Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Podcast

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 hea...

.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 vol...

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 milita...

  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 soldier...

  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 Caliphat...

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 eight and explores the mental health of Western Islamists....

Emily, 2015             In October 2015, “Emily” of Rotherham, England, wrote an open letter to social services. She, like Bibi, weeps with the frustration, anger, and fatalism of a girl who feels powerless and is convinced that the civil service and civil society have abandoned her.   To the medical professionals who did nothing—Were you blind to my bruises, multiple sexually transmitted infectio...

Germany   Muslim–Non-Muslim Relations   “Of course there are Muslims in Germany. But Islam is not part of the German mainstream culture.”  Alexander Dobrindt, the general secretary of the Christian Social Union, 2011               History follows Germany, and many Germans are sensitive about their global image. Germany never had the colonial associations Britain or France had with the Middle East,...

Militant Islam             Britain, like the United States, France, and Belgium, has been victimized by Islamic terror for years. The government has tried to fight, as Prime Minister Cameron called it, the “poisonous Islamist ideology,” while being respectful to Islam. Nonetheless, four out of ten British Muslims want Sharia law introduced into parts of the country. A fifth of the Muslims surveyed...

Great Britain “Many people born in Britain have little attachment to the country, which makes them vulnerable to radicalization.” UK Prime Minister David Cameron, referring to some Muslims   Muslim–Non-Muslim Relations   The Muslim population of Britain surpassed 3.5 million in 2015, representing approximately 5.5 percent of the overall population of 64 million. Britain has the third-largest Musli...

In spring and summer 2016, the Caliphate struck around the world at venues frequented by Westerners. Three American college students were killed during a siege at an upscale restaurant in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a favorite haunt of Westerners. The ringleader was young, university-educated, and raised in a well-to-do home. Caliphate operatives demanded that captives recite verses from the Koran to save...

In the Name of Humanity This is the Syria of 2015, where anyone who is upwardly mobile is now also westwardly mobile.               Many Westerners were moved by the human dimension of the migration crisis. Commercial and social media captured some of the pain. A Swedish journalist found a love poem, protected in a plastic bag and washed up on the shore of a Greek island. Many rickety boats coming...

The Caliphate Abroad, Part One: The Anglo-Saxons             Earlier chapters examined why Westerners are drawn to and sometimes repulsed by life in the Caliphate. Chapters 8 and 9 will return to Europe to provide more detail on Muslim–non-Muslim relations in selected countries. These chapters will expand on the Caliphate-related themes presented earlier, including social divisions, recruitment, s...

 Crusade!—The West Fights Back               This chapter now moves to the Western fight against the Caliphate in the Middle East. Western states and individuals fight the Islamic State with both nonviolent and violent means.   Western-Led Nonviolent Resistance               Some Westerners travel to Mesopotamia in the name of humanity. They seek to ease the suffering of refugees. NGOs help feed,...

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 reading continues with Chapter Seven and, particularly, the ISIS-inspired killing in C...

The Killing Floor   Killing floor: “That part of the slaughterhouse where animals are killed.”   “I want to do an Islamic Bonnie and Clyde on the kaffir.” Bridget Namoa, Australian convert to Islam, 2016   Introduction               By 2015, the Caliphate’s long, lethal arm had reached well beyond Mesopotamia. Its cells and lone operatives plotted in European cities and suburbs. A sleepy Southern...

Neighbors—“Forgive Them” “Let believers not take for friends and allies infidels rather than believers: and whoever does this shall have no relationship left with Allah—unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions.” Koran 3:28             The Caliphate’s conquest of Mesopotamian cities and towns has tested Christian–Muslim relations. Many Christians did not understand how tenuo...

Entertainment in the Caliphate               Muslims have enjoyed music for centuries, relishing folk, religious, popular, and foreign songs. But the State outlawed most music. Soon after their conquest, State operatives confiscated or destroyed musical instruments. They also killed musicians. Some musicians have sold or hidden their instruments, too terrified to play them. A celebrated local musi...

Health Care—Deadly Medicine             Westerners accustomed to European health care standards are often shocked by the primitive conditions in their new Middle Eastern home. By 2015, most of the Caliphate’s hospitals had fallen into disrepair. Citizens without money or influence receive the most rudimentary health care or none at all. In Raqqa, the hospital’s dialysis machines and incubators sto...

Mundanity, Fear, and Misery               Life in the Caliphate is tedious and dangerous. Well-paying jobs, scarce across the Caliphate’s territory, are often unattainable for those unconnected to the leadership. For most residents, life is marked by mundanity, fear, and misery. Basic services—electricity, waste management, potable water, and road repair—are unreliable. In the villages, electricit...

Salafist Dystopia: Life in the State   “ISIS is dedicated to a contemporary holocaust.”  V. S. Naipaul, March 2015   Introduction               Earlier chapters detailed the Caliphate’s geography, philosophy, origins, and support base. They surveyed tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim communities in the West and observed the lures of the Caliphate. This chapter returns to Mesopotamia and walks...

  Cruelty Was Not in Their Nature               A final reason Westerners want to come home is the realization that they are not emotionally suited for the cruelty of the State. Some Western Jihadis relish the brutality they inflict on their enemies. Sadists are comfortable in the Caliphate today. But many people cannot witness this cruelty without becoming traumatized. The reality of war is not w...

    A Woman’s World within a Man’s World   “It’s not Sharia that men scream or talk to us in the street. It’s not. I feel increasingly sad here now. There is so little respect for us .” A foreign fighter   “I know it may be shirk [idolatry] but sometimes I do miss Starbucks. The coffee here is beyond wretched.” Western woman called GreenBirdofDabiq               By their own accounts, many female...

Wanting to Come Home   “The Revolution is like Saturn. It devours its own Children.” Georg Büchner, Danton’s Death, 1835   “My iPod is broken. I want to come back.” A young French Jihadist’s tweet to his parents in France             The first three parts of this chapter discussed the broad groupings of reasons why Westerners travel to the Caliphate. The chapter will now turn to reasons why some o...

Sometimes parents will brave the dangers of Raqqa to fetch their daughters back home. Nineteen-year-old Aicha fell hard for a charismatic Dutch Jihadi after seeing him on television. She converted to Islam and left with him for Raqqa but soon called her mother, Monique, to take her home. “Monique,” fully aware of what she would likely encounter, set out to Raqqa undercover and in a burka to bring...