July 30, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
17:19
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| I think many people in the secular west have a lot of trouble understanding the religious motivations of Islamic terror attacks, and they find it difficult to reconcile the incongruity of a person whose life has not been particularly religious suddenly screaming Lau Akbar and then killing as many Kafirs as possible. | |
| It seems absurd that a relatively irreligious nominal Muslim who might drink alcohol, eat pork and fornicate, might suddenly turn on those around him with the fiery passion of the zealot and murder as many civilians as possible in an attempt to get themselves killed. | |
| But there is one explanation that does account for at least some of the attacks, and I think it's worth analysing some of the attacks that we've seen for any consistencies across them. | |
| The attacks we'll take a look at are all from 2016 and all took place in the West, and as far as I'm aware, there is no direct connection between the individuals who perpetrated these attacks. | |
| We'll start with the Orlando nightclub shooting, which left 49 people dead. | |
| Despite pledging his allegiance to ISIS on the phone, the shooter had no known ties to ISIS, and his parents didn't consider him particularly religious. | |
| Initially, there was no claim of responsibility for the attack by ISIS, but there were of course pro-ISIS sympathisers celebrating the attack, and eventually a message was posted by news agency AMAC, which is closely linked with ISIS, saying that the attack was carried out by an Islamic State fighter. | |
| Before I go on, I'm just going to say that it is entirely within the Islamic State's interests to claim responsibility for every single one of these attacks. | |
| So whether there was any connection or not. | |
| So when ISIS say yes, this is something that we're responsible for, you can't really put a lot of stock in that. | |
| But that's another subject for another video, so I'll explain that at a later date. | |
| And as we'll see with many of these attackers, people close to them think that they are mentally disturbed in some way. | |
| In the case of the Ansbach bomber, the bomber pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. | |
| The Ansbach bomber only managed to kill himself, but he did manage to injure many other people in what he claimed was a revenge attack on Germans. | |
| The Islamic State has claimed that they were behind the attack and that the Syrian refugee was an Islamic State soldier, with the attacker announcing in a video that it was an act of revenge against Germans because they were standing in the way of Islam. | |
| The bomber had previously been denied asylum in Germany, was due to be deported to Bulgaria where he'd been given refugee status, and he had previously received psychiatric impatient treatment and had tried to take his own life on two previous occasions. | |
| An analysis of the content of the videos found on the man's electronic devices was ongoing, and there's no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background, but once again there are no direct connections to the Islamic State. | |
| It seems that he had downloaded their video propaganda from the internet. | |
| And this seems to have led to him self-radicalising. | |
| A similar pattern of events seems to have occurred with the teenage Afghan immigrant who committed the axe attack in Munich. | |
| He attacked five people on a train shouting Allahu Akbar and hospitalised them, two of them critically. | |
| The authorities are concerned about the speed with which the young Afghan appears to have been radicalised, as they could not confirm a link to the Islamic State, which of course released a video and claimed responsibility for the attack. | |
| However, the investigators did find a hand-drawn flag of the Islamic State found in a notebook in his room and an Islamic State symbol printed on the t-shirt he wore during the attack. | |
| This is of course freely available on the internet to anyone who wants to get it, and so it's not clear to the extent with which the Afghan teenager was connected, actually connected, to the Islamic State, despite the fact the Islamic State putting out a bulletin saying that he was an Islamic State soldier. | |
| A similar set of circumstances occurred with the Munich knife attack in May 2016, in which a German man, quote-unquote, shouted, Allahu Akbar, and stabbed one person to death and slashed three others at a commuter town near Munich. | |
| Police say that the 27-year-old unemployed carpenter was mentally disturbed and stressed that he had no known links to Islamist militant groups. | |
| He had apparently taken drugs before the attack and claimed he'd removed his shoes because he felt bugs on his feet that caused blisters and were generating intense heat. | |
| The witnesses said the assailant who was arrested at the scene shortly after the attack shouted Allahu Akbar and someone also said they heard him shout infidels must die. | |
| But as already stated, as far as the authorities are aware, he is a lone criminal and not part of an Islamist network. | |
| Back in January in 2016, a Philadelphia police officer was shot by a man inspired by ISIS. | |
| A man accused of opening fire on a police officer in Philadelphia told investigators that he did it in the name of Islam and was inspired by the Islamic State. | |
| He apparently pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State, he follows Allah, and that's the reason he was called upon to do this. | |
| The authorities also said that they weren't aware of a broader connection to terrorism, saying the suspect had avoided implicating anyone else. | |
| I think it's worth putting these attacks in contrast to other attacks that happened this year to highlight the differences between them. | |
| For example, the recent Normandy attackers who murdered a French priest appear to have actually had connections with ISIS. | |
| ISIS released a video of the two French attackers who were allegedly pledging allegiance to the terror group. | |
| Both men spoke Arabic and referred to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the film released by the AMAC propaganda agency. | |
| Wearing a camo jacket and speaking in broken Arabic, one of them recites in the footage, We pledge allegiance and obedience to the Emir of the Faithful, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in hardship and unease. | |
| One of the attackers was identified by French police who grew up locally and tried to travel to Syria twice last year using family members' identity documents. | |
| And of course, ISIS claimed responsibility for this as well. | |
| However, in this case, I think it's actually likely that these men had some sort of contact with members of ISIS. | |
| It was by definition a conspiracy and not a lone wolf attack, and that they previously tried to travel to Syria implies that they already had contact there. | |
| These two seem to be terrorists more of the mould of Anders Breivik, not mentally disturbed, but politically fanatical. | |
| They don't appear to have been lone wolves who were radicalised over a short period of time, and they were known to French intelligence services, unlike most of the other terrorist attacks that have taken place. | |
| As far as I'm aware, they didn't have a history of mental illness, they seem to have been exceptionally politically motivated. | |
| Interestingly, the Islamic attack using a truck in Nice seems to have been a combination of the two. | |
| Although the attacker was completely unknown to intelligence services, and they had no idea he'd been radicalised, he was known to the police for threats and violence and thefts over several years. | |
| The Islamic State didn't immediately claim responsibility for it, but of course, social media accounts supporting Sunni Muslim extremist groups celebrated the attack. | |
| But counter-terrorism officials said that even if the attack in Nice was the work of one terrorist, it may have required collaborators. | |
| The acquisition of the truck, a handgun and other material for the attack indicates a degree of preparation that investigators are likely to focus on. | |
| Despite this history, the Nice attacker was not especially religious, and showed no signs of extremism according to reports. | |
| He was known for his anti-social behaviour, but there was no particular reason to think he might be a terrorist. | |
| Of course, the antisocial behaviour may well be an indication of mental health issues. | |
| And the picture that emerged of him is similar to those responsible for the Paris and Belgium attacks. | |
| A solitary man with a history of petty crime who neighbours said never showed much interest in religion. | |
| The cousin of his estranged wife said that he was not religious, he did not pray or observe Ramadan, and he ate pork, and that he was just a shit. | |
| But even though we know that this man lived a life that would be considered un-Islamic by Muslim scholars, he still watched ISIS beheading videos. | |
| That of course he downloaded from the internet. | |
| And he was in contact with an Algerian recruiter who found Mohammed an easy prey for recruitment. | |
| And Mohammed apparently learned about the Algerian recruiter from extended family members who lived in Nice. | |
| So in the Nice attacker we seem to have had a fusion of the two methods of radicalization. | |
| One by self-radicalisation via propaganda from the internet, and secondly being in contact with ISIS recruiters that would obviously actively try to get them to commit terrorist attacks. | |
| It's important to remember that these people who are usually slightly mentally unstable require outside propaganda to help them self-radicalize. | |
| It's not something that really just happens on its own. | |
| For example, an al-Qaeda terror magazine that urges lone wolf attacks of the sort that we see on a, on an almost daily basis in Europe now, has been downloaded 55,000 times in the United Kingdom. | |
| The magazine, which gives step-by-step guides on how to make a bomb and urges an attack on the UK, is being read by 4,000 Britons a week according to a report. | |
| The magazine is titled Inspire and it's released by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and it's been downloaded 55,000 times from UKIP addresses in the past three months. | |
| The magazine, infamous for articles with titles such as How to Build a Bomb in Your Mum's Kitchen, has been linked to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, as well as the killing of a Canadian soldier last October. | |
| The edition also called for readers to commit lone wolf-style jihadi attacks on the West. | |
| The latest edition lists British Airways and EasyJet as recommended targets. | |
| And they're also encouraging lone wolves to target white people to avoid the hate crime label, because these people understand how we work. | |
| Lone wolf jihadists should target white Americans so no one mistakes their terror attacks for hate crimes unrelated to the cause of radical Islam. | |
| The magazine called for self-directed Muslims to kill in America, but the article titled Inspire Guide Orlando Operation tells terrorists to avoid targeting places and crowds where minorities are generally found, because if gays or Latinos appear to be the targets, the federal government will be the one taking full responsibility. | |
| It isn't out of any particular love for these minority groups, or out of any kind of hatred of white people and their oppressive ways, that al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorists are suggesting that they should only target white people. | |
| It's because it's politically expedient. | |
| It's becoming our Achilles heel. | |
| It's important to note that al-Qaeda and ISIS are not the same thing. | |
| In fact, they're in competition with each other. | |
| However, their methods are very much the same out of necessity, because they're trying to recruit from the same pool of young Muslim men. | |
| But this only answers the question of how they are being radicalised. | |
| These people are downloading Islamic propaganda off the internet and using it to self-radicalize to a point where they think that committing a terrorist attack in the name of Islam is the right thing to do. | |
| But it doesn't answer the question of why. | |
| The Orlando shooter and the Nice truck attacker were probably both gay. | |
| Both them and others fail to observe Ramadan, they take part in the sinful activities often found legally in the West. | |
| And this is a consistent feature of Islamic terror. | |
| If we go back to the 2001 9-11 attacks, we know some things about the attackers. | |
| Apparently the leader of the September 11 terrorists and four of the hijackers made several trips to Las Vegas over the summer to hold meetings, gamble, and be entertained by topless dancers. | |
| According to the FBI, the pilot of the first aircraft and his accomplices spent some of their time in the Las Vegas Olympic Bar, a downtown strip club. | |
| Dr. Osama Haikal, president of the board of directors of the Islamic Foundation of Nevada, said, True Muslims don't drink, don't gamble, and don't go to strip clubs. | |
| These things are a sin, just like what they did in New York and Washington is a sin. | |
| If the hijackers had enjoyed a lap dance in the most strict Islamic countries, they would probably have been flogged. | |
| Now, I am sure, absolutely sure, that there are going to be people saying, well, this has got nothing to do with Islam. | |
| And I'm afraid you are wrong. | |
| In fact, this would not be possible without Islam. | |
| The problem is that the people saying this has got nothing to do with Islam are usually not very religious. | |
| And so I don't think that they really understand what these people are thinking or going through. | |
| There are many, many examples in history of people who have led lives that are directly in opposition to the values of their own religion, who at some point have had a religious epiphany and changed their ways to become exemplars of that religion. | |
| I think possibly my favourite among these is the example of the 4th century Egyptian monk, Saint Moses the Black. | |
| Saint Moses was a thug who was accused of murder and went on the run, forming a gang of bandits who roamed the Nile Valley spreading terror and violence. | |
| After one particular robbery went wrong, Moses found himself on the run from the authorities and had to take refuge with a colony of monks out in the desert near Alexandria. | |
| Moses was won over by the monks, converted to Christianity and remained with them for the rest of his life. | |
| Being a valiant warrior, he defended the monastery from attacks until in his old age he decided to become a martyr to save the other monks who fled from the monastery. | |
| Moses the Black, a scoundrel, a ruffian, a thief, a murderer and a liar, is now the patron saint of non-violence in Catholicism. | |
| Moses the Black became such a devout Christian, he allowed himself to be martyred by these bandits instead of resisting them. | |
| Even as an older man, it's likely that Moses probably could have resisted any bandits attacking his monastery, however his devotion to Christianity prevented it. | |
| This is the power that religion has over true believers, and it's important to remember that religions are not all created the same. | |
| It's very difficult and unconvincing to cherry-pick examples from the New Testament to support violent acts in the name of Christianity. | |
| It's very easy to cherry-pick from the New Testament to support pacifism in the name of Christianity. | |
| However, it's quite easy to cherry-pick an interpretation from the Quran that encourages and rewards violence. | |
| For example, Quran 3, 169, 170 Think not of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead. | |
| Nay, yet they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord. | |
| They rejoice in the bounty provided with Allah, and with regard to those left behind who have not yet joined them in their bliss, the martyrs glory in the fact that on them is no fear, for they have no cause to grieve. | |
| The Messenger of Allah, from the Hadith Sinsira, I asked the Prophet, peace be upon him, who are in paradise. | |
| He replied, Prophets are in paradise. | |
| Martyrs are in paradise. | |
| The Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, said, All the sins of a Shaheed, martyr, are forgiven except debt. | |
| All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of their sins. | |
| This last quote is not an excerpt from any Islamic text, nor is it an excerpt from the Bible or the Torah. | |
| It is in fact from Pope Urban II's speech at the Council of Clermont when he was preaching the call for the First Crusade. | |
| He does not cite the Bible because the Bible is not helpful in preaching a holy war, because the first and most logical thing you need to do to persuade any followers of any religion that they need to engage in a holy war is that any taking part in the Holy War will have all of their sins forgiven and their souls will enter paradise or heaven or whatever the followers believe that the spiritual benefit of joining the holy war will be. | |
| This isn't included in the texts of Christianity, but it is included in the texts of Islam. | |
| And so when people say, well, Islam is not about that, unfortunately, sometimes it is. | |
| It's all down to the individual or the organization that is preaching a certain message. | |
| You can cherry-pick a narrative from the Quran, which is entirely peaceful and anti-war. | |
| However, you can also cherry-pick an interpretation of the Quran that is entirely warlike and completely justifies it on a spiritual level. | |
| I think this is the narrative and the reason that people who are less mentally stable and who are almost irreligious Muslims are suddenly taking up the call of jihad and attacking the people around them, even though they have no prior history of Islamism, no ties to any terrorist groups, and no apparent motivation to do so. |
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