The Islamic terrorist group known as the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) is making itself more visible in the West now. Newsweek is reporting Pro-ISIS demonstrators calling for “death to Jews” in the Netherlands. German news outlets reported ISIS supporters in Saarbrucken hung the ISIS flag from a balcony of a private home for several weeks. The flag was only recently removed.
The terrorist organization just released an online magazine called “Dabiq” for its English readership for Ramadan. In the magazine, ISIS justifies stoning women for adultery and mass executions of their enemies, while touting their compassion and generosity with orphans and the impoverished. Additionally, ISIS goes after only one American politician–Senator John McCain (R-AZ), for a June 12 floor speech of he delivered about ISIS:
“…the crusader John McCain came to the Senate floor to rant irritably about the victories the Islamic State was achieving in Iraq. He forgot that he himself participated in the invasion of Iraq that led to the blessed events unfolding today by Allah’s bounty and justice.”
McCain had this to say:
“I come to the floor this morning with great sorrow and great concern and even deep alarm about the events that are transpiring rapidly in Iraq. ISIS the most extreme, Islamist organization – radical terrorist organization – now controls at least 1/3 of Iraqi territory and is rapidly gaining more. The areas of Fallujah, Mosul, Tikrit, they are on the outsides of Samarra… with these victories ISIS controls a swath of territory that stretches from the Syrian-Turkish frontier in the north, down the Euphrates river, all the way down to the Iraqi city of Fallujah just forty miles west of Baghdad.
And of course, hourly they are experiencing greater gains while the Iraqi military and police seem to be dissolving before our very eyes. ISIS social media published pictures of their fighters demolishing the sand berm, which hitherto marked the border between Syria and Iraq – an interesting symbolic gesture.
They also released… ISIS released footage of large numbers of weapons and armored military vehicles being received by members in Eastern Syria, confirming fears that the looted weapons would fuel the insurgency on both sides – both Syria and Iraq. Sources in the Syrian city of Hasakah confirmed that large numbers of trucks – conveys of trucks – arrived late on Tuesday and were met by senior ISIS figure Omar al-Checheni.
McCain responded to the two page spread attack on him telling Breitbart News on Monday, “Well I think they view me as a problem. And just as I was flattered to be sanctioned by Vladimir Putin, I’m flattered to be attacked by ISIS–the worst radical terrorist organization in the world.”
Middle-Eastern Counter-terrorism expert Patrick Poole analyzed the ISIS magazine and explained, “For anyone who wants a look at the moral universe that the new Islamic State seeks to promote, here it is in glossy full-color and multiple Western languages in their Ramadan issue… Their straight-faced acceptance of violence is intermixed with stories about helping orphans and local farmers.”
Poole says that the purpose of ISIS’ Dabiq magazine is stated in the opening pages of the issue in the forward, where the terrorist organization talks about the obligation for Muslims to make hijrah to the Islamic State, or barring that, to pledge allegiance to it wherever they are.
“This is a recruitment tool. And as long as they continue to hold the ground they have, let alone expand, their popularity is going to continue to grow much to the consternation of those Western analysts who wrote an early obituary for the Islamic State. Nothing succeeds like success, especially in that part of the world.”
Read the full issue of Dabiq below: