ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam (24 page)

Is it any wonder, given how Britain has utterly failed to assimilate the waves of Muslim immigrants that have come to its shores, that British recruits to ISIS seem to be popping up everywhere? They’re chopping heads, appearing in propaganda recruitment videos, tweeting prolifically, and yes, dying for the cause—as of this writing, about twenty British citizens have been killed fighting for ISIS and other jihadist groups in Syria.
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A trio of British jihadists even had responsibility for guarding high-value ISIS hostages (Westerners who could fetch a large ransom or be used for propaganda effect)—including American journalist James Foley. The London-accented threesome came to be known among the hostages as “The Beatles,” with Foley’s beheader dubbed “Jihadi John.” Those who were lucky enough to be freed—thanks to ransoms paid—later said that their British captors were extraordinarily cruel and ruthless. As the
Daily Mail
reported, “Both [British hostage John] Cantlie and [James] Foley
were ‘water boarded’—an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, in which the victim is strapped down with their mouth and nose covered with cloth, before large quantities of water are poured over their faces. They were also given electric shocks, and shot with Tasers, stunguns which cause temporary paralysis, after being dragged from their cells to be ‘punished’ for any behaviour their captors deemed a breach of their rules.”

Their British captors, “did the most appalling stuff in the world—they were psychopathic.” They pitted their prisoners against each other in “some sick pastiche of the film Fight Club” forcing them to box against each other and then torturing the men who lost the boxing matches.

Even other ISIS members apparently thought the Britons were going too far. “But the British Islamists, who spoke with London accents, were too enthusiastic in their torture of the hostages for the taste of their fellow jihadis. It is understood they were at one point taken off the job of guarding the Westerners because of their brutality. ‘The British jihadis got into trouble because they were considered to be so brutal,’ the [
Daily Mail
’s] source said.”
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In other words, these British ISIS jihadis were among the worst of the worst—a uniquely sadistic crew that stood out even among the most sadistic terrorist group in memory. In previous centuries, the British Empire exported Judeo-Christian values and Western civilization to some of the darkest corners of the world. How far the mighty have fallen. Britain today is a leading exporter not of the Gospel or Shakespearean literature but of Islamic terrorism—indeed, no fewer than twenty-eight countries have suffered jihadist attacks carried out by British citizens.
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That is an astounding indicator of the depths to which British society has plunged in the twenty-first century. The widespread riots and coordinated street violence carried out by young toughs in cities and towns throughout Great Britain for several days in August 2011 recalled the nightmare vision of Anthony Burgess’s
A Clockwork Orange.
The 1962 novel, which was later made into a controversial film—banned in Great Britain for its
graphic violence—by director Stanley Kubrick, envisioned a nightmarish UK of the future when violent young thugs ran amok. However, neither Kubrick’s film nor the book ever envisioned one crucial detail: that a large chunk of the derelicts of the future would be driven into a murderous frenzy not by drugs or alcohol but by Islamist ideology. Forget “Singin’ in the Rain.” Try “Allahu Akbar.”

Great Britain today has lost its once-proud culture, its traditional Christian faith, and its pride, only to see the vacuum filled by a bleak mixture of Islam, left-wing political correctness, violent street gang culture, and hedonistic celebrity-worship (are you listening, America?). Is it any wonder, then, that products of this increasingly dark society are joining ISIS and gleefully torturing innocent people in a manner that makes the Droogs of
A Clockwork Orange
look like the Wiggles?

Shiraz Maher, a former British radical who left Islamism and now monitors ISIS’s European—and specifically, British—foreign fighters, described for the
Wall Street Journal
the sort of “chaps” ISIS is attracting from every corner of the UK. As the
Journal
reports, “The typical British Islamic State terrorist is male, in his 20s and from a South Asian background. ‘He usually has some university education and a history of Muslim activism,’ Mr. Maher adds.” Maher divides the British jihadists into three different “personality types”: “The first is the adventure-seeker. ‘They’re in jihadist summer school or camp,’ Mr. Maher says. ‘“I’m with my buddies, we’re hanging out and we have these great weapons—AK-47s, RPGs.”’” Members of this group have frequently been “involved with U.K. gangs or drugs, and they might consult
Islam for Dummies
before traveling to Syria.” These are the guys who post selfies in which they’re “eating fast food, swimming and playing soccer in Syria”—basically as a recruiting message to their friends in Britain, evidence that life with ISIS is better than their lives in London.

The second type are “the ‘really nasty guys,’ Mr. Maher says, ‘the ones who will show off a severed head on Facebook and say, “Yeah, I just
beheaded this son of a bitch.”’ These guys, Mr. Maher adds, ‘should definitely never come back.’”

Third is a category of “‘what you might call idealistic or humanitarian jihadists for want of a better phrase,’ Mr. Maher says,” inspired by compassion for suffering Muslim populations. Unfortunately, as Maher points out, these fighters eventually “‘become hardened’” by their experiences in ISIS and “‘no longer mention the innocents they came to rescue. “The land belongs to Allah,” they now say. “We’re here to impose Islam.”’”
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The Islamic State has drawn British Muslims from all backgrounds and walks of life. From twenty-year-old medical student Nasser Muthana to sixteen-year-old twin sisters Salma and Zahra Halane (who traveled to Syria to become “jihad brides” for ISIS)
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to former National Health Service doctor Shajul Islam
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to rapper (and beheader extraordinaire) Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary to a former British banker who explained his decision to join ISIS thus: “[The Islamic State is] the only place where the shari’a of Allah is applied fully. I hate democracy and the self-indulgence of the rich. . . . I hate inequality . . . I hate the corporations who are trying to destroy this world because of tyranny.”
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Yes, better to destroy the world through the sharia-fied tyranny of ISIS—which, as we saw in
chapter two
, is raking in the dough at a pace that would make many of those mean old corporations blush. But since when does a committed Islamist let facts stand in the way of a revived caliphate?

That caliphate, as we’ve already seen, needs women in order to flourish—and leave it to Britain to answer the call. As of this writing, at least sixty British women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four have reportedly traveled to the Middle East to join ISIS since 2013 alone, making Britain the leading European source of female jihadists in the fledgling Islamic State. Like their British male counterparts, they’ve earned a reputation for brutality, even overseeing brothels where ISIS fighters routinely rape non-Muslim Iraqi women and girls imprisoned as sex slaves.
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In a sickening example of the utter depravity of these “women of ISIS,” one of
them, a British medical student named Mujahidah Bint Usama, took to Twitter and posted pictures of herself clad in a white doctor’s jacket and holding up a severed head as a group of young children looked on. The message accompanying the gruesome image read, “Dream job, a terrorist doc.”
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Mind you, this female doctor of death hails from the same country that once produced Florence Nightingale. Think the sun isn’t setting on Great Britain?

The recruitment of British Muslims into ISIS’s ranks has become such a widespread problem that British authorities seem perplexed as to how to handle it. London counterterror police have called on families, religious leaders, and the public to out the extremists in their midst.
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But their plea for help is unlikely to move the majority of Britain’s increasingly insular, radicalized Muslim population. Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposed anti-terror legislation that would seize the passports of British citizens seeking to fight overseas with ISIS and bolster authorities’ ability to track ISIS supporters on British soil is a belated step in the right direction. Nevertheless, investigators have their work cut out for them as “preachers, battle-hardened returning fighters and jihad sympathisers” work to recruit young Britons. According to the
Guardian:

          
Examples of on the ground recruitment have been seen in Cardiff and Birmingham—amid wider evidence that the UK is being specifically targeted by those with links to ISIS in Europe.

                
. . . In Birmingham a leaked police report . . . . reveal[ed] that extremists are providing support and facilitation for those wishing [to] travel abroad to fight. The report, written
by former assistant chief constable Sharon Rowe . . . says: “Influential extremists continue to operate in Birmingham, promoting extremist ideologies.” Rowe said they were operating from locations including gyms, restaurants and cafes, which are “used to facilitate extremist activity by allowing key figures to operate and promulgate their message.”
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As we’ve seen in the case of Anjem Choudary and his al-Muhajiroun network, some of this activity is happening right under UK authorities’ noses. Take thirty-five-year-old “hate preacher” Abu Waleed—yet another Choudary crony—who was seen at an outdoor barbeque in Wales in June 2014 where the black flag of ISIS was flown and an attendee was spotted with the ISIS symbol emblazoned across his shirt.
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Abu Waleed, who has been linked to at least three young Brits who have traveled to Syria to join ISIS, gave a January 2014 lecture that nicely summarized what life will look like for non-Muslims under the Islamic State: “If a Muslim comes out on the day of ‘
Eid
and sees an infidel with nice clothes, the infidel has to take his clothes off and give them to the Muslim. When an infidel walks down the street, he has to wear a red belt around his neck, he has to have his forehead shaved, and he has to wear two shoes that are different from one another. He is not allowed to walk on the pavement. He has to walk in the middle of the road, and he has to ride on a mule. . . . So everyone is going to become Muslims. That, my dear brothers, is the Islamic state.”
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In another lecture, Abu Waleed said Muslims want to “make sure David Cameron comes on his hands and knees, and gives us the jiziya [tax paid by non-Muslims in Islamic states].” He also vowed that in an Islamic society, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Kate Middleton—“the whore, the fornicator”—would be covered up in Islamic garb.
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Remember: these diatribes were delivered by a British citizen, on British soil—a citizen who (you guessed it) reportedly collects welfare benefits from the British government for himself, his wife, and his three disabled children.

The current state of recruitment to jihad was perhaps best described by a twenty-one-year-old British university student named Hamzah Parvez. The former London resident—who’s now fighting alongside ISIS—recorded an Islamic State recruitment video aimed at UK Muslims in which he called our time, “the golden era for jihad.”
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Of course, if you’re a young British Muslim in 2015 with a hankering for holy war, Parvez was merely repeating what you already knew.

While most clear-thinking citizens of the UK—Muslim and non-Muslim alike—are fully aware of which way the winds are blowing, I often speak to audiences in the United States that are stunned to learn that the nation that is closest to us culturally has descended into such an atrophied, Islamicized condition. They wonder if Great Britain, generally considered America’s staunchest ally and a stalwart of Western civilization, can turn things around. I answer with sadness that I am not optimistic. Yes, British Prime Minister David Cameron talks tough, saying that multiculturalism has failed, promising to curb immigration, and proposing tough new anti-terror laws. Yet the flow of immigration from Muslim countries into the UK continues, seemingly unabated. Extremist preachers continue to openly ply their trade and radicalized young British Muslims are lining up to go to Syria and Iraq and join ISIS.