The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS

by Robert Spencer

  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

  In 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.

  INTRODUCTION

  The Islamic State, a.k.a. ISIS, is the wealthiest, most successful, and most dangerous terror group in the world—and the most mysterious.

  Al-Qaeda shocked the world and staggered the United States when it destroyed the Twin Towers and struck the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad maintain steady pressure upon Israel with attacks on Israeli civilians and rockets lobbed from Gaza. Hizballah menaces Israel from Lebanon. In the Philippines, Islamic jihad groups have succeeded in compelling the government to grant Muslims an autonomous region in Mindanao. In Nigeria, Islamic jihadists horrified the world and moved Michelle Obama to take to Twitter with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls by kidnapping infidel girls and pressing them into sex slavery. Other jihad groups around the world wage jihad campaigns against various non-Muslim and non-Sharia governments, all for the goal of establishing an Islamic state.

  But one jihad terror group has outdone them all by actually establishing that Islamic state—and embarking upon a reign of terror unmatched in recent memory—rivaling the atrocities of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.

  This, of course, is the group that calls itself the Islamic State, that most of the rest of the world calls ISIS, and that Barack Obama and his administration call ISIL. ISIS constitutes a threat to the U.S. greater than that of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizballah, Boko Haram, and all other jihad groups combined. Undeniably, its success has already been far greater than that of any of them. The Islamic State has become the first jihad terror group to rule over a significant expanse of territory for any extended period. It has won the loyalty of other jihadis far outside its domains—in Libya and Nigeria, and even as far away as the Philippines. It has called for attacks in the West, and Muslims in the U.S., Canada, Britain, and France have heeded its call.

  On June 29, 2014, the group that had up to that point called itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (or al-Sham in Arabic; hence the synonymous acronyms ISIL and ISIS) announced that it was forming a new caliphate—a single unified government of all the Muslims, according to Sunni Muslim thought—and would henceforth drop the second half of its name and call itself simply the Islamic State.1

  This claim to constitute a new caliphate became the basis of the Islamic State’s appeal to Muslims worldwide, the inspiration for them to travel in unprecedented numbers to Iraq, Syria, and Libya to join ISIS. Once the Islamic State declared itself the new caliphate, it swiftly began to consolidate control over the large expanses of Iraq and Syria that it had taken by military force—an area larger than the United Kingdom, with a population of eight million people.2 Blithely disregarding the world’s universal condemnation of its pretensions, it has moved to assemble the accouterments of a state: currency, passports, social services, and the like. Its control of oil wells in Iraq quickly gave it a sizeable and steady source of wealth.

  And ISIS has achieved remarkable military success. Despite a promise from the president of the world’s only remaining superpower to “degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL,”3 the new caliphate continues to add to its territory.

  By May 2015 it had taken both Fallujah and Ramadi—reversing gains America had won over the Islamic State’s precursor organization al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) at a huge cost in our blood and treasure and the lives and confidence of our local allies. In the north toward Turkey, it was also in control of the formerly million-inhabitant city of Mosul, half of whose residents were driven out as refugees. The Islamic State had
captured American tanks, artillery, and thousands of U.S.-made armored vehicles from the hapless Iraqi Army. As ISIS forces stood within seventy miles of Baghdad, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government exchanged mutual accusations of incompetence and lack of commitment to the fight. In Syria, the Islamic State occupied half the nation’s territory, carried out mass public executions in the ancient Roman amphitheatre in Palmyra, and threatened Damascus. Coalition pilots were able to drop their bombs on only one out of four bombing runs because of a lack of ground intelligence on targets, and American airstrikes seemed to be no match for armored bulldozers and suicide bombers—some of them citizens of Western countries who had abandoned comfortable lives for the glamor of the new caliphate.

  The Islamic State’s conquests have been accompanied by savage brutality that commands the attention of the world. ISIS has beheaded Americans on video, burned a captured Jordanian pilot alive in a metal cage, and made sex slaves of thousands of women and young girls. It executes men for smoking and tortures women for the tiniest infractions against covering themselves in public.

  Yet despite all this and more, most Americans know very little about ISIS. And that’s not just Americans who know what they know about world affairs from watching network news shows. Even the nation’s highest authorities and our intelligence apparatus have shown that they know very little about the Islamic State.

  Back in January 2014, less than six months before ISIS declared itself a new caliphate, Barack Obama dismissed the group with a now-infamous analogy. After the group took over the Iraqi city of Fallujah, Obama declared that he did not take them seriously: “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” He added: “I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian.”4

  Just a few months later, this JV team that was supposed to be “engaged in various local power struggles” controlled a nation-sized expanse of Iraq and Syria and had organized a police force, amassed an army of over one hundred thousand fighters, and become the world’s richest (and best-armed) jihad terror group.

  Obama wasn’t the only person surprised by the sudden growth and stunning success of this group; its rapid advance shocked the world. No one, however, should have been shocked at all: the group’s success has been a long time in the making. Nonetheless, even after the Islamic State established its hold on so much territory, Western authorities continued to disparage it. “Whether you call them ISIS or ISIL, I refuse to call them the Islamic State, because they are neither Islamic or a state,” said Hillary Clinton.5 President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, Vice President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and virtually every other politician in the Western world agreed with Clinton that the Islamic State had nothing to do with Islam. All the major Muslim groups in the West likewise condemned the Islamic State and questioned its claims not just to be the caliphate, but to be Islamic at all.

  Despite this chorus of condemnation, however, the Islamic State is drawing Muslims from around the world to join it in unprecedented numbers. By February 2015, over twenty thousand Muslims from all over the world had traveled to Iraq and Syria to wage jihad for the Islamic State—an outpouring of support that no other jihad group, or in fact terror group of any kind, had ever inspired.6

  In this book I explain the roots of its success—in the political situation created by the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, the war against Bashar Assad in Syria, and the resulting chaos—but also in the deep currents of Islamic thought. I demonstrate how the Islamic State’s rapid success would never have been possible without its claim to reconstitute the caliphate, a claim that has proven to be extraordinarily potent among Muslims worldwide.

  I’ll take you inside the mindset of the leaders of ISIS, of those who have killed in its name, and of the Muslims from Western countries who have been inspired to give up everything they have known and leave their families in order to move to the Islamic State and take up its jihad.

  Wherever possible, I’ll let the Islamic State speak for itself. I’ll use the words of the people who have joined it and who run it (as well as of those who have been victimized by it)—so that you can see directly what they think of themselves and of their actions. You will also see what they think of you. I’ll bring you the Islamic State’s own explanations of what it has done, and why, and—most chilling of all—its plans for the future.

  I show what constitutes its appeal among young Muslims, and why the condemnations of ISIS from Muslim groups have been completely ineffective in stopping young Muslims from traveling thousands of miles from all over the globe to join the group. The Islamic State is likely to be around for years to come, but it can be defeated, and indeed must be; in this book, I’ll detail how it can be stopped, and what is likely to follow in its wake once it is defeated. You’ll also discover the shocking extent of the nature and magnitude of the ISIS threat within the United States.

  Above all, I show why the Islamic State is nothing less than the most pressing danger of our time. And why our struggle against it is a struggle against a force so purely evil, so focused, and so determined that our struggle against ISIS is, without exaggeration, a struggle for the survival of civilization itself.

  We can win. And we must win. For the sake of a society that preserves humane values. For the sake of the continued existence of free societies that maintain respect for the dignity of every human person. For our children’s sake.

  Chapter One

  BORN OF BLOOD AND SLAUGHTER

  The organization now known as the Islamic State was born in the struggles of Muslim hard-liners in the Middle East in the 1990s to topple the relatively secular Arab nationalist governments that dominated the region and restore the rule of Islamic law. But the blood and ruin wreaked by the Islamic State have their ultimate origin in the battles and raids that Islamic tradition ascribes to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and in the jihad conquests of the Abbasid, Umayyad, and Ottoman caliphates.

  Did you know?

  •ISIS founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi became a devout Muslim while he was in prison for drugs and sexual assault

  •Osama bin Laden hesitated to found a caliphate for fear of America’s power “to lay siege on any Islamic State”

  •Our word “assassin” derives from the word for the followers of a medieval Persian ruler who built a Potemkin Islamic paradise to recruit murderers with girls and hashish

  ISIS began as an Iraqi jihad group known as the Jama‘at al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad, the Party of Monotheism and Jihad. It was founded in 1999 by a Muslim named Ahmed Fadhil Nazar al-Khalaylah, who became internationally famous as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His career in jihad is illuminating not only of the background of the Islamic State, but of the goals of jihad terrorists in general.

  From Small-Time Criminal to Terror Master

  Zarqawi’s nom de jihad means “Musab’s father from Zarqa,” and the man who would become for a time one of the two most renowned and feared jihad terrorists in the world was indeed born in the Jordanian town of Zarqa, on October 30, 1966. Zarqawi’s father died when he was seventeen, leaving his mother with ten children to raise and the future terrorist with an angry, bitter heart. Zarqawi was jailed for possession of drugs and sexual assault, whereupon he found religion, gave up drinking and drugs, memorized the Qur’an, and embarked upon the path that would lead him to become one of the most notorious men in the world.1

  Zarqawi’s first taste of jihad came fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but he saw little action there, and in 1992 he returned to Jordan to wage jihad at home.2 He founded a jihad group named Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of the Levant), which foreshadowed ISIS in its dedication to overthrowing a relatively secular government (that of Jordan) and uniting a l
arger territory (the Levant) in a single Islamic state. Arrested after a cache of weapons was discovered in his home, Zarqawi was given a fifteen-year sentence in March 1994 at the end of a trial during which he showed his contempt for authorities who did not govern according to Islamic law by handing the judge a paper on which the terror mastermind had written out an indictment naming Jordan’s king and the judge himself as defendants.3

  While in prison, Zarqawi became the leader of a group of Muslims upon whom he imposed strict discipline and to whom he was fanatically devoted. A fellow jihadi who knew Zarqawi in those days recalled that he was “well-known for loving his brothers in God more than his relatives.”4

  In May 1999, Zarqawi was released from prison after serving only a third of his sentence, under a general amnesty granted by Jordan’s King Abdullah. The wisdom of that amnesty was immediately cast into doubt when Zarqawi got involved in a jihad scheme known as the “Millennium Plot”; plotters intended to bomb a luxury hotel and other sites in Jordan frequented by tourists.5 The plot was foiled; Zarqawi fled to Pakistan and eventually ventured into Afghanistan, where he founded the Party of Monotheism and Jihad.6 In Afghanistan he met Osama bin Laden, who decided to set him up with funding for a jihad training camp for Zarqawi in Herat, where he trained jihadis from Jordan, Syria, the Palestinian territories, and elsewhere for actions in Europe.7

  After 9/11, Zarqawi and his men crossed from Afghanistan into Iran, where they were able to operate until April 2002. At that point, eight of his jihadis were discovered in Germany, plotting jihad mass murder attacks against Jewish targets.8 Expelled from Iran as a result of this discovery, Zarqawi made his way to Iraq, where he anticipated that an American attack was imminent. He trained his Party of Monotheism and Jihad to be an anti-American jihad force and positioned himself as the leader and guide of the jihadis from all over the world who had begun to stream into Iraq to fight the Americans.