Book Reveals the Horrifying of Daily
Life Under Isis
It details all of Isis’s cruelty, but places it in the
context of a very bloody history
By Robert Fisk
November 02, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "The
Independent" - Before Obama’s
few dozen brave Spartans put their little bootees on the
soil of the tiny bit of Syria that the Kurds hold, not
far from Qamishli, they should learn a bit about Isis
from the work of a Syrian historian. They would find
that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Isis “caliph” is not only
a keen football fan but in his youth created a soccer
team for mosque regulars and even joked that he was
Iraq’s Maradona.
They would discover that he
communicates with his officials through mobiles,
WhatsApp and Skype SMS, speaks English and demands that
all paper intelligence reports be printed on a single
piece of A4 – which is pretty much what Churchill
demanded of his bureaucrats in the Second Word War – and
also demands that citizens work a six-day week. There’s
an Isis postal system in his Syrian capital of Raqqa and
if you want to write to Baghdadi (original family name
Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri) you have only to address
a letter to: al-Calipha Ibrahim, Raqqa. “Be assured it
will arrive safely,” the writer of Under the Black Flag
was informed.
He is Sami Moubayed, a historian and
former scholar at the Carnegie Center in Beirut and he
lives in Damascus. He is a brave man, and knows it.
“This book is very dangerous for me,”
he told me. “It could take my life. It’s very different
from the kind of history I’ve written about before –
it’s about a very different Syria with very different
characteristics and it was very painful for me to
write... You need to fight the radicals, yes, but
bombing these people is not the answer.”
As Moubayed also says in his book,
“The pre-Baathist Syria of the 1950s will never return –
nor will the Baathist one of 1963-2011... I have no
sympathy with Islamists and power-hungry soldiers. What
is happening today is a completely new chapter in the
history of my country. It is an ugly chapter but one
that will last much longer than any of us desire.” A
pessimist? Certainly no Baathist. Moubayed should indeed
take care.
He’s been to Raqqa, talked to Isis
officials, he’s even met their slick media guys, one of
whom, Abu al-Nada al-Faraj, a 25-year-old English
graduate from Aleppo University who treats Isis as “just
another well-paying employer”, translates for Isis’s
gruesome magazine, Dabiq. All its staff are European
Muslims, Google addicts with a list of critical
publications to read. The Independent is among them. But
so is the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy and the
Syrian government news agency SANA.
Raqqa has an efficient tax system and
schools have reopened – segregated, with a heavy
emphasis on religion – although it’s ironic to learn
that exam papers are forwarded across the front lines to
the Syrian government ministry of education in Damascus.
All-powerful Isis, it seems, is not as all-powerful as
it seems.
In his scandalously under-reviewed but
deeply revealing new book, Moubayed details all of
Isis’s cruel and inhuman punishments and executions –
war crimes indeed – but is intent on placing them in the
context of a very bloody history. There are, for
example, painful historical precedents for the
frightening “Islamic state” which now exists, from the
edge of Baghdad almost to the Mediterranean. Sunni
Muslims believe that a caliph must trace his origins
back to the Quraysh clan of Mecca, to which the Prophet
himself belonged. Thus al-Baghdadi insists on using two
additional names, “al-Qurashi”, and “al-Hassani”
(descendant of the Prophet’s grandson, al-Hassan ibn
Ali). Isis always refer to him with these names.
In the 14th century, Ibn Taymiyyah, a
Muslim theologian, sought a return to the purity of
Islam from moral corruption, calling for a holy jihad to
create an Islamic state. In the 18th century, Mohamed
Abdul-Wahab and Muhammad ibn Saud – whose family now
rules Saudi Arabia – went on head-chopping expeditions
to extend their purest rule over Arab lands. Al-Saud’s
historian, Uthman bin Bashir al-Najadi, wrote after
5,000 Shia Muslims were butchered in 1801: “We took
Karbala and we slaughtered… With the permission of
Allah, we will not apologise for what we have done and
we tell all kafir [unbelievers] ‘You will receive
similar treatment’.”
Sound familiar? It could be Jihadi
John himself. Nor is it surprising that al-Baghdadi
chose Raqqa as his capital. He studied three histories
of the Syrian city, because at the height of the Abbasid
dynasty, a Muslim empire stretching from north Africa to
central Asia was controlled from the very same city.
But Moubayed has also studied Isis’s
favourite Islamic texts and shows how while the Prophet
is quoted as saying “when you kill, kill well, and when
you slaughter, slaughter well” – in Arabic, darb al-rekab,
hitting the neck – “Isis seemingly forgets that the
Prophet adds ‘Let each of you sharpen your blade and let
him spare the suffering of the animal he slaughters’. In
other words [the Prophet] was talking about sheep and
cattle – not human beings.”
Quite a dissection of Isis for US
Special Forces to ponder before they tip-toe over the
Syrian border. But they might also remember that the
Prophet ordered the execution of prisoners captured in
the battle of Badr in 624, a precedent followed by later
Muslim leaders; the Ottomans beheaded King Ladislaus of
Hungary and King Stephen of Bosnia and his sons after
they surrendered.
And those most obedient of Muslims,
the Saudis, beheaded more than 50 people in one year
alone. Yup folks, it’s those Saudis again – one of
America’s most loyal allies...
© 2014 The Independent
See also
Islamic State reaches into
Turkey to behead 2 Raqqa activists:
A Syrian activist who helped produce a blog
dedicated to exposing Islamic State crimes against
the residents of Raqqa was found beheaded along with
another young activist at their apartment in
Sanliurfa in southern Turkey on Friday, friends
said.