Tag Archives: jihad

The Islamic State’s Official Biography of the Caliph’s Deputy

37 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on December 18, 2016

Obituary for Abdurrahman al-Qaduli in the German version of Rumiya, 11 November 2016

Obituary for Abdurrahman al-Qaduli in the German version of Rumiya, 11 November 2016

The forty-first edition of the Islamic State’s newsletter, al-Naba, released within the territory of the caliphate on 30 July 2016 and released online on 2 August, and the forty-third edition (released 13 and 16 August), contained a two-part obituary for Abd al-Rahman al-Qaduli (Abu Ali al-Anbari), the caliph’s deputy when he was killed on 24 March. The obituaries, entitled, “The Devout Scholar and Mujahid Preacher: Shaykh Abu Ali al-Anbari”,[1] make clear that al-Qaduli was one of the most consequential jihadists in the history of the Islamic State movement. Below is a translation, with some interesting and/or important sections highlighted in bold. The biography resolves some long-standing mysteries, and some of the claims are dubious in light of other evidence we have: these issues, and other points of context and explanation, are in the footnotes. The subheadings are mine, added to signpost the narrative and break it up into more manageable chunks.
Continue reading →

The Intellectual Roots of the Islamic State

Leave a reply

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 15, 2016

Published at The Wall Street Journal

Sayyid Qutb

Sayyid Qutb

Why did Prohibition in America fail? The Pakistani Islamic scholar Abul Ala Mawdudi argued that it was because the law “required people to accept human rather divine reasoning.” What was needed was a harsh and absolute divine mandate to root out evils like alcohol. As the Ottoman empire was being swept away and national-independence movements were about to overrun the Muslim world, men like Mawdudi began articulating a new ideology that would meld medieval and modern concepts. That ideology, Salafi-jihadism, now represents one of the West’s greatest security challenges. Continue reading →

Islamic State Claims It Follows God’s Law, Jews and Christians Do Not

Leave a reply

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 1, 2016
1

The fifteenth issue of the Islamic State’s English-language magazine, Dabiq, released on 31 July 2016 contained an essay, “By the Sword,” a brief polemic that defends the Islamic State’s brutality on the basis that it is conducted according to the Word of God—laying open claim to genocide and slavery so long as it is undertaken by Muslims and not disbelievers, saying they would have felt no need to have apologized for the atomic bombing of Japan or the use of defoliants in Vietnam and would have been more thorough-going in the extermination of Native Americans and Jews, since these things are vouchsafed by the Creator. The Islamic State contends that the Jewish and Christian religious contain the same prescriptions for the forcible implementation of the Holy Law that the Qur’an does, but these monotheists have lapsed and pay more attention to the edicts of the United Nations. Continue reading →

What We Know About The Islamic State’s Attack in Nice

Leave a reply

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 30, 2016

Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel on the promenade in Nice on 14 July 2016

Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel on the promenade in Nice on 14 July 2016

On 14 July 2016, Bastille Day, a lorry zig-zagged along the seafront Promenade des Anglais in Nice for two kilometres (1.25 miles) during a fireworks display. Eighty-four people, including ten children, were murdered instantly and two-hundred-plus wounded, nearly two-dozen critically. Below is a compilation of the evidence so far, which indicates that the killer was a part of a substantial network acting on behalf of the Islamic State, though there is not yet any evidence of a direct contact with the terrorist state headquartered in Raqqa. Continue reading →

Jabhat al-Nusra Claims to Dissociate From Al-Qaeda

9 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 28, 2016

Graphic released with the speech of Ahmad Hassan (Abu Khayr al-Masri) about Jabhat al-Nusra and relations with al-Qaeda

Graphic released with the speech of Ahmad Hassan (Abu Khayr al-Masri) about Jabhat al-Nusra and relations with al-Qaeda

In advance of Jabhat al-Nusra rebranding as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS) on 28 July 2016, there were carefully coordinated media releases between al-Qaeda “central” (AQC) and al-Nusra. First, al-Manara al-Bayda (The White Minaret), al-Nusra’s media arm, released a six-minute audio speech by Abdullah Muhammad Rajab Abd al-Rahman (Abu Khayr al-Masri),[1] identified as the deputy to al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri; then there was the first ever picture of al-Nusra’s leader, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, whose real name is Ahmad Husayn al-Shara, and shortly thereafter a video of al-Shara ostensibly severing ties with al-Qaeda; and finally the founding document for JFS was published. Continue reading →

Islamic State Intelligence Guided The Würzburg Train Attacker

3 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 21, 2016

muhammad-riyad-2

On 18 July 2016, in the Heidingsfeld district of Würzburg of Bavaria in southern Germany, a seventeen-year-old Afghan refugee named Riaz Khan Ahmadzai (Muhammad Riyad), armed with a hatchet and a knife, wounded five civilians, two of them seriously, on a train between Treuchtlingen to Würzburg. The four people injured on the train were from the same family from Hong Kong; Ahmadzai/Riyad then wounded another civilian seriously as he jumped from the train. Ahmadzai, who had entered Germany as an unaccompanied minor and had been living in Ochsenfurt, Bavaria, was shot dead after a chase with police.  Continue reading →

Al-Qaeda Leader Focuses on Main Enemies: Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State

3 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 13, 2016

1

As-Sahab Foundation for Islamic Media Publication, al-Qaeda’s media outlet, produced an English translation of a speech by the organization’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, on 13 January 2016. The speech was entitled, “Syria Is Entrusted Upon Your Necks”. The speech does focus on the West, particularly its de facto alliance with the pro-Assad coalition—namely Russia and Iran—and calls for the Syrian rebellion to unite with al-Qaeda to resist this conspiracy. What is more noticeable, however, is the two enemies on whom Dr. al-Zawahiri really focuses: Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State. The Saudis are accused—not without reason—of having been allied closely to the West and thwarting the jihadist projects at every turn. And al-Zawahiri makes a fierce ideological assault on the Islamic State, comparing them with the Khawarij and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), whose conduct in Algeria in the 1990s and their justifications for it took Islamist extremism to new depths. The speech is reproduced below with some minor editions, to transliteration and punctuation, and some interesting and important sections highlighted in bold.
Continue reading →

Islam’s First Terrorists, Part 3

6 Replies

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 19, 2015

This is the third of a six-part series. Read parts one and two.

Masyaf fortress, eastern Hama, the headquarters of the Assassins (1141-1270)

Masyaf fortress, eastern Hama, the headquarters of the Assassins (1141-1270)

The death of Hassan-i Sabbah and The Resurrection

Rashid ad-Din Sinan

Rashid ad-Din Sinan

Hassan-i Sabbah, the Nizaris’ first and most successful leader, died in May 1124. Hassan-i Sabbah was a fanatic who sternly imposed the Holy Law—even executing one of his own sons for drinking wine and another son (mistakenly) for an unauthorized assassination. An extreme ascetic and recluse, Hassan-i Sabbah left his house twice in the thirty-five years after taking Alamut. Hassan-i Sabbah’s great skill was in weaponizing the discontents of the dispossessed and refining the doctrine of al-dawa jadida (the new preaching).

Hassan-i Sabbah never claimed to be the Imam, merely the only one who knew what the Imam wanted. Hassan-i Sabbah confirmed the Ismaili doctrine as essentially authoritarian, where the believer must follow an Imam, the only source of truth, who has been appointed by god (unlike the Sunni view where the believer can choose an Imam).

The Nizaris’ history divides into essentially four parts after this: Continue reading →

Islamist Clerics Give Permission to Work with Turkey Against ISIS and PKK

1 Reply

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 4, 2015

Just over a week ago, a new clerical body was formed, al-Majlis Shura Ahl al-ilm fil-Sham (Advisory Council of the People of Knowledge in Syria), which includes Islamists from within Syria and from outside. Among the notable foreigners are Umar al-Hadouchi, a Moroccan jihadi-salafist, and Muhammad Ould al-Dedew, a Mauritanian who is more in line with the Sururis. There is also Abdallah al-Muhaysini, the Saudi jihadi cleric who is very close to al-Qaeda’s leadership inside Syria. From among Syrians, there are two Ahrar al-Sham notables, Dr. Ayman al-Harush and Mohamed Ayman Aboul-Tout (Abu Abbas al-Shami); Sa’ad al-Uthman, the son of Abd al-Karim, a major figure in the Hama wing of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and Ahmad al-Salum, a Sururi (an activist/political Salafi).

The Council’s first statement condemned the 25 July assassination of the Faylaq al-Sham commander Mazin al-Qassum by Islamic State (IS) operatives with Jund al-Aqsa, and demanded that all groups clarify their stance on IS and cleanse their ranks of IS agents and sympathizers. Today’s fatwa, “Concerning cooperation and coordination with the Turks in repelling Daesh and the PKK,” licensed Muslims to work with the Turkish government against IS and the PKK. The fatwa is reproduced below. Continue reading →

Islamic State Spokesman Calls For Immigration to the Caliphate, All Factions To Join

Leave a reply

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 1, 2015

On June 23, 2015, the Islamic State (IS) spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani gave a speech, “O Our People, Respond to the Caller of Allah”. Al-Adnani, noting the coming of Ramadan, called on Muslims to journey to the caliphate, saying that hijra (emigration) in this month—and martyrdom—is the most blessed. Al-Adnani called on Muslims—specifically Iraqi Sunnis and Syrian rebel and Islamist insurgent groups—to unite around IS, which had no theological factions or ethnic distinctions among its membership, being the only pure expression of Islam, ruling by god’s law. Iraqi Sunni militias and Syrian rebels had betrayed the religion by seeking favour from, and even seeking alliance with, Western states. Al-Adnani threatened the town of Haditha, specifically the Jaghayfa clan, that if it surrendered now its repentance would be accepted, but if the town was overrun first then they would be slaughtered. Al-Adnani played heavily on the interlinked themes of anti-Shi’a sectarianism and the spreading influence of Iran and its proxies, repressing Sunnis. The old guard of the jihadi movement—clerics like Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri (though neither are mentioned by name)—are attacked for not being on the battlefields. Al-Adnani also accepted the allegiance of the Russian-based faction that declared itself under the caliph’s authority, naming the group Wilayat al-Kavkaz. An English transcript of the speech was posted by IS and is reproduced below with some minor editions in transliteration and some interesting sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading →