THE CULTURE OF MODERN TERRORISM
General histories of terrorism are of interest because they give a causal explanation for the state of the world, but much like a hearty soup with no flavor, they shed little light on the intangible factors that played a role in these developments. If the story of modern terrorism is politics or, more specifically, the failure of governance, then it is worth considering the factors at play behind those politics. For as Aristotle explained some twenty-four hundred years ago, humans are political animals that must interact with each other to form societies with laws to regulate behavior. How do humans accomplish this? By developing a shared language, creating art and music, and developing a culture that subconsciously dictates what is right and wrong. This is to say that history is but only one aspect of understanding terrorism. Philip Bobbitt said it best when he wrote that the “perception of cause and effect—history—is the distinctive element in the ceaseless, restless dynamic by means of which strategy and law live out their necessary relationship … and it is the self-portrayal of a society that enables it to know its own identity.” Whether people wish to acknowledge it or not, terrorist groups are societies unto themselves with their own codes, culture, argot, and history that explain the strategies they use and the rules they choose to follow. IS is not just a product of Assad’s brutality, and neither were the anarchists in tsarist Russia in the 1800s.
Islamic terrorism owes much of its ideological understanding to developments in Egypt at the end of the nineteenth century, when a number of Islamic thinkers, such as Mohammed Abdu and Rashid Rida, who were to have considerable influence on the following two generations, appeared on the scene. They were true believers but at the same time could be considered reformers. They had considerable influence on Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Ismailia, Egypt, in 1928. Al-Banna wanted to educate a new generation in the spirit of the original teaching of the Prophet. But he was a reformer. His movement was not only concerned with religious preaching but also did a great deal of social work, which made it very popular in Egypt and was also present in some other countries. The Muslim Brotherhood became a major political force, probably at times the organization with the largest membership in the country. It did not, most of the time, strive to attain political power but intended to exert great pressure on the government in power in the spirit of their religious beliefs. This led them into almost permanent conflict with the authorities. During much of the time of its existence, it was banned and many of its leading figures were imprisoned.
The Muslim Brotherhood did not preach terrorism, but since it could not achieve its goals legally and was for long periods pushed underground, part of the movement (particularly the younger generation) became more and more radical. Virtually all terrorist movements in Egypt and some other countries had originally been part of the Brotherhood and subsequently have left it because its elderly leadership was too tame for their taste. This is true, for instance, in regard to the group that killed Anwar al-Sadat. Before that, though, they had been among the initiators of the great fire in Cairo (January 1952), which destroyed part of the capital city. The Brotherhood also participated in political assassinations, which were frequent in Egypt in the 1930s and 1940s. It is interesting that the targets of these operations were normally not the British overlords who controlled the country at the time. Instead, it was fellow Egyptians. Among the victims of these assassinations were several prime ministers, such as Mahmoud El Nokrashy Pasha, but also the founder and head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna. They were not the only reformist organization that engaged in terrorism. The Egyptian monarchy came to an end with the rebellion of the senior officers in 1952. Some of the officers had belonged to Misr al-Fatat (Young Egypt), a fascist organization of sorts that on the whole had not engaged in terrorism but had believed in achieving its goals by peaceful means. This movement brought into power Gamal Abdel Nasser, the great Arab nationalist who promised a new way of life for Arabs across the world after dominion by the Ottoman Turks and, later, the British and French empires. However, the Muslim Brotherhood did not fare well under the rule of Nasser. It was again banned, its leaders were imprisoned, and more than a few were executed, such as Sayyid Qutb (1966), one of the most radical and influential thinkers of Islamism in our time. His writings, a centerpiece for al-Qaeda’s and IS’s ideology, has inspired most Islamic radicals since the 1980s. What is curious about him is that a prolonged visit to the United States had in no way affected his views but made him more radical in his rejection of the West and modernism, and this seems at play in contemporary terrorist movements as well. What is important about the Muslim Brotherhood is that it provided the language and a foundational story for how to attempt to reform societies. Hamas, for example, emerged in the Arab regions of Israel and Gaza, where, not too successfully, it has been the ruling force in recent years.
A movement similar to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Gama’at Al-Islamiyya, emerged in British India and later in Pakistan and played a similar role to it in South Asia. It also had influence in some other countries, such as Afghanistan and Indonesia. Gama’at did not directly sponsor terrorism but prepared the field for a variety of terrorist groups, which appeared in recent decades. Its leader and chief ideologist was Abul A’la Maududi (1903–1979). He was not initially against the partition of India, but subsequently joined the camp of those favoring it. He was in constant conflict with a movement of nationalist separatists headed by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who had a considerable influence on the Islamists in Asia (especially in Afghanistan). He believed in political activity and intended to influence the leadership of the Muslim community. He believed that politics was an inseparable part of the Islamic faith. As he saw it, Muslims were not just a religious community group but rather one based on a certain theory or ideology with allegiance to a single leader, obedience, and discipline. As mentioned earlier, this movement did not initially favor terrorism, but in the course of time, it came to support a variety of terrorist movements in Asia and the Middle East. Thousands of its members joined groups of jihadist fighters in several Asian countries.
Again, though, the preceding is but cause and effect. How can we explain the rise of movements like the Muslim Brotherhood and Gama’a Al-Islamiyya, and the current wave of Islamism in general? There is no simple explanation for the genesis of religious movements like Christianity and why Jesus appeared at a certain time and place; the same is true for Muhammad and Islam. However, the resurgence of Islam seems to have certain obvious causes.
A few centuries after the time of Muhammad, Islam was a powerful religion that produced a high culture both in Baghdad and in Spain. At this time, much of Europe was shrouded in darkness, and its culture was clearly inferior to that of this golden age of Islam. In later centuries, the Ottoman Empire became the leading force, and the sultan also held the position of caliph. The Ottoman Empire stretched from northern Africa to most of the Middle East and, with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, it destroyed the Byzantine Empire and took over most of its territories (including most of the Balkans). But then the tide turned. The Ottoman Empire came under strong pressure from several sides. However, the internal crisis of the Ottoman Empire was the decisive factor for the decline of Islam’s golden age. This crisis was a result of a variety of factors, including the weakness of most of the sultans (some of them were mentally defective) and the absence of a middle class in the empire, which could have served as a pillar of the system. Economically, too, the country was quite backward compared with Europe, which grew richer, partly as a result of acquiring colonies. From the early nineteenth century, Russia became a powerful enemy of Turkey. Gradually, the Balkan states acquired independence from Constantinople. Turkey became the “sick man” of international politics.
This process reached its nadir in the early twentieth century, as Turkey was on the losing side of the First World War. England took over Egypt, the Italians were now the masters in Tripoli, and (according to Sykes-Picot) France was now the master in Syria and Lebanon. Iraq also became part of the British Empire. What remained was Kemalist Turkey. After the Second World War, the West became weaker, and most of the Arab states became independent. The increasing importance of oil and cars made some of these countries very rich, but the majority were left behind. Culturally, the Muslim world was unimportant. In brief, the Muslim world was in a sad state despite the fact that most of it had become independent. It was against this background of backwardness that the wave of Islamism, beginning in the late twentieth century, should be explained. The Islamists wanted their world to once again play an important role in world politics and also in world culture.
With the resurgence of Islamism has come a change in how victims of their terrorism are regarded or viewed. In the history of terrorism, it has been the norm that terrorists try to eliminate their enemies, but an element of cruelty was usually not involved. This has changed markedly with IS, a group that has been most successful of all in utilizing social media and symbolism, often beheading its enemies, who wear orange jumpsuits similar to those worn by the prisoners of Guantánamo Bay. Some terrorist groups, especially in the nineteenth century, took great care not to hurt people who, in their eyes, were innocent. There is a famous play by Albert Camus about an incident in which a Russian terrorist decided not to kill a high dignitary because he appeared on the scene together with his family, and there was a danger that the family too would be killed. The terrorist decided against the attack despite endangering his own life by doing so. This play was based on a true happening, and it was apparently not the only one of its kind.
The behavior of the twentieth century was not essentially different. There are few reports on acts of great cruelty committed. Until the early 1980s, Brian Jenkins’s famous precept that terrorists wanted many people watching and not many dead held true. With a few exceptions, terrorists did not prioritize mass-casualty attacks and did everything they could to avoid them. The IRA noticeably tried its hardest to moderate its violence for fear of losing the support of its base in Northern Ireland. These, of course, were secular movements who wanted popular support for their political aims. Even the Irgun found itself regretting the high number of civilian deaths caused by the bombing of the King David Hotel, while still acknowledging the positive effect the explosion had on its cause. This began to change at the end of the twentieth century, when some terrorist groups started to kill indiscriminately by trying to explode aircrafts, bomb supermarkets, or attack other places where many people congregated. Whether it was Hezbollah’s pioneering use of suicide bombings, Aum Shinrikyo releasing toxic gas in Tokyo’s subway system, or Timothy McVeigh’s attack in Oklahoma, the norms of terrorists shifted.
However, with the appearance of IS, yet another age dawned. There is no need to discuss in detail the kinds of atrocities committed, because they have been fully documented and IS does not deny them. To give but a few examples, crucifixion or rape of young girls, graphic beheading videos, the stoning of women who allegedly commit adultery, abuse and enslavement of the Yazidis, and desecration of Christian and Yazidi religious sites. Groups that commit such acts are located not only in the Middle East but also in other Asian and African countries.
The question then arises as to why these acts are committed and how to explain them. Is the aim to frighten their enemies, or should one look for deeper reasons? This in turn leads us to the issue of evil. The essence of evil has been difficult to understand for most of us today, who were taught that real evil does not exist. It has been rightly noted that people living in the Middle Ages would have found it easier to understand; they would have regarded such evildoers as emissaries of Satan. It is also true that Europe, from the days of the Inquisition to the period of the last burning of witches, is by no means free of acts of individual and collective atrocities. But with the eighteenth century, there has been a profound change, and this seems to be the reason for the difficulties that contemporaries have believing in the existence of evil in other parts of the world, even today. There is, for instance, the belief (even among criminologists) that mass murderers killing their victims in a particularly cruel way must be the victims of childhood neglect, undeserved punishment at an early age, or some other social circumstances.
There is much reason to assume that more profound issues are involved. To understand these is not easy, but a recent article in the IS journal Dabiq is of considerable interest and relevance. (Dabiq is a small town in northern Syria in which the final decisive battle between Muslims and their enemies is to take place. It is also the name of the IS periodical.) The article is called “Why We Hate You & Why We Fight You”:
1. We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers, you reject the oneness of Allah—whether you realize it or not—by making partners for Him in worship, you blaspheme against Him, claiming that he has a son, you fabricate lies against His prophets and messengers, and you indulge in all manner of devilish practices. It is for this reason that we are commanded to openly declare our hatred for you and our enmity towards you. There has already been for you an excellent example in Abraham and those with him, when they said to their people, “Indeed we are disassociated from you and from whatever you worship other than Allah. We have rejected you, and there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred forever until you believe in Allah alone” (Al-Mumtahanah 4). Furthermore, just as your disbelief is the primary reason we hate you, your disbelief is the primary reason we fight you, as we have been commanded to fight the disbelievers until they submit to the authority of Islam, either by becoming Muslim, or by paying juzyah—for those afforded this option—and living in humiliation under the rule of the Muslims. Thus, even if you were to stop fighting us, your best-case scenario in a state of war would be that we would suspend our attacks against you. If we deemed it necessary—in order to focus on the closer and more immediate threats, before eventually resuming our campaigns against you. Apart from the option of a temporary truce, this is the only likely scenario that would bring you fleeting respite from our attacks. So in the end, you cannot bring an indefinite halt to our war against you. At most, you could only delay it temporarily. “And fight them until there is not fitnah (paganism) and (until) the religion, all of it, is for Allah” (Al-Baqarah 193).
2. We hate you because your secular, liberal societies permit the very things that Allah has prohibited while banning many of the things He has permitted, a matter that doesn’t concern you because you separate between religion and state, thereby granting supreme authority to your whims and desires via the legislators you vote into power. In doing so you desire to rob Allah of His right to be obeyed and you wish to usurp that right for yourselves. “Legislation is not but for Allah” (Yusuf 40). Your secular liberalism has led you to tolerate and even support “gay rights,” to allow alcohol, drugs, fornication, gambling, and usury to become widespread, and to encourage the people to mock those who denounce these filthy sins and vices. As such, we wage war against you to stop you from spreading your disbelief and debauchery—your secularism and nationalism, your perverted liberal values, your Christianity and atheism—and all the depravity and corruption they entail. You’ve made it your mission to “liberate” Muslim societies; we’ve made it our mission to fight off your influence and protect mankind from your misguided concepts and your deviant way of life.
3. In the case of the atheist fringe, we hate you and wage war against you because you disbelieve in the existence of your Lord and Creator. You witness the extraordinarily complex makeup of created beings, and the astonishing and inexplicably precise physical laws that govern the entire universe, but insist that they all came about through randomness and that one should be faulted, mocked, and ostracized for recognizing that the astonishing signs we witness day after day are the creation of the Wise, All-Knowing Creator and not the result of accidental occurrence. “Or were they created by nothing, or were they the creators (of themselves)?” (AtTur 35). Your disbelief in your Creator further leads you to deny the Day of Judgment, claiming that “you only live once.” “Those who disbelieve have claimed that they will never be resurrected. Say, ‘Yes, by my Lord, you will surely be resurrected; then you will surely be informed of what you did. And that, for Allah, is easy’” (At-Taghabun 7).
4. We hate you for your crimes against Islam and wage war against you to punish you for your transgressions against our religion. As long as your subjects continue to mock our faith, insult the prophets of Allah—including Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad—burn the Qur’an, and openly vilify the laws of the Shari’ah, we will continue to retaliate, not with slogans and placards, but with bullets and knives.
5. We hate you for your crimes against the Muslims; your drones and fighter jets bomb, kill, and maim our people around the world, and your puppets in the usurped lands of the Muslims oppress, torture, and wage war against anyone who calls to the truth. As such, we fight you to stop you from killing our men, women, and children, to liberate those of them whom you imprison and torture, and to take revenge for the countless Muslims who’ve suffered as a result of your deeds.
6. We hate you for invading our lands and fight you to repel you and drive you out. As long as there is an inch of territory left for us to reclaim, jihad will continue to be a personal obligation.1
Such hysterical outpourings are rare, perhaps even unprecedented, in the history of terrorism. How to explain them? They have occurred in a civilization that was once among the leading in the world, but it has no humanist tradition and did not experience an Enlightenment. Voltaire wrote a play about Muhammad in which he noted his fanaticism, but this was not really the main point in his critique, which drew into doubt whether Muhammad had really been a true prophet. In fact, what Muhammad preached (even though it included the idea of a holy war) was not remotely as fanatical as the present-day propaganda of the radical Islamists. This again leads us to the issue of evil, normally dealt with by theologians and psychologists. They usually focus their research on very ancient periods in the history of mankind. More recently, as pointed out early on, a tendency has emerged to deny (or at least to doubt) the existence of evil. Freud, especially in his exchange with Einstein, was more realistic in this respect than some of his followers. Reading the preceding, though, makes one wonder about the ontology of evil. These are individuals motivated by religious motives to use violence. There have been religious movements in the past, but even they found it necessary to control their violence. As recently as 2013 al-Qaeda was chastising its members for excessive violence and atrocities.
The preceding at least gives some justification for why IS acted the way it did. What of the atrocities committed by IS? The question of evil is intimately linked to them. Warfare in the age of the Qur’an and the Hadith was not exactly gentle, but atrocities were not common. This is true for subsequent ages, but it is also true that in Medieval Europe, there was an injunction usually observed. This was called Treuga Dei, according to which clergymen were not to be killed, nor were women, children, and nonfighting individuals in general. Later warfare became rougher, especially in the Thirty Years’ War, and the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus were known for occasional brutality. For years to come, children in central Europe were frightened after they misbehaved because their parents told them, “The Swedes are coming.” In our age, atrocities have frequently occurred in countries such as Cambodia but particularly in the continent of Africa. This refers to the mutilation of the Tutsis with machetes and the cutting of their Achilles tendons, as well as the rape of women and girls. Some of these committing atrocities were Christians—at least nominally. Others were Muslims. The crimes committed in Rwanda have been documented in long reports by the United Nations. They refer to fighting in the Central African Republic; such mutilation sometimes occurred after the rape and included mutilation of the vagina with machetes, knives, sharpened sticks, boiling water, and acid. Sexual violence against men included mutilation of the genitals, which were then displayed as trophies.
But the leaders of IS and those who joined their ranks were on a somewhat higher social and cultural level. How to explain the atrocities committed by IS is a matter of policy. As noted previously, their violence had a shock value meant to intimidate its rivals. It certainly delivered. During IS’s rampage across northern Iraq in 2014, stories of Iraqi soldiers surrendering in the mistaken belief that surrendering would inspire leniency by IS were common. But this could by no means be the full explanation for IS’s continued engagement in atrocities against minorities, such as the Yazidis, in the territories it had “liberated” for a time. Obviously, such action could only be carried out by individuals who took a certain joy in inflicting pain on their victims. It means that at least some of them were sadists or, as some observers have claimed, mentally disturbed. Other terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, occasionally blamed IS for these outrages, which gave terrorism a bad name.
During the thirty-year period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, there was much indignation about the IRA’s attacks. Irish atrocities were relatively mild. They killed people, but never in a grisly, sacrificial manner like Islamic State. They would shoot individuals in the kneecap, making it impossible for their victims to physically work for the rest of their lives. The atrocities committed by IS are obviously of a different color and character and have broken all taboos. In the last decade, only Assad’s relentless use of chemical bombs and his death camps are comparable. Again, though, this should be viewed in the context of evil and its broader meaning. Is there any utilitarian function behind such systemic elimination of life or in mutilations, beheadings, or other acts of extreme violence besides inspiring fear? Not all deaths are publicized or disseminated as propaganda.
This feeds into a broader problem concerning the members of IS. The reality is that the organization is collapsing and will likely degenerate to a traditional terrorist organization. Many of its members will move on to other fighting grounds, and some will try to return to their home countries. After being exposed to such inhumane treatment of others, most will likely continue acting in such a barbarous manner unless they receive help from a psychologist. This is now part of the broader IS culture that will be repeated as an example of practices that worked and gave results. Again, atrocities occur even by the most enlightened nations, but that is why the global community revised the Geneva Conventions in 1949 following World War II. The idea was that warfare is sometimes necessary, but when the fighting ended, people would have to return to their societies and reintegrate, and so attempting to curtail excesses and atrocities would help protect people’s sanity. These bids to protect people’s sanity are not part of IS’s socialization program. To use the findings of the Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, these individuals have been empowered and ordered to commit the vilest of acts, and nothing has been done to reduce it. In part, most likely, it is because it makes them even more committed to the cause, making it harder for them to break out. This concept is explored further in a following chapter.
The effectiveness of IS propaganda has been often analyzed, and its sophistication has been frequently exaggerated. It is true, as a report by ABC put it, “IS propaganda expertly uses hip-hop music, video games and even children to successfully recruit young people to their violent cause.” 2 According to a spokesman from the Justice Department, “what they are trying to do is to convince young people to go slaughter civilians in a vicious war.” Their publications have been described as slick as well as sophisticated, but in fact, the actual content of their messages is primitive. Some have even called this kind of approach “strategic.” However, it is precisely this kind of primitive propaganda that appeals to the public, which IS intends to reach. IS probably never heard of Adolf Hitler (let alone Gustave Le Bon or other commentators on mass psychology) and never read Mein Kampf. But they practice what Hitler and others have said about propaganda. To be effective, it has to be short and concentrate on some essential points, and it must be repetitive. It is a frequent mistake to believe that a statement once made will be remembered by the public. It has to be repeated time and time again. Another commentator, writing about “cyber-Jihad,” also claims that IS is strategic in recruiting young men and women throughout the world using internet sites, worldwide magazines, and most social media tools, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and ASKfm. All this is true, but it does not mention the simple, primitive character of the messages.
The impact of social media on the radicalization of young Muslims has been widely commented upon and need not be discussed here in great detail. Of equal and even greater importance are the songs and hymns of IS and similar groups, as they are part of the group’s culture and play a role in normalizing or facilitating evil and atrocities. They are called nasheeds in Arabic. Similar to songs in America, nasheeds often convey messages of hope and love but can also be full of malice and spite. People have been singing, in all probability, since time immemorial. There have always been love songs and sad songs; people have sung while working and at leisure. There has been singing while wandering and playing games, but there have also been aggressive songs when going into battle and when fighting. The IS nasheeds belong to this category; they convey a message following the Dawa (“mission”). The message is that only terrorism will prevail; the battle will continue until everyone will embrace Islam. Music plays an important part because it conveys togetherness, comradeship, and fraternity. Why is it successful? This leads us to the general question concerning the reasons young people are responsive to this kind of message. This will be discussed elsewhere, but jihadism cool is certainly influenced by Western hip-hop culture.
The fact that music is used by extreme Islamists should be considered because, according to a long tradition, music is bad and should not be practiced. It is, according to Ibn Taymiyyah, like alcohol to the sword, and alcohol is of course taboo. For a long time, it has been the unanimous belief of Islamic scholars that Muhammad thought musical instruments sinful. Hanzala Ibn Abi Amir, a companion of Muhammad, has made it known that he had heard the prophets say, “From among my followers, there will be some people who will consider illegal sexual intercourse, the wearing of silk [forbidden in the Qur’an], the drinking of alcoholic drinks, and the use of musical instruments as unlawful.” Most subsequent Muslim scholars have declared that every type of music and musical instruments is haram (“forbidden”). Modern Islamic scholars have been somewhat more liberal, but certainly not the more Orthodox among them. This negative attitude has continued to the present day, and many Islamic theologians are very critical in this respect, just as they oppose soccer and similar games because they distract Muslims from their religious duties. The creators of these harmful nasheeds have composed their songs entirely a cappella, as per tradition. The feedback from the songs posted online is rather worrisome; young adults frequently share the opinion of how beautiful the song is, and it is not uncommon for these listeners to admit, whether joking or not, that they feel ready to commit violent acts against Americans.
The use of these nasheeds as an educational and propagandistic means is further evidence that the jihadists are by no means the most pious of Muslims. They observe, of course, the most important orders of the Qur’an (and also taboos) but in many respects have their own interpretations, ignoring tradition. Many of them have tried to circumvent the traditional taboo by producing songs without musical accompaniment. It could be argued that while these recitations do belong to the realm of music, they certainly do not belong to the realm of beautiful music, as commonly understood. Many of their nasheeds, which are intended for Western ears, are mere cacophony with texts that could equally have appeared in speeches by preachers or in newspapers of their movement. However, they correspond to a certain mind-set, which explains their enormous success. The first jihadist nasheeds appeared in the 1970s and 1980s. Palestinian political songs were heard even earlier, but their content was nationalist rather than Islamist.
Since then, there have been literally thousands of such nasheeds, and even IS has its own anthem. It begins with the words “My Umma, dawn has appeared.” Other leading nasheeds proclaim, “The Islamic State has arisen by the blood of the righteous. The Islamic State has arisen by the jihad of the pious.” Observers have noted that some of the songs are originals, but they are quite frequently traditional and familiar religious songs converted to odes of jihadism. Outsiders, like the present writers, could easily provide an example:
O lions of the desert, O tigers of the city,
Bravely, you march into the battle.
The coward enemy retreats with fear,
The final encounter is close by.
If you die, it will be the death of martyrs
For a Holy cause, etc., etc.
There is a fascinating similarity between these beliefs and secular movements that are convinced that the future belongs to them and that they will prevail all over the globe. One could refer to “L’Internationale,” written by Eugène Edine Pottier, and its refrain, “C’est la lutte finale” (This is the final battle), which also says, “Let the international socialist movement be victorious all over the globe.” There is a profound difference inasmuch as “L’Internationale” was sung by secular people whose ideas, at the time, were freedom and liberty. “L’Internationale” became the anthem of socialists and communist movements everywhere until the middle of the twentieth century.
The idea of a final victory also appeared in Nazi Germany, but hardly ever in Fascist Italy. Songs like “Wir Werden Weiter Marschieren” were frequently heard in Germany after 1933:
We shall go on marching
even if the whole world perishes.
Today Germany is ours and tomorrow the whole world.
To appreciate their character, a few examples of the lyrics have to be given, such as for the song “Ya Dawlat al-Islam Nawariti al-Dunna” (O Islamic State, You Lit Up the Earth):
O State al-Islam you lit up the earth … your sky graced us with lots of blessings when you erected the religion, its smell emerged that I enjoyed its perfumes so they prepared the light of the Rahman Khilafa in the land of Iraq which won these mercies.
So the brave ones out of our heroes and raised the bannered the most true banners, a straightforward path.
Another such song deals with the issue of terrorism:
They’re calling me a terrorist
Like they don’t know who the terror is
When they put it on me, I tell them this
I’m all about peace and love
They’re calling me a terrorist
Like they don’t know who the terror is
Insulting my intelligence
Oh how these people judge …
It seems like the Rag-heads and Pakis are worrying your dad
But your dad’s favorite food is curry and kebab
It’s funny but it’s sad how they make your mummy hurry with her bags
Rather read the Sun than study all the facts
Tell me, what’s the bigger threat to human society
BAE Systems or homemade IEDs
Remote controlled drones, killing off human lives
Or man with homemade bomb committing suicide
I know you were terrified when you saw the towers fall
It’s all terror but some forms are more powerful
Those interested in more examples of jihadi music are referred to the following artists and performers: Abu Talha al-Almani and Douglas McCain. Both of these men, now dead, were jihadists fighting for Islamic State, and both actually had their start as minor hip-hop artists in Germany and the United States respectively.