heart himself.
Jihadis Wanted
The Islamic State has recruited openly in the West on at least one occasion: in August 2014, the Islamic State’s supporters in central London
handed out leaflets proclaiming the restoration of the caliphate. The leaflet announced:
KHILAFAH ESTABLISHED
THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA HAS BEGUN
The darkness of following manmade law and the abandonment of the Shariah of Allah led to the destruction of the Khilafah (Islamic State) in the year 1924.
Since that year, for over 90 years we have been living in a constant state of ignorance. Our lands separated, resources stolen, Ummah [worldwide Muslim community] disunited, honour humiliated and the laws of Shirk [polytheism] established over us.
After many attempts and great sacrifices from the Ummah of Islam throughout the world, the Muslims with the help of Allah have announced the re-establishment of the Khilafah and appointed an imam as a Khaleef (Muslim leader).
As Muslims around the world we all have many great responsibilities towards the success and spread of the Khilafah across the world.
1.
Pledge
our Bayah [allegiance] to the Khaleef.
2.
Obey
the Khaleef according to the Shariah.
3.
Advise
the Khaleef if he does anything wrong.
4.
Dua
—Make dua to Allah to help and guide the Khaleef.
5.
Migrate
—Those that can migrate and resettle should migrate.
6.
Educate
Muslims and non-Muslims about the Khilafah.
7.
Expose
any lies and fabrications made against the Islamic state.
“ . . . And if they seek help of you for the religion then you must help . . . ” (Qur’an 8:72)
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In February 2015, Michael Steinbach, chief of the FBI’s counterterrorist division, said that the Islamic State was recruiting young Muslims in America, and that it was very difficult to track such efforts: “I’m worried about individuals that we don’t know about that have training. We know what we know. But there is a number that’s greater than that that we don’t know.”
According to Steinbach, in America today, “there are individuals that have been in communication with groups like ISIL who have a desire to conduct an attack,” including Muslims as young as fifteen years old: Steinbach said that he “can’t speak with 100% certainty that individuals of that age group have not gotten over there successfully.” These teen Muslims, he said, were often encouraged by their parents: “There are individuals out there who are inspired by the message of terrorist groups and they encourage family members, including their children, to follow that path.”
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They do so because it is the path of jihad. The path of Islam.
It’s the Meaning, Stupid
But American officials continued to be tone deaf to the jihadis’ religious motivations and committed to the poverty explanation—to the point of absurdity. In February 2015 State Department spokesperson Marie Harf said,
We’re killing a lot of them, and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians—they’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s a lack of opportunity for jobs—