Tag Archives: islam

ISIS Magazine Promotes Slavery, Rape, and Murder of Civilians in God’s Name

by TraceyTearle Posted on October 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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ISIS, the self-proclaimed Islamic state that’s attempting to establish a caliphate across large areas of Iraq and Syria, publishes a glossy English-language propaganda magazine called Dabiq, complete with slick graphics and high-quality photos. Dabiq is one of the group’s recruitment tools, coupled with its strong social media presence. The magazine, whose name references the location of Islam’s mythical Armageddon (a town in northern Syria), bills itself as an “informative” source for the activities of ISIS fighters, while preaching on holy topics and issuing decrees. Its producers claim that Allah approves the message: ISIS has “not a mustard seed of doubt regarding this.”

In any case, the fourth issue of Dabiq just came out, and it justifies all sorts of terrible things ISIS and its fighters may do in the name of Allah. Here are 10 of the worst examples, with quotations:

1. Sack other people’s cities

“We will come to your homeland by Allah’s permission.”

“We will conquer your Rome.”

“We will not rest from our jihÄ&#129;d until we are under the olive trees of Rome, after we destroy the filthy house called the White House.”

2. Condemn other people’s beliefs

“We will…break your crosses.”

“And those who have disbelieved—unto Hell they will be gathered.” (Although, to be fair, some Christians believe the same thing.)

“You are the best people for people. You bring them with chains around their necks, until they enter Islam.”

3. Enslave people, in some cases to save ISIS’s men from temptation

“We will…enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted. This is His promise to us…”

“Our children and grandchildren…will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

“The desertion of slavery had led to an increase in fÄ&#129;hishah adultery, fornication, because the shar’Ä« alternative to marriage is not available, so a man who cannot afford marriage to a free woman finds himself surrounded by temptation towards sin.”

4. Threaten and kill people

“You will not feel secure even in your bedrooms.”

“You will pay the price when your sons are sent to wage war against us, and they return to you as disabled amputees, or inside coffins, or mentally ill.”

“You must strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the tawÄ&#129;ghÄ«t unbelievers. Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a disbelieving American or European—especially the spiteful and filthy French—or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.”

5. Turn women and children into sex slaves and concubines—those you don’t kill

Yazidi “women could be enslaved unlike female apostates who the majority of the fuqahÄ&#129;’ jurists say cannot be enslaved and can only be given an ultimatum to repent or face the sword. After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the SharÄ«’ah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority to be divided as khums taxes.”

“One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffÄ&#129;r unbelievers and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the SharÄ«’ah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’Ä&#129;n and the narrations of the Prophet.”

6. Plunder

“His provision becomes what Allah has given him of spoils from the property of His enemy,” because “wealth” was only sent to earth to create prayer and “people with obedience to Allah are more deserving of wealth.”

“Send them very much, for it will end up as war booty in our hands by Allah’s permission. You will spend it, then it will be a source of regret for you, then you will be defeated. Look at your armored vehicles, machinery, weaponry, and equipment. It is in our hands.”

Allah “legalized war booty” for Muhammad and his ummah nation. “War booty is more lawful than other income for a number of reasons.”

7. Murder civilians

Americans—”die in your rage.”

“Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling.”

“We did not come as farmers, rather we came to kill the farmers and eat their crops.”

8. Ethnically cleanse

“It has become necessary for a trial to come, expel the filth, and purify the ranks.”

9. Use suicide as a weapon

Muslims “are a people who through the ages have not known defeat. The outcome of their battles is concluded before they begin. Being killed—according to their account—is a victory. This is where the secret lies. You fight a people who can never be defeated.”

10. Purport to help people even as you commit horrible atrocities

Dabiq

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ISIS Magazine Promotes Slavery, Rape, and Murder of Civilians in God’s Name

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Here Are the Psychological Reasons Why an American Might Join ISIS

by KlaraXDJWuempk Posted on August 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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“Its Islam over everything.”

So read the Twitter bio of Douglas McAuthur McCain—or, as he reportedly called himself, “Duale Khalid”—the San Diego man who is apparently the first American to be killed while fighting for ISIS. According to NBC News, McCain grew up in Minnesota, was a basketball player, and wanted to be a rapper. Friends describe him as a high school “goofball” and “a really nice guy.” So what could have made him want to join the ranks of other Americans drawn towards militant Islam like John Walker Lindh and Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Yahiye Gadahn? And how can we explain the dozens of other Americans who have also gone off to fight as jihadists in Syria, for ISIS and other militant groups?

According to University of Maryland psychologist and terrorism expert Arie Kruglanski, who has studied scores of militant extremists, part of the clue may lie in that Twitter tagline of McCain’s. Not just its content, but the mindset that it indicates—one that sees the world in sharp definition, no shades of gray. “These extreme ideologies have a twofold type of appeal,” explains Kruglanski on the latest Inquiring Minds podcast. “First of all, they are very coherent, black and white, right or wrong. Secondly, they afford the possibility of becoming very unique, and part of a larger whole.”

That kind of belief system, explains Kruglanski, is highly attractive to young people who lack a clear sense of self-identity, and are craving a sense of larger significance. In fact, Kruglanski and his colleagues have found that one important psychological trait in particular seems to define these militants who leave their own culture and go off to embrace some ideology about which they may not even know very much. (We recently learned that Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed, two British jihadis who went to fight in Syria last year, ordered Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies from Amazon before they departed.)

Arie Kruglanski

These young people seem to have what psychologists call a very strong “need for cognitive closure,” a disposition that leads to an overwhelming desire for certainty, order, and structure in one’s life to relieve the sensation of gnawing—often existential—doubt and uncertainty. According to Kruglanski, this need is something everyone can experience from time to time. We all sometimes get stressed out by uncertainty, and want answers. We all feel that way in moments, in particular situations, but what Kruglanski shows is that some of us feel that way more strongly, or maybe even all the time. And if you go through the world needing closure, it predisposes you to seek out the ideologies and belief systems that most provide it.

Fundamentalist religions are among the leading candidates. Followers of militant Islam “know exactly what is right and what is wrong, how to behave in every situation,” explains Kruglanski. “It’s very normative and constraining, and a person who is a bit uncertain, has the need for closure, would be very attracted to an ideology of that kind.” And for an outsider coming into Islam and drawn to that sense of certainty that it imparts, Kruglanski adds, you then want to prove yourself. To show your total devotion and commitment to the cause.

That’s not to say every fundamentalist becomes a terrorist, any more than it is to say that every person with a need for cognitive closure does. Other life factors definitely matter as well, and the need for cognitive closure is a trait measured on a continuum; it’s not that you either have it our you don’t. All of that said, the trait clearly does show up again and again in these extremists.

How do we know? Kruglanski and his colleagues have directly studied violent extremists and measured them on these traits. In Sri Lanka, for instance, Kruglanski was able to study thousands of members of the so-called Tamil Tigers (more formally called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). A militant and terrorist group fighting to secede from Sri Lanka—a conflict fueled by both linguistic and religious differences—the Tigers had lost their civil war and surrendered, and many were now in a deradicalization program (thousands have since been released). “We administered questionnaires and interviews to about 10,000 of them, and we see how their thinking has evolved, and how it has changed,” he says.

Other psychological research points to conclusions highly consistent with those of Kruglanski. Psychologist Peter Suedfeld of the University of British Columbia, for instance, has investigated a trait called “integrative complexity,” which is clearly related to the need for cognitive closure and can be analyzed by examining an individual’s public speeches or writing. It is literally a measure of the complexity of thought, and one of its key aspects is whether one accepts that there are a variety of legitimate views about an issue, rather than thinking there is only one right way.

Suedfeld’s work has shown that in global conflicts, a decrease in integrative complexity on the part of the contending parties—exhibited, for instance, in an escalation of black-and-white rhetoric—is a good predictor that violent conflict will occur. He has also shown, through analyzing the speeches of Osama bin Laden, that the terrorist leader’s integrative complexity plummeted markedly in the run up to two major attacks: the twin embassy bombings in 1998 in Tanzania and Kenya, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Bin Laden “was very purist in his ideology,” adds Kruglanski—a trait suggesting his need for closure.

The USS Cole, with a visible hole in its side following a terrorist attack Department of Defense/Wikimedia Commons

And as it relates to terrorism, the need for cognitive closure has another, surprising implication. According to Kruglanski’s research, when terrorists attack a population, the fear and uncertainty that are created (for instance, following the 9/11 attacks) induce a strong need for closure in the attacked population as a whole. And this creates a kind of extremism of its own. People become more suspicious of outsiders and much more supportive of strong security measures that could curtail individual liberties. And they tend to rally around what is perceived to be a strong leader.

“The psychology of the terrorist victim—there is a high need for closure, high need for clarity, high need to commit to an ideology that would provide quick answers,” says Kruglanski. That’s certainly not saying that the victims of terrorism are themselves equivalent to terrorists. But it does mean that as psychological warfare, terrorism might very well work.

So how do you overcome the need for closure, and achieve deradicalization, when much of this core impulse emerges from the very human need to manage uncertainty and find meaning and significance in life? Kruglanski celebrates community-based programs in Muslim countries that try to “inoculate” young people against extreme ideologies. He also praises deradicalization efforts that seek to weaken the ideology of former terrorists with the promise of potential release and reintegration.

Both types of programs have shown at least some effectiveness, says Kruglanski. They help former extremists “find alternative ways of being significant, making a contribution, other than violence.”

This episode of Inquiring Minds, a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and best-selling author Chris Mooney, also features a discussion of a new Pew report showing that social media may actually discourage the expression of some opinions (rather than enabling them), and of how neuroscientists and filmmakers are working together to understand how people’s perceptions actually work in a movie theater.

To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. We are also available on Stitcher. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook. Inquiring Minds was also recently singled out as one of the “Best of 2013” on iTunes—you can learn more here.

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Here Are the Psychological Reasons Why an American Might Join ISIS

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Why This Summer Could Be the Arab Summer

by MadgePiddington Posted on June 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Three and a half years ago, the world was riveted by the massive crowds of youths mobilizing in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to demand an end to Egypt’s dreary police state. We stared in horror as, at one point, the Interior Ministry mobilized camel drivers to attack the demonstrators. We watched transfixed as the protests spread from one part of Egypt to another and then from country to country across the region. Before it was over, four presidents-for-life would be toppled and others besieged in their palaces.

Some 42 months later, in most of the Middle East and North Africa, the bright hopes for more personal liberties and an end to political and economic stagnation championed by those young people have been dashed. Instead, a number of Arab countries have seen counter-revolutions, while others are engulfed in internecine conflicts and civil wars, creating Mad Max-like scenes of post-apocalyptic horror. But keep one thing in mind: the rebellions of the past three years were led by Arab millennials, twentysomethings who have decades left to come into their own. Don’t count them out yet. They have only begun the work of transforming the region.

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Why This Summer Could Be the Arab Summer

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So the Benghazi Attacks Were Motivated by the Video After All?

by DorethaMoo Posted on June 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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From a New York Times article today about the capture of Ahmed Abu Khattala, believed to be one of the leaders of the Benghazi attacks:

On the day of the attack, Islamists in Cairo had staged a demonstration outside the United States Embassy there to protest an American-made online video mocking Islam, and the protest culminated in a breach of the embassy’s walls — images that flashed through news coverage around the Arab world.

As the attack in Benghazi was unfolding a few hours later, Mr. Abu Khattala told fellow Islamist fighters and others that the assault was retaliation for the same insulting video, according to people who heard him.

I’m a little puzzled. The story is by David Kirkpatrick, with additional reporting from Suliman Ali Zway in Tripoli. Kirkpatrick has written extensively about Benghazi, and he has suggested before that the “Innocence of Muslims” video did indeed motivate some of the attackers. But as far as I know, he’s never reported that Abu Khattala explicitly said that the video was his motivation. That makes this new and important reporting, but it’s casually buried in the 18th paragraph of today’s story—as if it’s old news that’s merely being repeated for this profile of Abu Khattala.

Maybe I just missed it before. But if this is truly new reporting, I’d sure be interested in knowing who the sources are and why they’ve never told us this before.

UPDATE: It turns out that Kirkpatrick has indeed reported this before. On October 18, 2012—five weeks after the Benghazi attacks—he wrote a profile of Abu Khattala that included this:

Mr. Abu Khattala, 41, wearing a red fez and sandals, added his own spin. Contradicting the accounts of many witnesses and the most recent account of the Obama administration, he contended that the attack had grown out of a peaceful protest against a video made in the United States that mocked the Prophet Muhammad and Islam.

This seems to have escaped everyone’s attention, including mine, but apparently it’s nothing new. Abu Khattala has claimed all along that the video was one of the motivations for the attacks.

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So the Benghazi Attacks Were Motivated by the Video After All?

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Why There Is No Cure for the GOP’s Benghazi Fever

by RosauraMansom Posted on May 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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The current outbreak of Benghazi Fever shows how strong the virus is—and that it is apparently immune to basic remedy.

On Friday, the Republicans went full Benghazi. House Speaker John Boehner announced he was setting up a special House committee to investigate the attack—that is, the Obama White House’s response to it. Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chair of the House government oversight committee, subpoenaed Secretary of State John Kerry to testify before his committee on May 21 about the State Department’s handling of GOP congressional inquiries about Benghazi. (Apparently, Issa is now probing a supposed cover-up of the original supposed cover-up.)

This week, Issa, Fox News, and other Benghazi-ists rushed to the ramparts once again, when a White House email was released showing that a top Obama aide had suggested that an administration spokeswoman defend the president’s policy regarding the Arab Spring and the Muslim world following a series of anti-American attacks that included the September 11, 2012, assault on the US diplomatic facility in Benghazi. As part of the interagency effort then underway to prep then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice for appearances on several Sunday morning talk shows—the exercise that produced the Benghazi talking points Republicans have been howling about ever since—Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, wrote that one goal for Rice was to “underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

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Why There Is No Cure for the GOP’s Benghazi Fever

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Dancing With the Tsars: A Gossip Column Dedicated to Celebrities Who Perform for Dictators

by PMMMathias Posted on April 2, 2014

Mother Jones

totalitarian request live

In January, ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman went back to North Korea to chill with his “awesome” basketball-loving, uncle-purging pal Kim Jong Un. He even sang “Happy Birthday” to his brotalitarian buddy…Under Siege star Steven Seagal has been hanging out with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and supports his buddy’s annexation of Crimea. This bromance runs deep; in 2011, the Hollywood martial-artist asked Putin to support Russian immortality and artificial body research…Jennifer Lopez reportedly snagged $1.5 million to sing at a bash attended by Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (mind if we call you G-Berdy?), the dictator of Turkmenistan, last June…In October, Julio Iglesias sang at a gig put together by the son of the mysteriously wealthy president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang. With the cheapest seats going for nearly $1,000, fans had to beg, borrow, or steal from the state treasury to get in…Imma let you finish, but Kanye West had the best concert for a dictator’s progeny last year. In August, he rocked the wedding reception of the grandson of Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev. $3 million is gonna buy a lot of damn croissants…


eavesdropping

“The concert was organized by the president’s daughter and I believe sponsored by UNICEF.”

—Sting, stung by reports that he’d taken more than $1 million to sing at a 2010 concert for the daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, whose police are known for watching every move you make. (Shrugging off the free PR, unicef said it had nothing to do with the event.)

“By going there, I played MUSIC for the Chechenyan sic people. I’m a MUSICIAN and would appreciate if you leave me out of your politics.”

—Seal, tweeting after he performed at Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov’s birthday bash in 2011. Also in line for party favors at the bash: Jean-Claude Van Damme and Hilary Swank.


autocratic for the people

While Moammar Qaddafi was busy with one-party rule, his family’s parties ruled! Among the crooners who sang for the Qaddafi kids over the years: Mariah Carey, 50 Cent, Timbaland, Enrique Iglesias, Nelly Furtado, and Usher. And don’t forget Beyoncé, who reportedly got $2 million for a Caribbean gig thrown by the Libyan strongman’s son Hannibal in 2010. Daddy Qaddafi himself partied all night long with Lionel Richie in 2006.


from the memory hole

The King of Pop wasn’t above entertaining lesser royalty. In 1996, the Sultan of Brunei paid Michael Jackson $17 million to moonwalk at his 50th birthday gala. More than a decade later, the gloved one sought a vacay from paparazzi and lawyers in Bahrain, only to be sued for $7 million by his host, Prince Abdullah al-Khalifa, for allegedly bailing on a deal to record an album for the royal record label…And who could forget when James Brown headlined the concert thrown as part of the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle,” the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman bout put on by Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko? As Etta James later dished about her host, the hardest working dictator in sub-Saharan Africa, “This mother was off the wall.”

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Dancing With the Tsars: A Gossip Column Dedicated to Celebrities Who Perform for Dictators

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"Noah" Film Inspires Flood of Religious Freak-Outs

by MoseBodincktsh Posted on March 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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The new Darren Aronofsky movie Noah is pissing off quite a lot of people. The outrage over the film—which retells that famous biblical tale of Noah, his ark, and God’s wrathful flood—is international and diverse in its stupidity. And it goes without saying that the majority of the people saying mean things about the film haven’t yet seen it (Noah hits theaters on Friday, and stars Russell Crowe and Emma Watson). “It’s always kind of silly that somebody puts their voice and opinion to something when they haven’t seen it, based on an assumption,” Crowe said in an interview with Access Hollywood. (Crowe has been trying to get Pope Francis to endorse Noah. That won’t be happening.)

Aronofsky has dubbed his $160-million epic the “least biblical biblical film ever made.” (Word on the street is that it promotes some pretty “aggressive environmentalism.”) Here are some lowlights in the ongoing permutations of Noah hate:

1. Noah is actually banned in some countries because it depicts Noah.

Censorship bodies in United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Indonesia have banned national releases of the film. This pre-release backlash stems primarily from a conservative Islamic prohibition on representing holy figures in art and entertainment. (Al-Azhar, a top Sunni Muslim institute in Egypt, also objected to the film and released a statement declaring that it would hurt the feelings of believers.) Also, there’s a sense among certain government officials that Aronofsky’s film doesn’t play it straight: “There are scenes that contradict Islam and the Bible, so we decided not to show it,” Juma Al-Leem, director of media content at UAE’s National Media Center, said.

“If there is a fear that the film will cause unrest and protest from some groups then the government should create a situation conducive to people growing up instead of always limiting them to a narrow-minded condition,” Joko Anwar, an award-winning Indonesian filmmaker, told the Jakarta Globe.

Paramount

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"Noah" Film Inspires Flood of Religious Freak-Outs

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Iran Says Interim Nuclear Talks Have Been Completed

by ggkk2121333 Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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One day after Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that the current round of nuclear negotiations “showed the enmity of America against Iran, Iranians, Islam and Muslims,” relations seem to have improved dramatically:

Iran said Friday that talks in Geneva with the group of six world powers had resolved all outstanding issues on how to carry out an agreement reached in November that would temporarily halt some of Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief.

A report on Iranian state television quoted Abbas Araghchi, the deputy foreign minister….saying that “we found solutions for all the points of disagreements, but the implementation of the Geneva agreement depends on the final ratification of the capitals.” He did not specify a target date, although officials have said privately it is Jan. 20.

OK then. It sounds like progress, fitfully and slowly, is being made.

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Iran Says Interim Nuclear Talks Have Been Completed

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