Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Podcast

Sometimes parents can rescue their children. But even these initially joyous events can become tragic. A Tunisian military physician went to Turkey to retrieve his son, who had joined and then left the Caliphate. Earlier, the son had been a lighthearted medical student. “He used to spend time with my daughters, laughing and joking, but that stopped,” said a cousin. But he became withdrawn and hate...

Blue-Eyed Jihad: The Caliphate’s Foreign Legion, Part Two “We have the unborn martyrs in our wombs.” A woman shouting at the Muslim Day Parade in New York City, 2015               The previous chapter focused on the Islamic State’s foreign legion of Westerners. Chapter Five continues to discuss this cohort, with attention to parental involvement and disillusionment with the Caliphate’s cause and i...

Interspecies Predators—Psychopaths and Foreign Fighters   “I’m glad I’ve lived to see an enemy prepared to die for something other than their bank balance.” Ian Brady, infamous British Moors murderer, referring to the Caliphate, 2016               Sometimes called “psychopaths,” sometimes “sociopaths,” and historically called “evil,” they are men and women without remorse. Though they are not nece...

The Caliphate as a New Beginning—Antisocials in a New Society   Bar girl to Johnny:        “Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?”                Johnny to bar girl: “Whaddya got?      From the film The Wild One, 1953   “If you’re scrambling for your identity, ISIS is the bright flame to follow.” Raffaello Pantucci, director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Ins...

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 four and introduces the deadly Western women of the Calipha...

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 four and introduces the deadly Western women of the Calipha...

Sexual Jihad   “There are a lot of things about us women that sadden me, considering how men see us as rascals.”     Lysistrata, from the play Lysistrata by Arisotphanes”               As the Greek play goes, Athenian women were fed up with the war against the Spartans. Lysistrata organized a sex strike to force their men to stop killing Spartans, who, according to plan, would stop killing Athenia...

Profile Nine: Maria, Fatima, and Alessandra             By the time she was in her early twenties, Muslim convert Maria Giulia Sergio had become famous in her country of birth, Italy. She was also well known in her new home, the Islamic State, under her new name, Fatima. The former biotechnology student at the University of Milan said, “I can’t wait to die as a martyr,” according to L’Espresso mag...

For the first two years of the Caliphate’s existence, it was easy for Westerners to travel to its cities. Security services did not expect the lure of the Caliphate, and man border controls in Europe had been removed. From 2014 to early 2016, it was relatively easy for those with support and guidance to travel from most European cities to the Caliphate.             A Daily Mail undercover sting op...

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 three and turns to Western universities and militant Islam....

            Popular culture—movies, television, comedy, art, drama—has explored the Caliphate, and so has academia. There have been myriad panels, discussion groups, speaking engagements, and resolutions passed on university campuses. Some see it as a campus craze. This is important because universities prepare future generations of journalists, public intellectuals, and scholars for leadership wo...

Weaponized Humor and the Caliphate             Some American leaders have turned to Hollywood to develop a propaganda strategy against the Caliphate. This action has precedent; presidents have partnered with movie studios to confront an external enemy before, including during World War II, when films boosted morale on the home front and many celebrities went to war against the Axis powers. Three g...

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.   Profile Four: The Ever-Angry Mr. Bukhari Wants His Shoe Back               Asghar Bukhari...

Profile Three: Portrait of an English Village—“Even the Ice Cream Lady Wears a Burka”             In many ways, the West Yorkshire town of Dewsbury is unremarkable. Along its terraced streets are a few pubs, snooker clubs, and tea shops. The elderly tend their English gardens. Jean Wood, reflecting on her seventy-five years in Dewsbury, notes its transformation: “The change happened so quickly. On...

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 comes from chapter two and will examine “Eurabia” – the crossroad of a secular Europe...

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 comes from chapter two and will examine “Eurabia” – the crossroad of a secular Europe...

Welcome to an excerpt from Jihad and the West, Black Flag over Babylon written 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 is from the first chapter and begins with the full life and tragic de...

  Welcome to an excerpt of Empire of Terror, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, written by Mark Silinsky and published by Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. This is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security. This excerpt comes from chapter One.   Ideological Divergence   While all four ideologies converge on seven po...

            I am Cyrus, who founded the Persian Empire and was King of Asia. Grudge me not, therefore, this monument. —Inscription on the tomb of Cyrus the Great Iran sits at the strategic center of the greater Middle East. Once boasting the most powerful kingdom of its day, Iran’s influence waned over the centuries. By the nineteenth century, its military and industrial capabilities could not mat...

Iran sits at the strategic center of the greater Middle East. Once boasting the most powerful kingdom of its day, Iran’s influence waned over the centuries. By the nineteenth century, its military and industrial capabilities could not match those of Western empires. In the twentieth century, many powers courted Iran until Iranian leaders broke from the Western orbit in 1979 to create a unique poli...

Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher, founded the Muslim Brotherhood to fill material and spiritual voids in civil society. Along with other pious Muslims, he was crestfallen at the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924. Much like Shia clerics in Persia, he saw Islam threatened by atheism, imperialism, and the widening scientific gap between the West and the Islamic East. Al-Banna was a...

 This is the foreward by Sebastian Gorka.    The word “jihad” is misunderstood and misrepresented. It is a human concept (rather than a heavenly mandate) with historical, political, and religious contexts, and has been applied in different ways by different users over the centuries. Today its most important application is by the members of the Global Jihadist Movement, most specifically Al Qaeda a...