“Listen, Putin, we will come to Russia and will kill you at your homes” – and subways. My latest in
FrontPage:
Ten people were killed and many others injured Monday
when an Islamic jihadi exploded a bomb filled with shrapnel on the St.
Petersburg metro. Another bomb was found in a different train station
but was defused before it exploded. According to Reuters,
“authorities had established the identity of the suspected suicide
bomber and that the suspect was a 23-year-old from central Asia who had
carried an explosive device into the St Petersburg metro in a rucksack”
and had links to the Islamic State. And so this jihad attack looks to be
the fulfillment of a vow the Islamic State made last summer: to strike
in Russia, and strike hard.
In a video released last August,
an Islamic State jihadi declared: “Listen, Putin, we will come to
Russia and will kill you at your homes … Oh Brothers, carry out jihad
and kill and fight them.” The video also showed Islamic State jihadis,
according to a subtitle, “breaking into a barrack of the Rejectionist
military on the international road south Akashat [Anbar province,
Iraq].”
“Rejectionists” are Shi’ites, who in the view of Sunnis are guilty of
rejecting the legitimate authority of the first three caliphs, Abu
Bakr, Umar and Uthman. The Russians in Syria are backing the Alawite
regime of Bashar Assad, which is aligned with the Shi’ites of Iran (and
the Alawite religion is itself an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam), and
fighting the Islamic State. Hence the rage of the Islamic State against
Russia – although Western analysts would do well to avoid the pitfall of
thinking that if Russia were not involved in Syria, the Islamic State
would not have struck in St. Petersburg.
In reality, the Islamic State’s enmity toward Russia goes much deeper
than anger at its presence in Syria. On July 1, 2014, just after the
Islamic State had declared itself the new caliphate – that is, the sole
legitimate government for all Muslims anywhere on earth – its new
caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, issued a declaration entitled, “A Message
to the Mujahedin and the Muslim Ummah in the Month of Ramadan.” In it,
he said:
O ummah of Islam, indeed the world today has been divided into two
camps and two trenches, with no third camp present: The camp of Islam
and faith, and the camp of kufr (disbelief) and hypocrisy – the camp of
the Muslims and the mujahidin everywhere, and the camp of the jews, the
crusaders, their allies, and with them the rest of the nations and
religions of kufr, all being led by America and Russia, and being
mobilized by the jews.” – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s
caliph Ibrahim, in his message upon being named caliph, “A Message to
the Mujahedin and the Muslim Ummah in the Month of Ramadan,” July 1,
2014 (capitalization as in the original).
The self-styled caliph couldn’t have been clearer: as far as he is
concerned, the greatest enemies of the Muslims are the Jews, as he knows
from his Qur’an (5:82). This sinister enemy of the Muslims has
mobilized the United States and Russia to lead “the camp of kufr
(disbelief) and hypocrisy” against “the camp of Islam and faith.” As far
as the Islamic State is concerned, this is an eschatological struggle,
the apocalyptic showdown between good and evil.
And given the exultant brutality of the Islamic State, they may very
well have a point. But Western analysts would do well to realize that no
adjustment of foreign (or domestic) policy is going to prevent attacks
such as the one in St. Petersburg Monday, or the recent Islamic State
jihad attack in London, or any of the others. Nor will the destruction
of the Islamic State itself end this conflict: not only will its jihadis
in Iraq and Syria be dispersed throughout the world to wage jihad in
new countries, but other Muslims will also take up this cause, and
enlist in the war between Islam and unbelief.
This is not just one way that the Islamic State and other like-minded
Muslims look at the world. It is the only way. It is the prism through
which they view all political events and issues. It is, likewise, the
one aspect of this broad and spreading conflict that Western analysts
continue to minimize, downplay, or ignore outright. And so as long as we
fail to heed Sun Tzu’s adage that one must know one’s enemy in order to
defeat him, we will continue to fail to defeat him.
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