After Memorial Day, Stop Lying About Jihadists

May 30, 2017  
|  7 Comments
Categories: Op-Eds

We’ve been at war for over a decade and a half now. In various countries, on assorted continents, and while that war is not being waged on a religion, it is damn sure being waged against it — if you understand the difference. All the different AQ variants, ISIS, the Taliban, Al-Shabaab…they have something in common, you know. Mad Duo

Today’s article was brought to you in its entirety by EOTech: a member of Joint Task Force Awesome.

After  Memorial Day, Stop Lying

Chris Hernandez

No, I don’t mean stop honoring those we’ve lost. Keep doing that. Keep remembering those who served and fell in past wars, those who fell during the last sixteen years of the War on Terror, and especially those who fell during attacks here at home. When I say stop lying, I mean stop lying about why we’ve lost them, and to what enemy.

Memorial Day isn’t just about honoring the lost, it’s also about maintaining what they gave their lives for. The thing is, far too many Americans aren’t willing to admit what they died for, or who killed them. And they’re not just refusing to admit it, they’re outright lying about the threat we’re facing.

Most people reading this probably aren’t lying. But many, MANY others need to read this, and need to stop lying. If you read this and you aren’t lying, show it to someone who is lying. It’ll be easy to find them. They’re in both major political parties, all over the news, on every college campus, and basically spread throughout almost every part of American society. If you’re in Europe, it’ll be even easier to find them.

And what are they lying about? Here’s a partial list:

-Islamic Jihadist Terrorism is in Response to Western Foreign Policies and Air Strikes on Muslim Countries.  

That’s a lie. Jihad has been ongoing in the Muslim world since Islam’s inception in the 7th century. Islam was spread by military force from its first days, was consolidated through a massive military campaign to put down rebellious Muslim tribes immediately after Mohammed’s death, and spread from the Arabian peninsula as far as Asia and Europe by armies who defeated and forcibly subjugated people of other faiths. Islam’s most famed early military commander, Khalid al-Walid, known as the “Sword of Allah,” was known for surrounding cities like Damascus and sending the following message:

“Submit to Islam and be safe. Or agree to the payment of the Jizya [tax on nonbelievers], and you and your people will be under our protection, else you will have only yourself to blame for the consequences, for I bring a people who desire death as ardently as you desire life.”

Today’s suicide bombers in places like Baghdad and Manchester desire death as ardently as we desire life, and are trying to force our conversion or submission. That’s what jihadists do, regardless of what the rest of the world does.

And if you think terrorism is only in response to western bombing, maybe you’ve heard of the numerous bombings and shooting attacks on Egypt’s Coptic Christians. Who did the Copts bomb? Jihadists blew up a Pakistani Easter celebration last year. Who did the Pakistani Christians bomb? Jihadists blew up a Pakistani Sufi Muslim mosque this February. Who did the Sufis bomb?

A Coptic Christian Church bombed in Egypt

Besides that, jihadists have already told us that they’re not attacking us because of our actions. No, they don’t like us, and they don’t like our policies. But in Dabiq magazine (before ISIS lost the city of Dabiq and changed their magazine name to Rumiyah, or “Rome”) ISIS already told us why they hate us, in an article aptly titled Why We Hate You, and Why We Fight You:

“Furthermore, just as your disbelief is the primary reason we hate you, your disbelief is the primary reason we fight you, as we have been commanded to fight the disbelievers until they submit to the authority of Islam, either by becoming Muslims, or by paying jizyah …What’s important to understand here is that although some might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary… The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam.”

So no, jihadists aren’t attacking us because of what we do. Stop lying.

-Jihadist Terrorists Kill More Muslims Than Anyone Else, So Terrorism Isn’t About Religion 

Yeah, but what Muslims are being killed? The victims are almost all Shia. And how do ISIS and AQ, hardline Sunnis, regard the Shia?

They hate them. They despise them. They call them “Rafidah,” which means “rejectors,” as in rejectors of Islamic law. Some Sunnis have posted pictures of Shia women cutting their children’s heads during the Ashura celebration next to pictures of a female gorilla lovingly holding her child, with the caption “Monkeys are better mothers than Shia.” In their magazines and videos ISIS says things like “Rafidah are a scourge that can only be removed by the sword.” ISIS also hates smaller sects like the Sufis, who practice mystical ceremonies dating from pre-Islamic times and are therefore considered pagans.

An anti-Shia meme, apparently made in America. “Mutah” is the practice of “marrying” a woman for a fee for one night, which is banned in Sunni Islam but permitted by parts of Shia Islam.

And no, this isn’t some division in Islam created by the west. In 1801 or 1802 Sunni Wahhabist Muslims from what’s now Saudi Arabia destroyed the shrine of Hussain, Mohammed’s grandson, in the Iraqi city of Karbala, and slaughtered thousands of Karbala’s inhabitants. Hussain is one of the most revered figures in Shia Islam, and the Wahhabists were trying to stop the Shia from worshipping at his shrine because they considered it paganism (and still do).

So stop lying. Yes, ISIS, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups kill more Muslims than others, but they do it because they consider those Muslims liars, heretics, fakers, and hypocrites. Muslim-on-Muslim terrorism is ALL about religion.

-Right-Wing Terrorists Are More Dangerous Than Jihadists 

No they’re not. Last year Newsweek published an article titled “Right Wing Extremists Are A Bigger Threat To America Than ISIS” in which they pointed out that since 9/11 right-wing terrorists had killed 48 Americans, while jihadists had merely killed 45. The article was widely celebrated by liars who refuse to acknowledge reality. Besides the count beginning the day after jihadists committed almost 3000 apparently unimportant murders, the article also failed to adjust for population differences. Muslims make up approximately 1% of the US population, while conservatives/right wingers make up about 50%. Were we supposed to be reassured by the fact that terrorists drawn from 1% of America were killing almost as many people as terrorists drawn from half?

Then the Pulse Nightclub massacre happened, and a jihadist killed more people in one night than all right-wing terrorists had killed in America in fifteen years. According to New America, Newsweek’s source for their 2016 article, the numbers are now 51 killed by right wingers vs. 95 killed by jihadists (plus eight killed by black separatists/supremacists in the Dallas and Baton Rouge police ambushes, both of which were committed by people who had identified themselves as Nation of Islam members). So jihadists have now killed almost twice as many Americans in America as right-wing terrorists have, just since 9/11. And that’s not counting Americans killed by jihadists overseas in places like Paris, Dhaka and Brussels, or kidnapped and beheaded on video by ISIS in Syria. If you go back to 1990 and compare numbers, we’re looking at approximately 440 killed by right wingers vs. 3132 by jihadists.

The Pulse Nightclub after the attack

And guess what? Since the numbers have flipped, the lying bastards who tried to convince us we were in less danger from jihadist terrorism suddenly quit comparing victims as evidence of who’s a bigger threat. Now they tell us stupid crap like “More people are killed every year by untied shoelaces than jihadist terrorism!”; well, if that’s true, those same people should shut the hell up about right-wing terrorism since it kills even fewer people, right?

Right-wing terrorism IS a danger, and we DO need to deal with it. But the numbers clearly show which threat is bigger. If someone insists that jihadist terrorism is no big deal but right wingers are a danger to everyone, they’re lying.

-Jihadist Terrorists Only Carry Out Attacks Because They’re Poor, Uneducated, and Suffer Oppression

That’s one of the stupidest lies I’ve heard, and is easily disproven by these things that are quaintly called “facts.” Osama bin Laden was son of a billionaire, personally inherited tens of millions, attended university and may have gotten a degree in civil engineering or public administration. Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of Al Qaeda since bin Laden’s death in 2011, is a former Egyptian Army surgeon. The 9/11 attackers were wealthy and educated. The men who killed almost two dozen innocents at the Holey Artisan Café in Dhaka, Bangladesh were from prominent, wealthy Bangladeshi families. The two men who tried and failed to detonate a car bomb at the Glasgow, Scotland Airport in 2007 were a doctor and an engineer. Moner Mohammad Abusalha, Al Qaeda’s first American suicide bomber in Syria, grew up in a gated Florida community and attended some college. Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, head of ISIS and self-proclaimed Caliph of a soon-to-be-worldwide Islamic State, has a PhD in Islamic Theology. Ronald Fiddler (aka Abu-Zakariya al-Britani), a British ISIS suicide bomber who blew himself up early this year, had been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, released and given a million pounds for “mistreatment” by the British government.

British suicide bomber Ronald Fiddler in his car bomb. Photo from the Daily Mirror.

And as far as the “oppression” lie goes, how many people worldwide are oppressed? The lowest caste in India, known as the “Untouchables,” has been oppressed for centuries yet its members aren’t blowing themselves up. Aborigines in Australia suffered oppression, yet aren’t blowing themselves up. Black Americans suffered slavery, segregation and Jim Crow, and according to the left are still victims of nationwide systemic racism, yet aren’t blowing themselves up. Based on their unending stream of complaints about campus rape, racism, white privilege, patriarchy and heteronormative cisgender whatever, you’d think American college students are the most oppressed people in all of human history, yet they’re not blowing themselves up either. My ancestors were oppressed and some say we Hispanics are still being oppressed, but I’ve yet to meet anyone willing to blow themselves up for La Raza. 

Gosh, why do you suppose that out of all the allegedly oppressed people on earth, only the ones whose religion praises martyrdom regularly blow themselves up?

Jihadists aren’t all stupid, or poor, or oppressed. They just believe in what they’re doing. Many of us in the west have grown up with only a weak religious foundation, and as a society we show a lot of disdain toward people who “speak in tongues” or make other flamboyant displays of faith. Therefore, many westerners just can’t get it through their heads that anyone really believes they’ll get 72 virgins if they martyr themselves for Allah. They don’t believe it when jihadists say they believe they’ve been commanded by god to fight us until Islam rules the world. They laugh at the idea that anyone, anywhere, would be willing to brutally murder innocent people and die a painful death in order to reach a mythical paradise. So those people lie to themselves and anyone willing to listen, and claim that terrorism has nothing to do with faith. They even lie about what constitutes a “real” Muslim and say, as the mayor of Manchester recently did, that suicide bombers aren’t real Muslims. As if a Muslim who grew up in a Muslim country, studied Islam his whole life, joined an Islamic jihadist group and carries out attacks he’s sure his religion demands, has to have his faith approved by some smartass, arrogant westerner who grew up without religion.

Islam has long revered inghimassi fighters, men who willingly undertook dangerous missions they did not expect to survive. Centuries ago, those men didn’t have the technology to be suicide bombers; instead they charged or infiltrated the enemy and died after inflicting as much damage as possible. Today’s inghimassi drive armored frankentrucks into Iraqi army positions and blow themselves up. While there are slight differences in that inghimassi didn’t expect to survive their missions but possibly could, and suicide bombers know they’ll die, it’s basically the same tradition, and the same beliefs, but with today’s technology.

So yes, jihadist suicide bombers blow themselves up for their religion. Anyone who tells you different is lying.

Liars lie about jihadist terrorism so much that even Al Qaeda complained about it. After Omar Mateen killed 49 people at the Pulse Nightclub, in an attack he did not expect to survive, AQ instructed would-be jihadists to kill whites because attacks on minorities would be mislabeled as hate crimes. Think about that: liars even lied about a guy who literally pledged allegiance to ISIS while he was massacring homosexuals. That’s how badly liars want you to believe that jihadist terrorism is about something, ANYTHING, other than religion.

-Calling Jihadist Terrorists Muslims is Islamophobic

I’m positive that if any liar has read this far, he’s screamed “But not all Muslims are terrorists!” at least ten times. Well, no kidding. Notice that in the above paragraphs I’ve very specifically spoken about jihadist terrorists, not all Muslims. So shut up. 

This Australian imam says Muslims have to acknowledge that Islamic scripture justifies violence, and must reject that scripture. Not surprisingly, he’s being threatened with death by extremists. 

I served with Muslims in the military. I lived as a civilian in a Muslim country (Kosovo), lived in a Muslim’s house, worked closely and socialized with Muslims, studied their history and culture, and even learned how to speak their language. As a soldier, every time I was in combat against Muslims I was also beside Muslims. One of the Afghan Muslim interpreters I worked with is now a Texan and US Marine infantryman; he’s still Muslim, and he’s American, and I’d trust him with my family and my life. No, not all Muslims are terrorists, and they’re not all the same. If you have a knee-jerk defense of all Muslims whenever someone discusses jihadist terrorism, you’re the one suggesting they’re all the same.

I’ll use Kosovo as an example, since I know it well. When I was there in 2000-2002 Kosovar Muslims were probably the most secular Muslims on earth. Most Albanian Muslims I met told me they had never been in a mosque. Albanian Muslims routinely ignored prayer call, many would eat during the Ramadan fast, they drank, smoked and had premarital sex (out-of-wedlock pregnancies weren’t unheard of over there). They were extremely proud of Mother Teresa, the most famous Albanian, and of their Albanian Catholic monastery in the city of Peja. A Kosovo Liberation Army commander even turned away Arab mujahidin volunteers during the war and announced “This is not a religious war.” Albanian Muslims put up a statue of Bill Clinton in Prishtina and held a candlelight vigil after 9/11. I met many Albanians who were furious about 9/11 and asked how they could join the US military so they could fight Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan.

Kosovar Muslims taking part in the “#BurnISISFlagChallenge”

Even so, I could see subtle changes. My Albanian officers and interpreters would complain, “America and Europe are rebuilding houses, schools and hospitals, but you know what the Saudis are doing? They’re building mosques and paying women to cover their heads.” When I first arrived in Kosovo it was rare to see Albanian men with full beards and high-water pants (to emulate Mohammed, who wore them as a sign of humility) and even rarer to see a woman wearing a hijab. One time I saw a woman in a full black burqa walking down the sidewalk; literally everyone stopped to stare at her, and my Albanian translator rolled his eyes and said, “She’s probably not wearing any underwear.”

But by the time I left, I saw many more bearded, high-water pants-wearing men. I saw bigger crowds at the mosques. I heard more mention of Albanians supporting jihadists. And I recently read depressing news: Saudis have poured millions into Kosovo to spread Wahhabism, have built 240 mosques in Kosovo since the war ended, and sent Albanian imams to Saudi Arabia to indoctrinate them in Wahhabist ideology. Those imams then went back to Kosovo and started preaching jihad. Other Albanian imams are speaking out about the danger they pose, but to no avail. Kosovo, once the most secular Muslim society on earth, now contributes more ISIS fighters per capita than any other country in Europe.

That means Muslims are not all the same. There are secular Muslims, there are moderates, there are devout Muslims who would never dream of using their religious beliefs to advocate violence against anyone. But there are also Wahhabists and other extremists who think everyone who disagrees with their religion needs to be killed or beaten into submission. Those extremists, even though they’re a minority among the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, are extremely dangerous to America, to Europe, to Asia, to the entire world. The extremists are funded by Saudi and other Middle Eastern billionaires who want to see Islam conquer the world, as the Quran says it will.

That’s the truth. And anyone who says jihadist terrorism is no threat, or that it has nothing to do with Islam, is lying. On this Memorial Day, let’s honor those we’ve lost in the fight against jihadist terrorism. The best way to honor them is to tell the truth about who and what we’re fighting, and to stop letting others lie about it.

CH

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breachbangclear.com_site_images_Chris_Hernandez_Author_BreachBangClear4About the Author: Chris Hernandez, seen here on patrol in Afghanistan, may just be the crustiest member of the eeeee-LITE writin’ team here at Breach-Bang-ClearHe is a veteran of both the Marine Corps and the Army National Guard who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also a veteran police officer of two decades who spent a long (and eye-opening) deployment as part of a UN police mission in Kosovo. He is the author of White Flags & Dropped Rifles – the Real Truth About Working With the French Army and The Military Within the Military as well as the modern military fiction novels Line in the Valley, Proof of Our Resolve and Safe From the War. When he isn’t groaning about a change in the weather and snacking on Osteo Bi-Flex he writes on his own blog. You can find his author page here on Tactical 16.

Hernandez, atop his M4A2 Sherman, after the Battle of Doomstadt in Latveria.

Chris Hernandez

Chris Hernandez

About the Author

Chris Hernandez may just be the crustiest member of the eeeee-LITE writin' team here at Breach-Bang-Clear. He is a veteran of both the Marine Corps and the Army National Guard who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also a veteran police officer of two decades who spent a long (and eye-opening) deployment as part of a UN police mission in Kosovo. He is the author of White Flags & Dropped Rifles - the Real Truth About Working With the French Army and The Military Within the Military as well as the modern military fiction novels Line in the Valley, Proof of Our Resolve and Safe From the War. When he isn't groaning about a change in the weather and snacking on Osteo Bi-Flex he writes on his own blog. You can find his author page here on Tactical 16.

7 Comments

  1. Bucky Lawson

    Well said

    Reply
  2. Monte GOULD

    Fxxk yea! Well done, excellent and on point, this is perfect and very informed of the facts of Islam. Great piece of work, well laid out and organized. This is the best article I have read yet on your blog. I’m subscribing again because of this.

    Reply
  3. Sal Zuniga

    Great article Chris. The first step in defeating an enemy, is knowing about them.

    Reply
  4. Phil

    I agree and disagree, but I’d rather read it here than anywhere else. Keep it coming.

    Reply
  5. OkieRim

    Good comments, and good luck trying to change those American minds, too. Most cant handle much more than the local movie schedule or their favorite video game.

    Reply
  6. Tom

    Awesome article. Want to really solve the whodunit gents ?, ‘follow the money’…

    Reply
  7. Mike the Mook

    Damn good Article!

    Reply

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