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September 27, 2014 by Daniel Greenfield 13 Comments

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

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They might be different brands of evil, but ISIS and the USSR have the same idea when it comes to agriculture.

ISIL is imposing a tribute on both farmers and landowners in the name of zakat on grain, said Mahmoud Hassan Ismail, a farmer from al-Raqa.

ISIL “issued a circular to all farmers titled ‘zakat on wheat and barley’ in which it stated it will take a portion of the crops, especially wheat and barley, as zakat”, he told Al-Shorfa.

The group “also rents out harvesting machines to farmers which were owned by citizens in the area but have been confiscated as spoils,” he said.

Wheat and flour have all but disappeared from al-Raqa and ISIL now controls their distribution, Ismail said.

The farmers’ situation is pitiful, he added, because of the taxes and zakat and as ISIL sets the crop prices, buys them at low rates, stores them in silos and controls their distribution.

“A state of anger and restlessness prevails among farmers, who constitute a large portion of the population of rural al-Raqa,” he said. “However, the terror they are subjected to by ISIL and fear of flogging and execution forces them to stay silent about these practices.”

So ISIS has managed to duplicate the Soviet achievement. Or more recently the Chavez-Maduro breakthroughs that turned Venezuela into a place that Cubans look down on.

Islamists and Communists are both ideological fanatics who are terrible when it comes to understanding economics.