In the latest issue of its online magazine, Dabiq, the Islamic State (ISIS) takes umbrage at Western politicians like President Barack Obama, who like to describe ISIS’ violence as “senseless.” On the contrary, ISIS argues, there is a relentless logic and religious justification to these atrocities, but Western leaders and media are afraid to discuss it.
The opening lines of the article lay out the Islamic State’s thesis with brutal efficiency:
Shortly following the blessed attack on a sodomite, Crusader nightclub by the mujahid Omar Mateen, American politicians were quick to jump into the spotlight and denounce the shooting, declaring it a hate crime, an act of terrorism, and an act of senseless violence.
A hate crime? Yes. Muslims undoubtedly hate liberalist sodomites, as does anyone else with any shred of their fitrah (inborn human nature) still intact.
An act of terrorism? Most definitely. Muslims have been commanded to terrorize the disbelieving enemies of Allah.
But an act of senseless violence? One would think that the average Westerner, by now, would have abandoned the tired claim that the actions of the mujahidin – who have repeatedly stated their goals, intentions, and motivations – don’t make sense. Unless you truly – and naively – believe that the crimes of the West against Islam and the Muslims, whether insulting the Prophet, burning the Quran, or waging war against the Caliphate, won’t prompt brutal retaliation from the mujahidin, you know full well that the likes of the attacks carried out by Omar Mateen, Larossi Aballa, and many others before and after them in revenge for Islam and the Muslims make complete sense. The only thing senseless would be fore [sic] there to be no violent, fierce retaliation in the first place!
“Mujahidin” are holy warriors. As Isis describes him, Omar Mateen is the ISIS jihadi who perpetrated mass murder at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Larossi Abballa is the ISIS jihadi who knife-murdered a French police commander and his girlfriend in June.
ISIS explicitly accuses the Western media and political class of dismissing its actions as “senseless” violence because they are afraid of political correctness, adding that moderate imams in the Western world act from similar motives. “The point is, people know that it’s foolish but they keep repeating it regardless, because they’re afraid of the consequences of deviating from the script,” says the Dabiq article.
ISIS then launches into a lengthy explanation of “why we hate you and why we fight you,” beginning “first and foremost” with disbelieving and disrespecting Islam.
“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,” ISIS writes, “either by becoming Muslims, or by paying jizya – for those afforded this option – and living in humiliation under the rule of Muslims.” Jizya is the special religious tax non-believers are supposed to pay their Muslim overlords, as a sign of submission.
Secondly, ISIS says it hates the West because “your secular, liberal societies permit the very things Allah has prohibited, while banning many of the things He has permitted, a matter that doesn’t concern you because you separate between religion and state, thereby granting supreme authority to your whims and desires via the legislators you vote into power.”
“Your secular liberalism has led you to tolerate and even support ‘gay rights,’ to allow alcohol, drugs, fornication, gambling, and usury to become widespread, and to encourage the people to mock those who denounce these filthy sins and vices,” the Islamic State lectures. “As such, we wage war against you to stop you from spreading your disbelief and debauchery – your secularism and nationalism, your perverted liberal values, your Christianity and atheism – and all the depravity and corruption they entail.”
ISIS then ladles out an extra helping of hatred for atheists because, it states:
You witness the extraordinarily complex makeup of created beings, and the astonishing and inexplicably precise physical laws that govern the entire universe, but insist that they all came about through randomness and that one should be faulted, mocked, and ostracized for recognizing that the astonishing signs we witness day after day are the creation of the Wise, All-Knowing Creator and not the result of accidental occurrence.
“We hate you for your crimes against Islam, and wage war against you to punish you for your transgressions against our religion,” ISIS says, continuing:
As long as your subjects continue to mock our faith, insult the prophets of Allah – including Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad – burn the Quran, and openly vilify the laws of the sharia, we will continue to retaliate, not with slogans and placards, but with bullets and knives.
The article concludes by citing “crimes against the Muslims” with drones and fighter jets, and the “invasion” of Muslim lands by Western nations, as reasons for their hatred, although ISIS takes pains to say that Western foreign policy is a “secondary” reason for their hatred.
“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,” ISIS writes, modestly offering to back off on its murder campaign if Western countries submit to Islam and pay the jizya tax, but insisting “we would continue to hate you” even under those circumstances.
“We fight you in order to bring you out from the darkness of disbelief into the light of Islam, and to liberate you from the constraints of living for the sake of the worldly life alone, so that you may enjoy both the blessings of the worldly life and the bliss of the Hereafter,” says the Islamic State.
“As much as some liberal journalists would like you to believe that we do what we do because we’re simply monsters with no logic behind our course of action, the fact is that we continue to wage – and escalate – a calculated war that the West thought it had ended several years ago,” asserts the Dabiq article. “We continue dragging you further and further into a swap [sic] you thought you’d already escaped, only to realize that you’re stuck even deeper within its murky waters.”
ISIS concludes:
So you can continue to believe that those “despicable terrorists” hate you because of your lattes and your Timberlands, and continue spending ridiculous amounts of money to try to prevail in an unwinnable war, or you can accept reality and recognize that we will never stop hating you until you embrace Islam, and will never stop fighting you until you’re ready to leave the swamp of warfare and terrorism through the exits we provide, the very exits put forth by our Lord for the People of the Scripture: Islam, jizya, or – as a last means of fleeting respite – a temporary truce.