10

Leaked ISIS Docs Show 70% of Recruits Don’t Even Know What Islam Is

by Claire Burnish at FreeThought.com

c
Shredding the oft- and self-propagated notion the Islamic State is comprised of radical Muslims, the vast majority of the group’s recruits have only superficial knowledge about the religion of Islam — some even purchased the book “Islam for Dummies” just prior to joining.
An analysis of leaked Islamic State documents obtained by Syrian opposition site Zaman al-Wasl and undertaken by the Associated Press found 70 percent of recruits at the height of the group’s push for members only possessed basic knowledge of Shariah, laws derived from verses in the Quran, and “hadith,” the words and actions of the prophet Mohammed.
While 24 percent had attained an intermediate understanding of the religion, a mere 5 percent were considered advanced students of Islam.
That exact ignorance of the religion’s true tenets likely helped inflate Islamic State numbers. As the outlet explains:
“At the height of the Islamic State’s drive for foot soldiers in 2013 and 2014, typical recruits included the group of Frenchmen who went bar-hopping with their recruiter back home, the recent European convert who now hesitantly describes himself as gay, and two Britons who ordered ‘The Koran for Dummies’ and ‘Islam for Dummies’ from Amazon to prepare for jihad abroad. Their intake process complete, they were grouped in safe houses as a stream of imams came in to indoctrinate them, according to court testimony and interviews by the Associated Press.”
Recruits like these, largely unaware of what violent extremism entails, can be facilely manipulated by actual radicals once family ties have been severed and means of communication with the world, like cellphones, have been taken away. Once in the clutches of the group, either full indoctrination into ISIL’s perverted interpretation of Islam occurs, or the realization its terrorist ways go too far still leave a recruit without means of escaping easily.
“I realized that I was in the wrong place when they began to ask me questions on these forms like, ‘when you die, who should we call?’” a 32-year-old European recruit, who thought he was joining a group to fight Pres. Bashar al-Assad and help Syrians, told the AP on the condition of anonymity.
Based on the analysis, it would seem religious ignorance — not thorough understanding of Shariah and Islam — makes the perfect background for potential Islamic State fighters.
For example, Mohamed Lahouaiyej Bouhlel — the driver who plowed a truck through a crowd of people, killing 85, on Bastille Day in Nice — “was described by family and neighbors as indifferent to religion, volatile and prone to drinking sprees, with a bent for salsa dancing and a reported male lover,” the AP described.
In the 4,030 entry documents for ISIL’s foreign recruits for Syria from 2013 and 2014 examined by the AP were those of Karim and Foued Mohammad-Aggad — both shortly returned to France, and Foued eventually participated in the Paris attacks on the Bataclan nightclub in November that left 130 people dead.
“Islam was used [by the Islamic State] to trap me like a wolf,” Karim told the court prior to sentencing.
According to the documents analyzed by the Associated Press, Karim and Foued Mohammad-Aggad were both listed as having only “basic” knowledge of Sharia.
This proved to be true in court. Under questioning by the judge concerning his grasp of Shariah and Islam, Karim repeatedly intoned, “I don’t have the knowledge to answer the question.”
Undoubtedly, some who join or vow allegiance to the terrorist group, do so for misguided religious reasons. However, as Patrick Skinner — a former CIA case officer who specialized in extremist organizations in the Middle East — explained, most who join are “reaching for a sense of belonging, a sense of notoriety, a sense of excitement.”
Indeed, he added, “Religion is an afterthought.”
Skinner also told the AP the thousand-year-old seat of learning for Shariah and Quranic studies in Cairo, Al-Azhar, came under sharp criticism in the Islamic State’s recent issue of its English-language magazine, Dabiq, which said Al-Azhar is part of an “approach to subdue Muslims through appeasement” with the West.
Al-Azhar Islamic scholar, Mohammed Abdelfadel, said ISIL propaganda videos heralding fighters’ supposed martyrdom directly contradict ‘Islamic laws that forbid terrorism, the murder of non-combatants in war, the imposition of Islam on non-Muslims and other criminal activity,’ as the AP paraphrased.
Further still, those with the most thorough understanding of Shariah were far less inclined to want to ‘martyr’ themselves as suicide bombers, a study by the U.S. military’s Combating Terrorism Center found, quoted by the AP:

If martyrdom is seen as the highest religious calling, then a reasonable expectation would be that the people with the most knowledge about Islamic law (Shariah) would desire to carry out these operations with greater frequency.”

But, despite ISIL’s claims of religious motivations for its attacks, “those with the most religious knowledge within the organization itself are the least likely to volunteer to be suicide bombers.”
Though these points have been argued and championed by a number of Muslims in an attempt to grow understanding of Islam and fight bigotry and prejudice, Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan urged Muslim scholars to demonstrate that what ISIL teaches isn’t Islam.
“The people who are doing this are not experiencing martyrdom, they are criminals. They are killing innocent people,” Ramadan implored. “Nothing in Islam, nothing ever can justify the killing of innocent people, never, ever.”


SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN

If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.

For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

10 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Paul Smyth
Paul Smyth
Aug 26, 2016 12:54 AM

Reblogged this on The Greater Fool.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Aug 22, 2016 3:17 PM

Reblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:
Of course what has not been analyzed is the fact that many “losers” who are of no import or significance but like playing the part of a gunslinging “warrior” because they believe it elevates their miserably lowly status, join in a bid to “be somebody”. We saw it within the cowardly ranks of the bovver boys back in the seventies and eighties. Cowards by nature, yobs with gobs when in groups but total losers without the backing of their mates.
That’s another story which probably overlaps this article in explaining how so many puffed up big girl’s blouses ended up imagining themselves as gun toting Mercs with a capital M when in fact half of them probably more, wouldn’t know how to strip a gun let alone hit something they were aiming at. The feeling of power carrying a rifle or big knife gives them is as close as most of them will come to being of any importance.

chrisb
chrisb
Aug 22, 2016 12:18 PM

‘Leaked ISIS Docs Show 70% of Recruits Don’t Even Know What Islam Is’ The title of this article is misleading. It would be better expressed as ‘Leaked ISIS Docs Show 70% of Recruits Only Possess a Basic Knowledge of What Islam Is’.
That, though, would still be an evasion from asking the fundamental question: what percentage of ISIS recruits know that within the caliphate women are treated as chattel and that gays, non-believers and ‘heretics’ are murdered. Given the propaganda in the western media, I would suspect that the majority of recruits have more than a basic knowledge of that.
Why then do people go? The first point to make is that most are young. We should not underestimate the importance of the sense of personal immortality amongst the young when they decide to go to a war zone. ‘Other people may do, but I won’t.’ Nor should we underestimate the youthful belief that they know better than those who are telling them what to do, even if those people have more life experience .
There are also reasons that apply to particular groups. I can see two reasons why some women might be attracted to the caliphate. The first one is that the best way to rebel against your father in a patriarchal, Islamic family without breaking from Islam is to be a ‘better’ Muslim than your father. So, why not go and live in a non-believer-free caliphate while your father compromises by working with and living amongst infidels? The second reason is repressed sexual desire. Some girls in every community and generation are attracted to ‘bad boys’. So why not go and marry one, especially if he isn’t really a bad boy but in fact a ‘good boy’ fighting the good fight?
The sexual imperative should also not be excluded from considering why men go to the caliphate. Young men who know that they will have to wait years while they go through college before their parents arrange their marriages are likely to be attracted by the thought that sex will be available after a few days’ fighting.
Few Muslims are unaware that homosexuality is forbidden to them. That leads to a high degree of self-loathing amongst gay Muslims (as it does amongst many gay Christians). Perhaps they believe that they can be cured of having homosexual desires of they go to a place where the punishment is death? This desire to be better Muslims and to redeem themselves for past activities is probably also an explanation for why some Muslims who drink, take drugs or have sexual relationships outside of marriage are attracted to the caliphate.
Finally, it is not a total surprise that ‘those with the most thorough understanding of Shariah were far less inclined to want to ‘martyr’ themselves as suicide bombers’. They are the officers who send the cannon fodder to their deaths. They justify their non-sacrifice by telling themselves that they are needed to recruit more foot soldiers.

joekano76
joekano76
Aug 22, 2016 11:04 AM

Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Aug 22, 2016 2:43 AM

Anyone who prefers to get their news from alternative media(as opposed to the prostituted)MSM is aware that ISIS are just “soldiers of fortune(Mercenaries), paid for and by the USA. That’s why the Russian Air Force blew them away(because, the USA was helping them fight Assad’s troops.

bill
bill
Aug 22, 2016 4:12 AM

dead on Brian !!!

chrisb
chrisb
Aug 22, 2016 12:25 PM

So you disagree with the article which suggests that ‘most who join are “reaching for a sense of belonging, a sense of notoriety, a sense of excitement”’ rather than money ?
Are you confusing ISIS with the Al-Nusra Front and other groups fighting in Syria? Even if you are, you seem to have missed out the roles of Saudi Arabia and Qatar in financing them.

Willem
Willem
Aug 22, 2016 12:56 PM
Reply to  chrisb

I agree with Brian. The points that chrisb raises only confirm that the mercenaries like their job.
ISIS, Al-Nusra, Al Qaeda, whatever they are called, are the mercenary soldiers for the USA in the Middle East and Afghanistan. It’s good to be clear on that one.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Aug 22, 2016 3:23 PM
Reply to  chrisb

chrisb. It doesn’t hurt that they get paid for parading round in camo cargo’s and abandoning all restraint, feeling and acting big and bad. For the most part, many of the IS, were just plain pissed off with their status in life and saw radical action as a place to be, with people who would pat them on the back for embracing the extremist views. It was better than being a nobody and totally invisible back home.

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Aug 22, 2016 9:21 PM
Reply to  chrisb

Saudi Arabia are a “client state” of the USA. America keeps them armed to the teeth, so SA does whatever America says.