The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS

by Robert Spencer

  Forty-nine Turkish diplomats were being held hostage in the Islamic State, Turkish authorities explained, and declaring that Turkey was going to fight against ISIS would endanger them. The possibility that refusing to sign up to fight the Islamic State might present an appearance of weakness that ISIS could exploit by kidnapping even more Turkish diplomats was not considered.9

  In any case, black market oil, a key element of the Islamic State’s wealth, continues to be transported through Turkey, with our friends and allies the Turks doing absolutely nothing to stop it.

  According to Undersecretary Cohen, “Our best understanding is that [ISIS] has tapped into a longstanding and deeply rooted black market connecting traders in and around the area.” He assured the world that the United States was working with “our partners in the region to choke off cross-border smuggling routes and to identify those involved in smuggling networks.”10

  COVETING THE CALIPHATE?

  Turkey was the home of the last caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, and Turkish President Erdogan has frequently been accused of “neo-Ottoman” tendencies—that is, of wanting to restore the caliphate. It is conceivable, therefore, that Erdogan sees the Islamic State less as an enemy than an opportunity: he may envision it defeating his other enemies, such as the Kurds and Assad’s Alawite regime in Damascus, at which point he can move in and reap its benefits, transferring the seat of its caliphate to Istanbul, and perhaps even installing himself as the caliph. Far-fetched? Sure. But so are every day’s headlines nowadays. And these ambitions would help explain why Erdogan has been mysteriously reluctant to oppose the Islamic State.

  Despite the lack of Turkish cooperation, these endeavors have been successful at least to some degree. Speaking in February 2015, a week after the Islamic State failed to take the Syrian town of Kobani after a four-month siege, Pentagon spokesperson Rear Admiral John Kirby announced, “We know that oil revenue is no longer the lead source of their [ISIS’s] income in dollars.” He explained that this was because the Islamic State had suffered losses on the battlefield: “They are changing. They are largely in a defensive posture. They aren’t taking new ground. So, they are losing ground. They are more worried now about their lines of communications and supply routes.”

  Kirby sounded a confident note: “This is a different group than it was seven months ago. I’m not saying they’re not still dangerous. I’m not saying they’re not still barbaric, but they’re different. Their character, their conduct, their behavior is different. And that’s a sign of progress.”

  The Islamic State was unable to rely as much upon oil sales as it had been, he explained, because it had “lost literally hundreds and hundreds of vehicles that they can’t replace. They’ve got to steal whatever they want to get, and there’s a finite number.”

  Upon what, then, was the Islamic State relying as its primary source of income?

  Said Kirby: “A lot of donations.”11

  Well-Heeled Donors

  A lot of donations. The Islamic State received $40 million in donations in 2013 and 2014—not only from rich individual donors, but even from government sources in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait. Qatar and Kuwait, according to Lori Plotkin Boghardt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “continue to stick out as two trouble spots when it comes to counterterrorist financing enforcement.” Boghardt noted that “the U.S. government continues to be concerned about spotty, to say the least, Kuwaiti and Qatari enforcement of their counterterrorist financing laws,” and attributed this spotty enforcement to the fact that “cracking down on some ISIS financiers is politically complicated for these countries’ leaderships”—because the financiers are men of power and political influence there.12

  What motivates these shadowy donors? There can be only one answer: Islam. The oil-rich Middle East is full of fantastically wealthy men who read the same Qur’an that is read in the Islamic State, and they are ready to use their wealth to aid the jihad for the sake of Allah worldwide. They don’t see the Islamic State as a twisting and hijacking of the peaceful tenets of their religion—that kind of talk is for Western consumption. Quietly, and with the full force of their pocketbooks, they demonstrate that—on the contrary—they see ISIS as a true and faithful embodiment of Islamic teaching.

  These donors get money into the Islamic State by means of old smugglers’ routes that have been used for generations, and which are supported by well-established systems ensuring kickbacks to government and law enforcement officials who obligingly turn a blind eye.13 They also, in line with the Islamic State’s technical savvy, make skillful use of modern means to launder money. Newsweek reported in November 2014 that donations are often “laundered through unregistered charities in the form of ‘humanitarian aid,’ with terrorists coordinating geographical drop-off points for payments using cellphone applications such as WhatsApp and Kik. Not only can WhatsApp be used around the world but, crucially, it incorporates a GPS mapping tool that makes it easier for terrorists to communicate their exact locations to each other. Kik offers the added benefit of allowing terrorists to register a username without providing a phone number that could identify them. Affiliated ISIS Twitter accounts openly publish their Kik usernames.”14

  Kidnapping and Ransoming Infidels

  The Islamic State demanded $100,000,000 for the release of journalist James Foley.15 When payment was not forthcoming, Foley was beheaded. Later, the Islamic State demanded $200,000,000 from the Japanese government for the life of hostage Haruna Yukawa. When the deadline passed with no response from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Islamic State beheaded Yukawa and released an audiotape purporting to feature their surviving Japanese hostage, Kenji Goto. The speaker said, “They no longer want money. You bring them their sister from the Jordanian regime, and I will be released immediately. Me for her. Don’t let these be my last words you ever hear. Don’t let Abe also kill me.”16

  OSTRICH ALERT

  “Extremism and Islam are completely different things.”

  —Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe17

  “Their sister from the Jordanian regime” was Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, a Muslim woman who was at that time imprisoned in Jordan after a failed jihad suicide bombing attempt in 2005. When the Jordanian government failed to release her, the Islamic State beheaded Goto.

  In both cases, the Islamic State did not get the ransom money it demanded; however, on other occasions—which have received little to no publicity because of the embarrassment of those paying the ransoms—its ransom demands have been more successful. The Treasury Department estimates that in 2014 alone the Islamic State took in $20 million in ransom payments.18

  These payments were for hostages who never received the media attention accorded to Foley, the Japanese hostages, and the other high-profile prisoners of the Islamic State. One Syrian Christian whom the Islamic State held captive for five months recounted that throughout his captivity he was kept chained to a wall blindfolded and was frequently beaten and infrequently fed. There were, he said, around one hundred captives of the Islamic State in the place where he was being kept; most were Christian. ISIS jihadis once told one of them, “We know everything about you. We know where your family lives, what their names are.” Another was forced to call his family during a torture session so that his screams would frighten them into paying the ransom. The jihadis told another, whose family was slow in paying, “We will make you call your family and tell them it’s their fault you are going to die.”

  Among those guarding him, the Syrian Christian recalled, were Muslims from France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Britain, and Saudi Arabia. Eventually his family paid $80,000 to the Islamic State, and he was released.19 Ransoms make up as much as 20 percent of the Islamic State’s revenue.

  NOT THAT THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM

  A manual of Islamic law stipulates that “when an adult male is taken captive, the caliph considers the interests . . . (of Islam and the Muslims) and decides between the prisoner’s death, slav
ery, release without paying anything, or ransoming himself in exchange for money or for a Muslim captive held by the enemy.”21

  Revered Islamic jurist Mawardi, agrees: “As for the captives, the amir has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first, to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale or manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them.”22

  All in all, the Islamic State is estimated to take in around $6 million a day.20

  How the U.S. Paved the Way

  In March 2015, Barack Obama offered a succinct explanation for how the Islamic State came to be: it was George W. Bush’s fault. “ISIL,” said Obama, “is a direct outgrowth of al Qaeda in Iraq, which grew out of our invasion, which is an example of unintended consequences, which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.”23

  Obama was derided for playing politics yet again in an area where partisanship should have had no place, and for blaming his predecessor for the umpteenth time. Yet in this particular instance, Obama was actually partially right—though only in a way that showed up his own failures and mistakes all the more vividly.

  George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 with the confident hope that once Saddam Hussein was toppled the Iraqi people would welcome the Americans as liberators and establish a Western, secular republic that would become a beacon of freedom and the vanguard of the new Middle East.

  Saddam Hussein was duly toppled, but the Americans were not universally welcomed as liberators. Soon American troops were being called “occupiers.” The new Iraqi constitution that was eventually adopted was an American production—but it enshrined Islamic law as the highest law of the land instead of instituting truly republican principles and guaranteeing people equality of rights before the law, freedom of speech, and other essential elements of a genuine functioning republic. Sharia is a political as well as a religious system, and it is authoritarian, not allowing for equality of rights for women or non-Muslims, or for the freedom of speech that any genuinely free society must have.

  The elections that were eventually held were less exercises in Jeffersonian principles than in tribalism, with Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Kurds voting strictly along tribal and sectarian lines. Shi’ites constitute 60 to 70 percent of Iraq’s population, and so the Shi’ites won the elections. Sunnis, who had ruled Iraq for decades under Saddam Hussein, felt angry and disenfranchised when a Shi’ite regime was established in Baghdad. And soon Sunni jihadist groups began to capitalize upon that anger and gain recruits from among the large body of young Sunnis in Iraq who hated the United States and the Baghdad government—and were ready to wage jihad against both.

  That much can indeed be laid at the feet of George W. Bush. He and his advisers misjudged the nature of Islam and of Islamic law: their constitution for Iraq, with its adherence to Sharia, directly contradicted their desire to establish Iraq as a Western-style republic. They were wrong to assume that the lure of democracy would be stronger than the pull of government constituted according to Islamic law. Ultimately, in encouraging Sharia rule in Iraq, Bush encouraged the forces that led to the rise of the Islamic State.

  However, in criticizing Bush for his Iraq policies, Obama was also incriminating himself. We have seen how, in his speech at Fort Bragg on December 14, 2011, Obama called his withdrawal of American troops from Iraq a “moment of success” and added: “Now, Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.”24

  None of this was true. Iraq was neither sovereign, nor stable, nor self-reliant, and Obama gave ISIS a golden opportunity by withdrawing American troops before any of those things actually was true. Obama created a vacuum, and the Islamic State filled it.

  Destroying Civilization

  Once in power, the Islamic State set about “purifying” the land.

  An apocryphal story holds that the caliph Umar, the second successor of Muhammad, ordered the famous Library of Alexandria to be burned to the ground. The books in it were not needed: “they will either contradict the Qur’an, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous.”

  Although this almost certainly never happened, the words ascribed to Umar are illustrative of a tendency within Islam that manifested itself on February 22, 2015, when jihadis from the Islamic State ransacked the Mosul Public Library, burning over eight thousand rare and irreplaceable books and manuscripts, including an ancient Arab astrolabe and books from the Ottoman period.25

  The Islamic State has also destroyed numerous ancient Assyrian artifacts in the Nineveh Museum in Mosul.26 It released videos showing jihadis taking sledgehammers and drills to priceless artifacts such as an Assyrian winged bull statue dating from the ninth century BC.27

  In March 2015, the Islamic State bulldozed the thirty-three-hundred-year-old city of Nimrud and the two-thousand-year-old city of Hatra and blew up a tenth-century Chaldean Catholic Church north of Mosul.28 It sold Christian icons and other artifacts from the looted churches and turned some of the destroyed churches themselves into torture chambers.29

  The Islamic State has also destroyed cemeteries—some of them Christian, in which they destroyed the crosses on tombstones, in line with the Islamic hatred of the cross—in order to prevent “veneration of the dead.”30

  NOT THAT THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM

  “‘These books promote infidelity and call for disobeying Allah. So they will be burned,’ a bearded militant in traditional Afghani two-piece clothing told residents, according to one man living nearby who spoke to The Associated Press. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation, said the Islamic State group official made his impromptu address as others stuffed books into empty flour bags.”

  —Associated Press report from the sacking of the Mosul Public Library by ISIS31

  “Muslims, these artefacts behind me are idols for people from ancient times who worshipped them instead of God. . . . The so-called Assyrians, Akkadians and other peoples had gods for the rain, for farming, for war . . . and they tried to get closer to them with offerings. The prophet removed and buried the idols in Mecca with his blessed hands. . . . Even if they are worth billions of dollars, we don’t care.”

  —the ISIS video explains the destruction of archaeological and artistic treasures at the Ninevah Museum in Mosul32

  The world watched agog as ISIS gave it this new confirmation of the Muslim group’s gleeful contempt for civilization and embrace of barbarism. But once again, the Islamic State is simply acting in accord with its stated principles. In April 2015, the Islamic State published photos of jihadis smashing tombstones and destroying the crosses upon them, along with a statement of the fourth caliph, Ali ibn Abi Talib: “I am dispatching you with what the Prophet dispatched me: That you not leave an elevated grave without levelling it, nor an image without erasing it.”33

  Many have scoffed at the Islamic State’s claim that they’re simply removing temptations to idolatry. Who, after all, would be tempted to worship a three-thousand-year-old Assyrian statue of a bull? And there is more to the Islamic State’s actions than just that. Besides removing supposed temptations to idolatry, Islamic jihadists want to ruin the artifacts of non-Muslim civilizations because doing so testifies to the truth of Islam, as the Qur’an suggests that ruins are a sign of Allah’s punishment of those who rejected his truth: “Many were the Ways of Life that have passed away before you: travel through the earth, and see what was the end of those who rejected Truth” (Qur’an 3:137).

  THE ISLAMIC ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF VANDALISM

  This dynamic in which ISIS jihadis are inspired to turn archaeological treasures into broken shards is a chilling Islamic variation on the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism effect that Max Weber claime
d to have discovered. Like Dutch Calvinists in the seventeenth century working hard to succeed in business to prove to themselves that they were among the elect—and creating capitalism in the process—the jihadis of the twenty-first century Islamic State smash the priceless art of pre-Islamic civilizations to reassure themselves that the Qur’an is the truth, Allah is triumphant, and they are his instruments, responsible for creating ruins so as to show his wrath and his judgment. For the Qur’an exhorts believers to fight unbelievers as the tools of Allah’s chastisement: “Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts of a believing people” (9:14). They don’t seem likely to create anything of value in the process.

  In other words, travel through the earth and see the ruins of non-Islamic civilizations, and realize that it is Allah who has destroyed them for their idolatry.

  The duty to reduce ancient cities to ruins is related to the Islamic idea that pre-Islamic civilizations, and non-Islamic civilizations, are all jahiliyya—the society of unbelievers, which is worthless. Consequently, any art, literature, or architecture produced by any non-Islamic culture has no value whatsoever: it is all simply a manifestation of that pre-Islamic ignorance and barbarism.

  Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul encountered this attitude in his travels through Muslim countries. For many Muslims, he observed in Among the Believers, “The time before Islam is a time of blackness: that is part of Muslim theology. History has to serve theology.” Obviously this cuts against the idea of tourism of ancient sites and non-Muslim religious installations. Naipaul recounted that some Pakistani Muslims, far from valuing the nation’s renowned archaeological site at Mohenjo Daro, saw its ruins as a teaching opportunity for Islam, recommending that Qur’an 3:137 (“Many were the ways of life that passed away before you. . . .”) be posted there as a teaching tool, to warn the stupefied onlookers that they were witnessing not the artifacts of a once-great civilization but the visual proof of the awesome judgment of Allah.