The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS

by Robert Spencer

  “Our war with Kurds is a religious war. It is not a nationalistic war—we seek the refuge of Allah. We do not fight Kurds because they are Kurds. Rather we fight the disbelievers amongst them, the allies of the crusaders and jews [sic] in their war against the Muslims. As for the Muslim Kurds, then they are our people and brothers wherever they may be. We spill our blood to save their blood. The Muslim Kurds in the ranks of the Islamic State are many. They are the toughest of fighters against the disbelievers amongst their people.”

  —from the September 21, 2014, letter by the Islamic State’s Ab Muhammad al-‘Adnn ash-Shm28

  Brinsley: “Strike Terror into the Hearts of the Enemies of Allah”

  Thirty-three days after Adnani’s letter urging attacks on the police, absolving jihadis of any guilt for the blood of non-Muslims, and urging improvised attacks with any weapon that might be to hand, Zale Thompson used his hatchet on the New York City policemen. He wasn’t the first Western Muslim to heed the call of ISIS here—and he wouldn’t be the last.

  On December 20, 2014, a Muslim named Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley murdered NYPD Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu as they ate lunch in their patrol car.

  Brinsley had written that he was going to avenge the killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown that caused so much racial strife in 2014. Much less noted in the media was the fact that Brinsley’s Facebook page featured a photo of the Qur’an open to the eighth chapter, where Allah exhorts the believers to “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah” (8:60).29 Brinsley also had worked for the Islamic Society of North America, an organization with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and went by the name Ismaaiyl Abdullah-Muhammad.31

  DON’T BE AFRAID TO IMPROVISE!

  “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him. Do not lack. Do not be contemptible. Let your slogan be, ‘May I not be saved if the cross worshipper and taghut (ruler ruling by manmade laws) patron survives.’ If you are unable to do so, then burn his home, car, or business. Or destroy his crops.

  “If you are unable to do so, then spit in his face. If your self refuses to do so, while your brothers are being bombarded and killed, and while their blood and wealth everywhere is deemed lawful by their enemies, then review your religion. You are in a dangerous condition because the religion cannot be established without wala’ [loyalty to believers] and bara’ [disavowal of unbelievers].”

  —September 21, 2014, letter from the Islamic State’s Ab Muhammad al-‘Adnn ash-Shm30

  Were his murders another example of a Muslim heeding the Islamic State’s call to individual Muslims to attack police in Western countries? Authorities have remained tight-lipped, and there is no doubt that Brinsley was interested in avenging what he saw as the unjust deaths of Garner and Brown. But the Islamic State has sought to appropriate racial tensions in the U.S., and specifically anger about the killing of Michael Brown, for its own cause—tweeting out ISIS support for the Ferguson protestors and urging them to commit to jihad.32 And the timing, as well as the photo of Qur’an 8:60 on Brinsley’s Facebook page, was certainly suspicious. Brinsley may have thought, What better way to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah than to kill a couple of infidel, racist police officers, just as the Islamic State has called for? It would be refreshing if we had law enforcement and government officials willing to investigate such questions, but in this age of Obama, we do not.

  Rouleau: “NO SURRENDER. IT’S EITHER VICTORY OR MARTYRDOM”

  There was no such ambiguity about the motives of a Canadian convert to Islam, Martin Couture-Rouleau, who after his conversion called himself Ahmad Rouleau (on Facebook) and Abu Ibrahim AlCanadi (on Twitter).33 On October 20, 2014, just a week after the Islamic State’s call to Muslims in the West to pursue “[k]nocking off a police, military or any other law-enforcement officer” was made public by the FBI, Rouleau drove his 2000 Nissan Altima to a parking lot in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, about twenty-five miles southeast of Montreal. There he waited in his car for over two hours until he spotted Canadian Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent walking through the parking lot in his uniform. With Vincent was another Canadian soldier who was not in uniform.

  Rouleau fired up his Altima and plowed into Vincent and his companion, killing Vincent and injuring the other soldier. Then he led police on a highspeed chase, ultimately crashing his car, charging out of it and lunging at a Canadian police officer, at which point he was shot dead.34

  Unlike Brinsley, Rouleau left behind no question about his motives. One of his friends remarked on his fervent commitment to his new religion: “He thought it was true. He believed it all. He thought that of all the religions it was Islam that was the truest.”35 Said another: “It was a terrorist attack and Martin died like he wanted to. That’s what happened. . . . He did this because he wanted to reach paradise and assure paradise for his family. He wanted to be a martyr.”36 According to the same friend, Canadian officials had stopped Rouleau while he was trying to leave Canada to join the Islamic State: “He became an extremist. He wanted to go fight jihad but they wouldn’t let him do it. The caliphate called all the Muslims on earth to fight. He listened to what they had to say and he did his part here.”37

  Rouleau’s Facebook page was full of Qur’an quotes and exhortations to jihad. One image featured the black flag of jihad with the legend, “WORK FOR KHILAFAH [caliphate].” Another also showed the black flag and proclaimed, “NO SURRENDER. IT’S EITHER VICTORY OR MARTYRDOM.” Another quoted a prophecy, attributed to Muhammad in the hadith, that is popular among modern-day jihadis for its apocalyptic overtones and hint of the destruction of Israel: “(Armies carrying) black flags will come from Khurasan (Afghanistan). No power will be able to stop them and they will finally reach Jerusalem where they will erect their flags.”38

  Many of the Qur’an quotations on Rouleau’s Facebook page simply exhorted skeptics to believe, but some took on a new significance in light of his hit-and-run jihad attack. One declared, “Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the cause of Taghut [rebellion against Allah]. So fight against the allies of Satan. Indeed, the plot of Satan has ever been weak” (4:76).39 The New York Times noted that “several of his postings there had extolled Islamic State violence, expressed anti-Semitic sentiments and denigrated Christianity,” and that Canadian government officials had linked his attack to the Islamic State’s call for violence against military men in the West.40

  Zehaf-Bibeau: “There Can’t Be World Peace until There’s Only Muslims”

  Just two days after Rouleau’s hit-and-run jihad attack, another convert to Islam, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, went to the Canadian War Memorial in Ottawa and shot dead Corporal Nathan Cirillo, who was on sentry duty there. He then entered the Parliament building, engaged in a shootout with security guards, and was killed.

  Zehaf-Bibeau was a convert to Islam who had applied for a passport and told friends that he wanted to go to Libya.41 The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said that he had intended to go to Syria, but his mother insisted that his real destination was Saudi Arabia. She wrote: “He ultimately wanted to go to Saudi Arabia and study Islam, study the Coran [sic]. He thought he would be happier in an islamic [sic] country where they would share his beliefs.”43

  NOT THAT THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM

  Like ISIS founder Zarqawi, Zehaf-Bibeau became devout in prison. He had once been a homeless crack addict, but he had turned his life around after converting to Islam. In his zeal, he began preaching his new religion to his coworkers. A coworker recalled, “He was always trying to convert me, (saying) ‘You should read the Qur’an, bro,’” and said that Zehaf-Bibeau had told him, “There can’t be world peace until there’s only Muslims.” Zehaf-Bibeau also “believed that there i
s this conspiracy that Jewish people were trying to suppress Muslim culture and they’re trying to take over the world.”42

  During his attack at the Canadian War Memorial, a tourist took a photo of Zehaf-Bibeau wearing a scarf over his face and carrying a rifle. That photo soon afterward appeared on an Islamic State Twitter account. This didn’t mean that Zehaf-Bibeau was acting on orders from the Islamic State, but it was a clear indication that its leaders approved of his actions and considered them to be a response to their call to kill Western military personnel.

  We can’t be sure that Zehaf-Bibeau killed a Canadian soldier because the Islamic State had called for precisely such attacks. But the timing, yet again, is noteworthy.

  The Islamic State Strikes Muhammad Cartoonists . . . and Jews

  On January 7, 2015, two Muslim brothers, Cherif and Said Kouachi, entered the Paris offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and, screaming “Allahu akbar,” opened fire, killing eleven of the magazine’s staff members. One shouted, “We have avenged the prophet Muhammad.”44 They were avenging the magazine’s cartoons of Muhammad, which they considered blasphemous. Blasphemy carries the death penalty in Islamic law.

  After the attack, a man called BFM-TV, a French TV network, claiming to be one of the jihadis and saying: “I, Cherif Kouachi, was sent by al Qaeda in Yemen. I had been there (to Yemen) and it’s Sheikh Anwar Awlaki who financed me, may Allah have mercy on his soul.”45 “Al Qaeda in Yemen” is al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which, as we have seen, had declared its “solidarity” with the Islamic State on August 14, 2014, nearly five months before the massacre.46 Said Kouachi trained with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen in 2011, and Cherif Kouachi also spent some time in Yemen while his brother was there.47 After the attack, a spokesman for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said: “The leadership of AQAP directed the operation, and they have chosen their target carefully.”48

  Interestingly, some Islamic State operatives seemed to know about the attack before it took place. The day before the jihad massacre at Charlie Hebdo, a known Islamic State jihadist who called himself “Paladin of Jihad” on Twitter tweeted the words “snail-eating people” along with a weeping emoticon face. Then, two hours after the massacre, he tweeted: “You heard it here first. #SnailEaters ate lead. #DustNeverSettledDown.”49

  Islamic State supporters were thrilled with the massacre, taking to social media to exult over a video of one of the Kouachi brothers murdering a French policeman—“Watch how a brother kills a French policeman”—and to celebrate the murders as “heroic” and “joyous.”50

  The Kouachi brothers’ attack at the Charlie Hebdo offices was coordinated with their associate Amedy Coulibaly’s hostage-taking and massacre of four people at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket on the same day. When he entered the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket, Coulibaly said, “I am Amedy Coulibaly, Malian and Muslim. I belong to the Islamic State.”51

  Coulibaly explained himself more fully in a video that the Islamic State released after the attack. He began by making it clear that he had carried out his attack for the Islamic State: “I am firstly addressing the caliph of the Muslims . . . the Caliph Ibrahim. I pledged allegiance to the Caliph as soon as the caliphate was declared.”52

  Then he explained how he and the Kouachi brothers had coordinated their attacks:

  The brothers of our team, divided in two, they did Charlie Hebdo, alhamdulillah [thanks be to Allah]. I also went out a bit against the police. So yeah, we did things a bit together, a bit separate, in order to have more impact.

  I helped in his project and gave him a few thousand euros so he could finish buying what he had to buy.

  We managed to synchronise, to get out at the same time and not create problems because we are close and in the same affair. . . .53

  This cooperation is noteworthy because the Kouachi brothers had trained with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Coulibaly was an avowed supporter of the Islamic State. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are not the absolute antagonists and bitter rivals our media and government would like to think they are.

  Coulibaly justified the attacks as completely legitimate under Islamic law:

  What we are doing is totally legitimate, seeing what they are doing. Revenge on the prophet . . . mash’Allah.54 It is fully deserved and has been for a long time.

  If you attack the caliphate, if you attack the Islamic State, we attack you. You cannot attack and not get anything in return. So you victimise yourselves, as if you didn’t understand what’s going on, over a few deaths, so that you and your coalition, which you are almost at the head of now, you regularly bomb over there, you have invested forces, you kill civilians, you kill fighters, you kill . . . why? Because we apply the sharia? Even in our countries we are not allowed to apply the sharia now. You decide of what’s happening on Earth? Is that it? No. We won’t let this happen. We will fight, insha’Allah [Allah willing]. To elevate the word of Allah.55

  Echoing the ISIS party line, Coulibaly exhorted fellow Muslims in the West to carry out similar attacks:

  I am speaking to my Muslim brothers, everywhere and particularly in Western countries. And I ask them: What are you doing? What are you doing my brothers?

  What do you do when there is a direct combat . . . What do you do when they insult the Prophet, repeatedly? What do you do when they harass us? What do you do when they slaughter entire populations? What do you do when in front of your house your brothers and sisters are held captive . . . ? What do you do?

  Since I got out [of prison], I moved a lot, I went to many different mosques in France a little bit, mostly in the region of Paris. They are full, mash’Allah. They are filled with men full of vigour, they are filled with young athletes, they are filled with healthy men. How come, with these thousands, millions of people, there aren’t as many to defend Islam?56

  He couched his justification for his murders in the same language of revenge that the caliphate had used in calling for such attacks. It was a vivid reminder that there are many young Muslims in the West who view the world the way the Islamic State does, and are prepared to murder as a result.

  The National Guardsman: “Honestly We Would Love to Do Something like the Brother in Paris Did”

  ISIS’s call for jihad in the West has inspired a few successful terror killings. There is also a long list of other potential terrorists who have tried to heed the call of the Islamic State but failed.

  Twenty-two-year-old Specialist Hasan Edmonds was an Army National Guardsman, but his true allegiance lay elsewhere: “I am already in the American kafir [unbeliever] army,” he declared in January 2015, “and now I wish only to serve in the army of Allah alongside my true brothers.”57

  Edmonds began trying to devise ways to travel to the Islamic State. “I know several Muslims have been caught attempting the Turkey route,” he said to a fellow plotter, “so tell me why not many Americans take the Egypt route. I am open to either way.”58 He added: “InshAllah [Allah willing] we will complete our task or be grants [sic] shahada [martyrdom] I look forward to the training.”59

  Hasan Edmonds was arrested at Chicago Midway International Airport on March 25, 2015; he had planned to go to Egypt and make his way from there into the Islamic State. His cousin, Yunus Edmonds, wanted to go as well, saying: “Number one on my list is Mosul.” Specialist Edmonds was caught trying to leave the country for jihad overseas, but he and his cousin had also planned a jihad mass murder plot inside the United States: “If I find myself stuck here,” said Yunus, “I intend to take advantage of being so close to the kuffar [unbeliever].”60 Hasan agreed: “Honestly we would love to do something like the brother in Paris did.”61

  The “brother in Paris” was most likely Amedy Coulibaly—or possibly the transcript missed the terminal s and Hasan was referring to the Kouachi brothers.

  The cousins concocted a plan: after Hasan traveled to the Islamic State, Yunus would wear his uniform and storm the Joliet Armory, where Hasan had trained
for the National Guard.62 Yunus, thinking big, said that he “anticipated a body count of 100 to 150.” Hasan gave him a list of Joliet Armory officers and told him: “Kill the head.”63

  Yunus would have done so, but the fellow plotter to whom the cousins had divulged all their plans was actually an informant, and the plot was foiled.

  The Army Recruit: “Getting Ready to Be Killed in Jihad Is a HUGE Adrenaline Rush!!”

  Also attempting to carry out the Islamic State’s call to kill U.S. military personnel was a U.S. Army recruit named John Thomas Booker Jr., also known as Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, who was arrested in April 2015 for a plot to set off a weapon of mass destruction in a jihad martyrdom suicide attack at Fort Riley in Kansas.64

  Hassan had been the object of a manhunt a year before that, after he posted on Facebook (spelling and punctuation as in original):

  Oh those of the ummah [community] of the Prophet Muhammad(S). I will soon be leaving you forever so goodbye! I am going to wage jihad and hopes that i die. I want to be with my lord so bad that I cry but I will miss you guys I am not going to lie. I wish I could give you guys more but I am just a guy who is so very poor.

  I am telling you I am so broke that my pockets are sore:) I cannot wait to go the Prophet Muhammad’s(S) door and prank Isa bin Maryam [Jesus Christ] and party so hard that it will rock Jannah to its core. Only Allah knows what the future has in store so that should make you fear Allah much much more.65

  Shortly after writing that, Booker added that “getting ready to be killed in jihad is a HUGE adrenaline rush!!”66

  He had planned to murder as many of his fellow soldiers as possible during basic training, intending to concentrate on murdering not just “privates,” but “someone with power.”67

  FBI agents questioned him but decided that he didn’t pose any danger, and that was that—and Hassan never did get into the Army. He did, however, maintain his dreams of jihad, and late in 2014 he began plotting to commit a jihad attack in service of the Islamic State. He began to formulate his plot against Fort Riley, while saying that he really wanted to attack “the White House right now.”68