By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 21, 2014
Rich Leech
Following Robb Leech, whose step-brother, Rich, has been converted to Islam, the film shows the path of the “white,” middle-class (in the British sense), apparently-irreligious Westerner who succumbs to the call of faith. T Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 17, 2014
Since the Syrian rebellion went to war with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in January, there has been a parallel campaign of political warfare by the rebels and al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, to delegitimize ISIS. This has often taken the form of referring to ISIS as Kharijites or the Khawarij.
This Khawarij are an ancient sect who broke from the Rashidun (Rightly-Guided) Caliphate in the name of righteous revolt in 658, and continued their campaign against the caliphate—by then in the hands of the Umayyads—for a century and more. Regarded as perhaps the first terrorists in Islamdom (by another definition it would be the Nizaris, a.k.a. “The Assassins”), the connotations of the Khawarij label are extremism and deviance, particularly a tendency to excommunicate (make takfir against) Muslims not only for sins that do not merit excommunication, but simply for reasons of political exclusivism. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 11, 2014
That Barack Obama’s indecision on Syria is final there has been no doubt for some time. But it is worse than that. When the subject comes up in the Situation Room, President Obama could be found “disengaged …, sometimes scrolling through messages on his BlackBerry or slouching and chewing gum.” Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 6, 2014
The spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, gave a speech on 30 September 2013, entitled, “Lak Allah Ayatuha al-Dawla al-Mazluma” (لك الله أيتها الدولة المظلومة), roughly: “God Is With You, O’ Oppressed State” (The English translation released by Fursan al-Balagh Media gives the title as, “May Allah Be With You, O’ Oppressed State”.) The speech is primarily a ferocious attack on the Syrian rebel groups, accusing them of being part of a Western-led conspiracy, which includes the media stations of Arab governments and their “mouthpieces” throughout the region, to manipulate the coverage of ISIS such that it blackens their name and turns Muslims away from them.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 4, 2014
The spokesman of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, made a speech on 19 June 2013, a transcript of which is reproduced below. Al-Adnani’s speech was entitled, “Fadharhum wa-ma yaftarun”, variously translated as: “So Leave Them Alone With Their Devising”, “Leave Them Alone with their Fabrications”, and “Ignore Them and Their False Allegations”. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 3, 2014
Ayman al-Zawahiri, September 2013, AFP/Getty Images
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the then-Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), released an audio statement on 8 April 2013 asserting his authority over Jabhat al-Nusra, which was set up as the Syrian wing of ISI. Al-Nusra’s leader, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, rejected al-Baghdadi’s hostile takeover on 10 April and swore allegiance—renewed, in his telling—to al-Qaeda. The leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, ruled on this matter in a letter dated 23 May 2013, which was released to, and translated by, al-Jazeera, on 9 June 2013. Al-Zawahiri’s letter is reprinted below with some editions for clarity and some important sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 2, 2014
On 10 April 2013, Jabhat al-Nusra’s leader, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, put out a speech, published by al-Manara al-Bayda, entitled, “About the Fields of Syria”. In the speech, al-Jolani rejected the statement from thirty-six hours earlier by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, which revealed officially that al-Nusra was a front-organization for the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), and then al-Baghdadi asserted his authority publicly over al-Nusra, dissolving ISI and al-Nusra into a new group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This dispute would ultimately lead to ISIS being expelled from al-Qaeda’s network after it refused the orders of al-Qaeda’s leadership to return to Iraq and leave al-Nusra as al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria. A translation of this speech by jihadology.net is reproduced below with some minor editions for clarity and some interesting sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 2, 2014
Al-Qaeda expelled the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) from its ranks on February 3, 2014. This was the culmination of a dispute that broke into the public eye with ISIS’s declaration in April 2013, an effort by ISIS’s emir, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to formally subsume the secret Syrian wing of the then-Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), known as Jabhat an-Nusra, under his own banner, and the rejection of both al-Nusra’s leadership and al-Qaeda’s to this move. In truth, the schism between ISIS and al-Qaeda has its roots all the way back to the beginning, when ISIS became al-Qaeda’s Iraqi branch, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM), in 2004.
Below is the transcript of the audio address by al-Baghdadi, released by al-Furqan on 8 April 2013, entitled, “Give Good News to the Believers: The Declaration of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”. Some transliterations have been altered, the syntax has been cleared up, and some interesting or important sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 1, 2014
Last September, a Save the Children report noted that children in suburbs of Damascus besieged by the regime were subsisting on “leaves, nuts, [and] fruits”. Throughout October it would become clear that a deliberate terror-famine was being waged by the regime against these rebellious districts, to starve them into submission. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on March 26, 2014
On March 14, 2014, Anthony Wedgewood Benn (“Tony Benn”) died aged 88. Though, as his assumed name in later years suggests, Benn presented himself as a populist, he was in fact of very elite stock: born in 1925, his grandfather was a Liberal MP, as was his father (until he joined Labour in 1927), and his mother was a leading early feminist campaigner. Benn was entitled to a hereditary peerage as Viscount Stansgate, which he objected to. Ever one for publicity, after the Peerage Act of 1963 was passed on July 31 of that year, allowing renunciation of peerages, he became the first peer to renounce his title, 22 minutes later. Benn mixed with figures like David Lloyd George and Mohandas Gandhi, and attended the exclusive Westminster School, which is “something he tried to hide in future biographies,” before going on to be a fighter pilot in the RAF.
