Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Podcast

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter Nine Podcast Five

Belgium A recent cover [of a British satirical magazine] proclaimed, “Cameron to bomb ISIS heartland,” with a fighter pilot saying, “Belgium, here we come! Private Eye magazine, 2016   “A ghost town, a mummy of a town, it smells of death, the Middle Ages, and tombs.” Charles Baudelaire’s description of Brussels, circa 1860   Small Belgium, located in the heart of Western Europe and home to the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union, has more Islamic State (IS) foreign fighters per capita than any other Western country. It is home to many symbols of Western military, cultural, political, and social power. It also has more Muslims per capita than any other country in Europe. Half of the country’s Muslims live in Brussels. Islam mobilizes more people in Brussels than the Roman Catholic Church. Most of Brussels’s Muslims are from Morocco (70 percent).   As in other European countries, the Muslim population in Belgium is young. Nearly 35 percent of Moroccans and Turks in the country are under eighteen, compared with 18 percent of native Belgians. Since 2008, the most popular name for baby boys in Brussels has been Mohammed. It is also the most popular name for baby boys in Belgium’s second-largest city, Antwerp, where an estimated 40 percent of elementary school children are Muslim. If there is any Western country that exemplifies the Great Replacement, the transition from a secular to a Muslim Europe, it is Belgium. By early 2016, Belgium’s intelligence services had identified 451 Jihadists. They were, largely, not poor. Only one in six Jihadists came from an impoverished background.   Muslim–Non-Muslim Relations   Belgium was never an imperial power, except for its holdings in the Congo, nor was it associated with militarism. Nonetheless, Brussels was targeted because, in the words of the State, “Crusader Belgium “has not ceased to wage war on Islam.” Most Belgians were unaware of this image, and many Europeans asked how a country known for its beer, chocolate, and bureaucracy could become a European hotbed of radicalization and extremism. In many ways, Muslims and non-Muslims live very separate lives in the country.   To tourists, the Molenbeek area of Brussels feels like a South Asian or modern North African city. It spans 6 square kilometers and, with a population of nearly 100,000, is nearly twice as dense as the average Brussels neighborhood. The Bataclan murders in Paris were planned there, and approximately a hundred men and women from Molenbeek left to fight in the Middle East.   Belgium has been a hotbed of radical Islam for more than a decade, breeding organizations like Sharia4Belgium, which want, as their name proclaims, to have Sharia introduced in Belgium. They are loud, intimidating, and belligerent. When the Bataclan murders occurred, one leader of the group said, “We couldn’t hold our joy.” That November 2015 attack in neighboring France panicked Belgium as well. The metro was closed down. Prime Minister Charles Michel said authorities feared a “Paris-style” attack with explosives and weapons at several locations despite the hundreds of soldiers patrolling the city, home to the EU and NATO.   But Belgians are concerned about the many attacks that receive little or no media attention. For example, youths threw a petrol bomb under a Christmas tree, setting it aflame. As they ran away, the teens could be heard yelling “Allahu Akbar.” “Today they will set fire to a Christmas tree, tomorrow they will behead a Christian,” wrote one man.   The Caliphate   The Caliphate used Brussels as its center of planning and operations for two mass murders—the Paris killing of November 2015 and the Brussels attack of March 2016. In the Brussels attack, one of the three chief perpetrators, known as the “man in the hat,” was born in Syria and came to Europe as a refugee in 2015. The Islamic State bragged that it was sending cadres disguised as refugees to Europe to conduct operations.   Belgian security officials are worried that the State is planning a primitive biological attack. Security officials found rotting animal testicles in a terror suspect’s backpack. Such material can be used to poison food supplies or to create a deadly concoction aimed at spreading fatal diseases. The Brussels prosecutor issued a statement saying, “The rucksack contents . . . could at no time have been used to make a biological weapon.” Profile Thirty-Seven: Brussels Is on Fire   “I will tell you, I’ve been talking about this a long time, and look at Brussels. Brussels was a beautiful city, a beautiful place with zero crime. And now it’s a disaster city. It’s a total disaster, and we have to be very careful in the United States.” Donald Trump, in reference to the Brussels attack of 2016   It was an apocalyptic scene with blood and dismembered body parts scattered. Witnesses heard some men yelling in Arabic before the nail-filled bombs rocked the Brussels airport and the subway system, killing dozens. Witnesses described the ceiling caving in and blood everywhere after two explosions in the departure hall at Brussels Airport. The Islamic State struck with suicide bombers, and the entire country went into lockdown. All flights were canceled, arriving planes and trains were diverted, and Belgium’s terror alert level was raised to maximum. Authorities advised people in Brussels to remain in place, bringing the city to a standstill. Security was also tightened at all Paris airports.   “Brussels is on fire” is a hashtag used to express Islamist triumph. The most common remark under the hashtag was “You declared war against us and bombed us, and we attack you inside your homeland.” After each additional attack, ISIS supporters celebrated by writing “Allahu Akbar.” The popular hashtag was inspired by a similar one created by Caliphate supporters after the November 13 Paris terror attacks: “Paris is on fire.”   In a British prison, terrorist convicts shouted “Allahu Akbar” after learning of the attack. Some burst into song and dance to celebrate the slaughter. According to one source, the Council of Belgian Imams rejected a recent initiative to pray for the souls of the victims of the Brussels terror attacks on the grounds that praying for non-Muslims ran counter to Islamic law. Several days after the attack, Belgians organized a “March against Fear.” However, it was canceled due to security concerns.   Summary   For the French, 2015 and 2016 were years of terror. There were shootings, bombings, beheadings, stabbings, and a spectacular vehicular murder. After the murder of Father Hamel, one of his parishioners, a middle-aged woman, expressed the anxiety of many of her country: “Nowhere in France is safe anymore.”   In April 2016, Belgian security services conceded that there were probably dozens more Caliphate supporters in the country. European intellectuals asked themselves and their audiences what the small Central European country had done to deserve the attacks and the hatred of their Muslim countrymen. When the killings came, Belgium went into shock. But some Muslim leaders refused to offer a prayer for the dead because it was counter to Islamic law. Others celebrated the slaughter. According to Belgian interior minister Jan Jambon, “a significant section of the Muslim community danced” when attacks took place. Belgians who were fighting for the Caliphate in the Middle East tweeted their joy to former neighbors. From Syria, one said, “We will drink your blood to the last drop.”

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon - Chapter Nine Podcast Four

.In this excerpt from Chapter Nine, we examine the response of  French leaders to the upsurge in killings and turn to the growing influence of Islam in France and Belgium.   Foreign Fighters   French foreign fighters, along with other Westerners, are reeling from a series of military setbacks in Syria and Iraq and have been battered by multiple airstrikes. The Caliphate is hemorrhaging foreign volunteer fighters, keeping intelligence services on edge. By June 2016, at least 248 French Jihadis had returned to France, while 666 were still in the Middle East. Other seasoned, dedicated fighters have also returned.   The proportion of French women in the State has increased to 35 percent of French members. Observers speculate that women in the Caliphate are being groomed for more violent activities in the Middle East and in France. Already active in domestic operations, logistics, and recruiting, they are likely to become more violent.   French counterterrorism leaders anticipate further attacks by individuals who detonate powerful bombs concealed in vests. Individuals would attend crowded events and shopping areas and detonate the explosives. The goal is to immobilize France. Islamic State is likely to use car bombs and other explosive devices as it seeks to carry out more atrocities in France.   Profile Thirty-Six: French-Speaking Political Leaders   Marion Maréchal-Le Pen—“Either We Kill Islamism or It Will Kill Us”   She has been described as a combination of Joan of Arc and Brigitte Bardot. French Member of Parliament Marion Maréchal-Le Pen assumed office at age 22, becoming the youngest parliamentarian since 1791. Four years later, she is one of the NF’s most promising politicians. Heir to a two-generation conservative family tradition, she is the niece of NF leader Marine Le Pen and shares many of her aunt’s views—respect for Western, particularly French, civilization; a strong Catholic identity; and a conviction that France is in a life-and-death struggle with political Islam. “Either we kill Islamism or it will kill us again and again. You are with us and against Islamism, or you are against us and for Islamism.” Her fan base is largely composed of young, traditional Catholic men, who compare Le Pen alternately to Joan of Arc and Brigitte Bardot.   Tall, blonde, and attractive, she is more popular than ever and, like Aunt Marine, has distanced herself from her grandfather’s anti-Semitic barbs. After a French priest was murdered in his Norman church, she joined the army reserves in her constituency and invited her countrymen to join her. She enlisted to take the war to the Islamic State and intends to do so in a military uniform and, if need be, with arms.   Some Europeans are concerned about an emerging dynasty. One writer spoke of the “Poison le Pens.” “Maréchal-Le Pen, like many on the far right, slipped in under the radar. Would it be enough to hope the voters will swiftly push her back again at the next available opportunity?” She may be voted out, but that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Too many of her countrymen look to the “golden girl of the right” for national leadership.   Belgium’s Yves Goldstein—No Chagalls, Dalis, Warhols, or Dreams   Yves Goldstein is a council member from the Belgian town of Schaerbeek and chief of staff to the minister-president of the Brussels Capital Region. He does not share Le Pen's political pedigree, but he faces similar challenges. Belgium and France face unprecedented and increasingly frequent outbursts of Islamic radicalism and violence. However, unlike Le Pen, he largely blames Europeans, not Muslims, for the tinderbox. If Marion Le Pen embodies an invigorated pushback against the mounting Islamic presence in Europe, Goldstein exemplifies the multicultural bridge builder.   The council member insists his country’s young Muslim rage is driven by ethnic alienation and poverty. The attacks have little to do with true Islam. Radicals cherry-pick violent verses to militarize the unemployed young. But, according to Goldstein, the real driver of radicalization is alienation. As for the terrorists, “religion for them is a pretext.”   The youth have no connection to the larger society because that society has excluded them and encouraged them to ghettoize. “We failed!” he said. “We failed in Molenbeek and Schaerbeek, too, to ensure the mixing of populations.” This failure, in turn, bred anger, crime, and radicalization. “We have neighborhoods where people only see the same people, go to school with the same people.” The youth of Molenbeek, he said, live “in a little box” that needs to be opened up.   This, he explains, is why there is such support for the Caliphate among Muslim communities in Belgian cities. According to his estimates, 90 percent of the high school seniors in Molenbeek and Schaerbeek described the Brussels attackers as “heroes.” Goldstein’s parents were Holocaust survivors who found refuge in Belgium, but all the Jews have now left Schaerbeek, and the last two synagogues are being sold and may be converted into mosques. In his 2012 election campaign to Schaerbeek, the Socialist Goldstein was accused of “stabbing Palestinians in the back.”   But Goldstein wants, above all, to integrate Muslims. For Goldstein, the most powerful antidote to narrowness and intolerance is liberalism. Western literature and art can draw alienated Muslims out of their cultural islands. He further argues that just as the West can draw inspiration from the classics of Islam’s Golden Age, so can Belgium’s Muslims find cultural enrichment in the West. Goldstein laments, “These young people will never go to museums until 18 or 20—they never saw Chagall, they never saw Dalí, they never saw Warhol, they don’t know what it is to dream.”

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter Nine Podcast Two

Welcome to an excerpt from Jihad and the West, Black Flag over Babylon by Mark Silinsky, with a foreword by Sebastian Gorka. It was published by Indiana University Press in Bloomington and Indianapolis. This reading is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security. This excerpt comes from chapter nine and examines two cases of Westerners who became militant Islamists. The statistics are stomach-churning: almost 250 innocents have been murdered in France in the past eighteen months by terrorists—more than the total number of French nationals killed by them in the entire twentieth century. While police, military, and paramilitary personnel are prepared and alert for attack, many French engaged in civil society are not. Many attacks come without warning and are directed against persons completely unconnected with national security. Some Islamist attacks are difficult to explain. A man-and-woman couple armed with a knife and an axe and shouting “Allahu Akbar” attacked a charity leader at a soup kitchen near Paris. The attackers allegedly called him an “infidel dog,” but the charity leader fed Muslims out of compassion. The look of Paris changed after the 2015 attacks, with more dog patrols, random checks at gates and in terminals, video surveillance cameras, and “profilers”—police officers, sometimes in plain clothes—around public transportation venues. Steps may go further; right-wing politicians reiterated calls for preventive detention or electronic bracelets for suspected Islamists, longer prison sentences, shutting down mosques, and deporting radical imams The Caliphate Pro-Caliphate activists have partnered with French Islamist organizations from the beginning of the State. They have shouted support for the Caliphate at demonstrations and waved the “black flag of Jihad,” which quotes the Shahada—“There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” By January 2016, France was host to 8,250 radical Islamists, a 50 percent increase over the previous year. As in Britain and France, Islamists have infiltrated the civil services, police forces, and armed forces. According to one report, police officers broadcast Muslim chants while on patrol. France is between 9 and 11 percent Muslim, and 16 percent of French citizens have a positive opinion of the Caliphate. This percentage increases among younger respondents, spiking at 27 percent for those aged eighteen to twenty-four.   Profile Thirty-Four: A French Girl and a French Woman In France, more teenage girls than boys joined the Caliphate in 2016. Among recruits, women began to outpace French male residents preparing to travel to the Caliphate or who had already done so. “The Story of A” It is sometimes difficult to determine which factors drive the transition from conventional politics and everyday life to a full embrace of the Caliphate’s beliefs, values, and aspirations. Some teenagers who live uneventful, seemingly normal lifestyles have become Caliphate propagandists or gunmen. But the full-turn conversions and blood lust of some converts beggar the imagination. This is the story of “A.” Because A is not an adult, her full name was not released, but authorities did reveal that she was Jewish, one of two known French Jews to join the State, and she had been raised in a religious home. Her parents were described as “loving and open,” and she was an outstanding student until she found Islam online. She began to wear a veil, but this did not mask her increasing hatred of the West, France, and Jews.   A is certainly an anomaly within the Islamic State's spiritual ranks. According to a French anthropologist who extensively studied French women in the State, most converts to Islam come from atheistic homes with spiritual voids. But A was raised in a religious home. Her parents don’t know what happened to her. A feels obligated to kill her parents because they are not Muslim. Many people convert to Islam, very few of whom feel compelled to kill their parents. A’s mother and father moved to a new apartment because of their daughter’s Jihadi ties, and they keep their address a secret. They are worried about their daughter attacking them, as she has repeatedly sworn to do. Perhaps some Friday, as they are lighting candles, breaking bread, and saying prayers over their Sabbath meal, their daughter will storm into their home brandishing a butcher knife and lunge at them, shouting, “Allahu Akbar.” Emilie’s Manhunt Emilie converted to Islam at age seventeen and changed her name to Samra. She began wearing a niqab because she believed it would help her attain the highest level of paradise. However, she began wearing it only after the French government banned it in 2012. A female journalist remarked that without her heavy clothing, Emilie/Samra is strikingly pretty. She takes Islam very seriously, and when Emilie thought her son was possessed by a demon, she shook her boy, yelling, “Jinn [a jinn is a spirit], leave my son!” According to Emilie’s account, the jinn quickly left her son.   As with many European converts to Islam, Emilie had a tough childhood. She lamented, “My father has erased me from his heart.” He left the family when Emilie was two years old, and her experiences with men never improved. She described her life as “a series of failures.” She dropped out of school and became both a Muslim and a barmaid. She married an Islamic man who impregnated her, but he beat her, sold drugs, and went off to prison.   She looked for a new man and advertised for a “virile and pious Muslim.” One suitor claimed to be a former friend of bin Laden, which initially impressed Emilie because she admired bin Laden and mourned his death. But Emilie later became convinced that this man had never met bin Laden and had made up the story to get her into bed. After he published a selfie with a naked Emilie, she broke off the relationship. Emilie hoped to travel to the Islamic State to find the right kind of man. But police were on to her, froze her bank account, and kept an eye on her. She supports violence against nonbelievers, including those killed in Paris. Nonetheless, she insists, “I am French, born French. I consider myself a human being. I am no monster.”

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon - Chapter Nine Podcast Three

Attacks   The Islamic State has aggressively targeted France. In 2015, Islamic State spokesperson Abu Muhammad al-Adnani demanded, “If you can, kill a disbelieving American or European—especially the spiteful and filthy French—or a Canadian.” Why were the French singled out as particularly “filthy”? According to the Clarion Foundation, there are several reasons. First, France fights. Its soldiers have been battling Jihadis around the world, from Syria to Timbuktu. The French approve of the French armed forces' intervention in Iraq, and 70 percent support the air strikes in Syria.   The Caliphate views France as a leading infidel state and one committed to destroying its organization and similar Islamist organizations around the world. Furthermore, French leaders, unlike many other Western leaders, have asserted that their country is at war with a variant of Islam. The French ambassador to America later clarified, saying, “We are at war with radical Islam. It means that right now . . . Islam is breeding radicalism, which is quite dangerous for everybody.” This language is much sharper than that of most other Western leaders.   Further, the Caliphate and other Islamists despise French civilization, which is centered on and helped create the Western canon. France is the home of the Enlightenment and promotes liberal values. In 732, France held the thin line of European civilization at the Battle of Tours. Later, the nobility and commoners fought in the Crusades. Some symbols are unendurable to the Caliphate. The acerbic, anti-religious Charlie Hebdo weekly, the Bataclan theater, home to Western music, police and military personnel, and Bastille Day are hateful signs for Islamists.   In July 2016, a Tunisian Jihadist plowed a rented eighteen-ton truck through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France. At full throttle, the driver zig-zagged through spectators who had come to enjoy the fireworks and patriotism. The driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, was shot dead while yelling “Allahu Akbar,” but not before killing eighty-four people, including ten children, and injuring over a hundred more. Babies lay dead in the street, having been jolted from their buggies, which were crushed during the mile-long killing spree. There were twenty-seven nationalities among the dead. Before the blood was cleaned from the pavement, the Caliphate’s fans flooded social media with posts celebrating the event.   The Caliphate claimed responsibility. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, who agree on very little, viewed the carnage through the same lens. Secretary Clinton said, “I’d even call this World War III. It’s a very different kind of war.” Her rival, Trump, echoed the same words: “This is war.”   Profile Thirty-Five: “Kiss the Devil”   Some survived the rampage in Nice by pure chance. “I was supposed to be there on Friday night,” said a twenty-eight-year-old journalist of the web magazine French Metal who struggles with survivor’s guilt. “I had a ticket but couldn’t find anyone who wanted to go. It was pure chance.” She lived, but several of her friends died, and she wept in front of a makeshift memorial at the Bataclan theater in Paris. Others wept, too, for the eighty-eight people who were killed and the scores more who were wounded.   The theater was one of six attack sites where coordinated shootings and suicide bombings killed at least 129 people. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks. The terrorists shot anything that moved in the theater, which has hosted artists from Edith Piaf to Prince. Elsewhere in Paris, on November 13, 2015, their Caliphate-connected associates killed without mercy anyone they believed to be non-Muslim. They struck cultural targets in Paris’s vibrant east end, which teems with nightlife. A local woman explained, “They were attacking culture—music, celebrations, everything fanatics don’t like.”  The group Eagles of Death, a California heavy metal band, had played a favorite, “Kiss the Devil.”   As they shot into the audience, the killers laughed, played with some musical instruments, and asked, “Where’s the singer? Where are the Yanks. Some of the doomed were shot while huddling in dressing rooms. Some of the survivors played dead. Others threw their bodies on the injured, young, or female to save them. Some of the victims died quickly and others slowly, having bled out on the floor. For some it was a family catastrophe. A thirty-five-year-old mother clutched her son against her, probably saving his life. But her mother, the boy’s grandmother, was killed.  The killers kicked the fallen victims to check for signs of life. One man lived thanks to his artificial leg.   Very quickly after the attack, Western leaders assured the world that it had nothing to do with Islam. Others said they refused to fight hate with hate, words that would presage US Attorney General Lynch’s sentiments after the Orlando killing, less than one year later. One Frenchman told the Caliphate, “I will not give you the gift of hating you.” His wife, Helen, had been murdered with the rest. The widower said, “I do not know who you are, and I do not want to know. You are dead souls.”   T

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter Nine Podcast Three

This reading continues to explore tensions and pathologies in Muslim-non-Muslim relations in Britain and Germany. We hear European girls and young women pleading to be heard.   The Caliphate Abroad, Part Two: The French Speakers   “It took Hitler 10 years to control France. But our state shook France in an hour from the north to south. May Allah bless you O soldiers of the Caliphate.” A Caliphate supporter’s tweet after a French priest was beheaded, July 2016   Introduction France and Belgium have proportionately large Muslim populations. They are also venues for Caliphate attacks and breeding grounds for Islamism. The Islamic State struck both countries in 2015 and 2016 and changed the lives of their citizens.   France   Muslim–Non-Muslim Tensions   In France, relations between Muslims and non-Muslims have long been strained. The French absorbed many French nationals who fled Algeria in the 1960s. Subsequently, waves of North Africans arrived in the following decades. Elites predicted assimilation on the basis of earlier successes. But relations, always tenuous, became tense by the twenty-first century, as discussed in chapter 2.   By the new millennium, many leaders and opinion-makers in Europe were nervous about growing Islamic communities. French intellectual Alain Finkielkraut coined the term “homesick at home.” He and his compatriot, Eric Zemmour, sometimes called the “Rush Limbaugh of France,” write wistfully of “les Trente Glorieuses,” the thirty years following liberation from the Nazis until the leftist cultural ascent of the mid-1970s. In 1965, few Europeans could have imagined that their compatriots would be too afraid to sketch religious cartoons a half-century later. Fewer still could have imagined that groups such as the Islamic State would appeal to European Muslims who were raised on the Continent and were often well educated.   Today, French intellectuals still speak in hushed tones about Islam, lest they offend the sensitivities of a watchful and politically active Islamic constituency. As mentioned in chapter 3, some critics are scared they could be harmed, fired, or taken to civil or criminal courts for making the wrong comment about Islam in France. Bridget Bardot was threatened with prison and fined for opining that France was “being invaded by sheep-slaughtering Muslims.” Michel Houellebecq was tried for defaming Islam in 2001, when he called it “the most stupid religion.” These high-profile cases serve as warnings to critics of radical Islam.   In Britain, Germany, and the United States, ordinary people have become more alarmed by Islam than politicians or intellectuals. After two deadly attacks in 2015, the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan killings, the image of Muslims plummeted in the eyes of the French, even among socialists. The image would dive even further after the truck attack on the Riviera. By spring 2016, 47 percent of the French saw Islam as a threat to French identity, and many wanted to halt mosque construction. This has bolstered the fortunes of right-wing politicians in France, particularly Marine Le Pen of the right-wing National Front (FN), who is expected to run for president in 2017. Patrick Calvar, the head of France’s general directorate for internal security, warned that his country was “on the verge of civil war” between Muslim communities and French nationalists. Gilles Kepel, a political scientist and specialist in Islam, also claimed that France is on the verge of a major social explosion because of Muslims’ failure to integrate into French society. Islamic fundamentalists despise social liberalism and sexual license, which helps explain honor killings and Sharia patrols. The Islamic State has called for attacks on symbols of Western sexual decadence, such as swinger clubs, but it finds any criticism of Muhammad even more offensive.   The killing in Nice was particularly explosive. Unlike cosmopolitan Paris, Nice is politically and culturally conservative. Many of the non-Muslims are descended from the white Algerian population, known as “pied noirs.” Nice also has a large Muslim population. Said one observer, “If you wanted to light the fuse of race war in France, Nice would be a clever choice.”