LONDON FALLING: THE BATTLE FOR BRITAIN
“I BELIEVE THERE WERE MANY POSITIVE OUTCOMES FROM 9/11 . . . the legacy of that is what you see today in the Islamic state that has been established in Syria and in Iraq.”
It was September 11, 2014, the thirteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks—and I was interviewing a man who has openly supported al Qaeda and called for sharia law to be imposed in every corner of the globe.
“I think the Muslims are defending themselves around the world,” said Anjem Choudary, leader of the radical Islamist group al-Muhajiroun, banned by the British government under the UK’s counterterrorism laws. “There is a giant that has woken up. The Sharia is being implemented. [Muslims] are getting rid of the dictators, which many of the Western regimes put in place—in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, in Tunisia, in Egypt. And that is affecting the interests of the West. . . . Communism is dead. Capitalism is dying. Islam is the future, I believe, for mankind.”
During our talk, Choudary prefaced Osama bin Laden’s name with the honorific title, “Sheikh,” and followed his mention of the deceased al Qaeda leader with a heartfelt, “May Allah bless him.” Coming from Choudary—whose al-Muhajiroun group once praised the 9/11 hijackers as “The Magnificent 19”—this veneration of history’s most notorious terrorist was no surprise.1
Over the past few years, I’ve spent hours talking with Choudary, Great Britain’s most notorious and outspoken radical Islamist. The previous two encounters, which I described in my books The Terrorist Next Door and The Brotherhood (2013), had been in person, on Choudary’s London home turf. On those occasions, he always made sure to bring along some of his followers—a somber, bearded crew who looked like they had just stepped out of an al Qaeda recruitment video.
This time, however, there would be no such jihadi ambience. We were speaking long distance via Skype—and our discussion focused not so much on 9/11 as it did another date: 6/29. That would be June 29, 2014—the day ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the establishment of a caliphate across a broad area of Syria and Iraq, in the process branding himself as “caliph,” or leader, of all Muslims worldwide.
I was eager to get Choudary’s thoughts on the Islamic State. After all, he was one of Europe’s most visible Salafists and had long pined for the return of the caliphate. I figured that Choudary’s take on ISIS would be a pretty good indicator of what the rest of Europe’s ever-growing radical Salafist community felt about al-Baghdadi and his minions. As expected, “Great Britain’s Most Hated Man” gave the new caliphate his enthusiastic endorsement.
“There are two types of people in the world today,” said the long-bearded Choudary, clad in a skullcap and grinning confidently as the black flag of Islam loomed over his shoulder as a backdrop. “Those who believe in man-made law, the head of which is Barack Obama, and those who believe in [sharia] law, the head of which at the current time is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. And I believe these will fight each other economically, politically, militarily, ideologically . . . there is a war taking place, Erick.”
To hear Choudary declare outright that the Islamic State and its ilk are at war with the West was striking. As we’ve seen in previous chapters, President Obama and his team can’t seem to decide whether America is at war with ISIS or not—Secretary of State John Kerry, in particular, has mumbled and bumbled his way through many an awkward press conference and media interview when pressed on that very question. Perhaps it’s all just an “Overseas Contingency Operation” against “Man-Caused Disasters”—to quote some of the administration’s own cringe-worthy jargon regarding Islamic terror. The Obama administration has treated Islamic terrorists as common criminals, trying them in civilian courts rather than in military tribunals, always with an eye toward shutting down Guantanamo Bay prison. This does not exactly scream “war footing.”
But according to our jihadist enemies, a war it most certainly is—whether we choose to fight it or not.
“I think it’s fascinating that you acknowledge this is a war,” I said to Choudary. “Because some Western leaders say, ‘Look, this is all just a criminal action. . . .’”
“There is a war taking place,” he reiterated. “I was just reading . . . that there are up to one thousand people who are joining the Islamic State’s army every single day. And these people look down the barrel of a gun and they see paradise. They love to die, the way that you and others love to live. You cannot defeat people like that.”
Actually, history has shown that you can—but it takes strong leadership, an unwavering commitment to victory, and an acknowledgment that a nation is facing an existential, fanatical enemy bent on its destruction. Unfortunately for the United States, the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue does not fit the bill.
“I believe this [ISIS] army will grow much stronger,” Choudary continued. “Because the regimes in Muslim countries are so weak. They are so unjust, they are implementing so much oppression, that I think [the caliphate] will spread very, very quickly. The Muslim world will be united very quickly. And then I think you will have a superpower unparalleled in the world. After that, I believe it will be easy to annex many other countries like China, and Russia, and even America one day.”
“This is a long term vision?” I asked.
“Well, I think it’s a short term vision, actually,” replied Choudary. “I think these things will happen rapidly. Regime change is something that has become quite an easy phenomenon for those people under the Islamic State nowadays.”2
There was a time not too long ago that the British media and political establishments heard Choudary’s big claims and predictions and regarded him as little more than an annoying rabble-rouser. Sure, he and his supporters would hold fiery rallies around the country calling for the establishment of sharia law and harassing troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Plus, Choudary would pop up on various talk shows praising acts of terrorism and slamming the British government for its supposed oppression of Muslims. But he was just a fringe, extremist loon with a tiny, inconsequential following—or so “enlightened” British elite thinking went.
Then reports started to trickle in of several of Choudary’s followers being arrested for plotting attacks against the British homeland, or of traveling abroad to fight alongside the likes of the Taliban. As one British terrorism expert told me, Choudary’s teachings take his disciples right up to the edge of violence—from that point, it’s just a hop, skip, and a suicide belt away from jihad, if they so choose.
There was white convert Richard Dart, radicalized by Choudary and later convicted for planning to bomb the British military repatriation town of Royal Wootton Bassett.3 Then there was Afsor Ali, former spokesman for another banned Choudary-led group, Muslims Against Crusades, sentenced to jail in August 2014 for possessing terrorist materials.4 And of course, as we have already seen in chapter five, there was former Choudary follower Michael Adebolajo, who, along with an accomplice, nearly beheaded British soldier Lee Rigby in a horrifying terror killing on a London street in May 2013. The list goes on.
According to Breitbart London, Choudary’s banned al-Muhajiroun group “has been linked to nearly one in five individuals convicted of terrorism offences in Britain over the last decade.”5 Likewise, the UK non-profit HOPE not hate—a leftist organization that is openly hostile to conservatives and opponents of Islamism—nevertheless issued an eye-opening report stating that at least seventy people who have been convicted of terrorism or terrorist-related offenses in the UK, or who had died overseas, have been linked to Choudary’s al-Muhajiroun network: “Anjem Choudary’s group now leads a network of hardline Islamist organisations across Europe. These include groups in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Denmark and Italy. It is also closely linked to Islamist extremist groups in Germany, Norway and Finland. Together, they represent the largest extreme Islamist network in Europe linked to domestic or overseas terrorism.”6
The same report found that “al-Muhajiroun-connected groups across Europe have sent between 200–300 people to Syria, making it the largest single recruiting network in Europe” for terrorist groups like ISIS. Given that the report was published in November 2013, months before ISIS recorded its biggest successes in Fallujah, Mosul, and elsewhere, that 200–300 figure has almost certainly grown.
In short, Anjem Choudary is a very dangerous man, a virtual jihadi pied piper. At this stage, only the most stubbornly naive would dismiss him as a non-threat—indeed, as can be seen in the report quoted above, even the far-left HOPE not hate group has recognized him as a national security menace. Yet, incredibly, except for a brief stint in jail in September 2014 for allegedly supporting terrorism (he made bail and promptly blasted the British government),7 Choudary continues to walk the streets of London freely, spewing hatred and stirring up his followers—and collecting welfare benefits to boot. You read that right. Choudary is one of a number of radical Islamists who receive benefits from the very British government they openly mock and despise.8 He likewise encourages his followers to avoid work and collect welfare, saying in one lecture, “the normal situation is for you to take money from the kuffar [non-Muslims]. So we take Jihad Seeker’s Allowance. You need to get support.”9 The British government seems all too happy to oblige—allowing Choudary to avoid the distraction of a 9-to-5 job as he devotes his time and energy to talking up the fledgling Islamic State.
In August 2014, a loud group of pro-ISIS demonstrators handed out leaflets in London’s busy Oxford Street tourist district extolling the new Islamic State. They were holding signs saying, “Khilafah [caliphate] the Dawn of a New Era” and one of the leaflets read:
After many attempts and great sacrifices from the Ummah of Islam throughout the world, the Muslims with the help of Allah have announced the re-establishment of the Khilafah and appointed an Imam as Khaleef [Caliph].
As Muslims around the world we all have many great responsibilities towards the success and spread of the Khilafah across the world.
1. Pledge our [Allegiance] to the Khaleef [Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi].
2. Obey the Khaleef according to the Shariah.
3. Advise the Khaleef if he does anything wrong.
4. Dua [Prayer]—Make dua to Allah to help and guide the Khaleef.
5. Migrate—Those that can migrate and resettle should migrate.
6. Educate Muslims and non-Muslims about the Khilafah.
7. Expose any lies and fabrications made against the Islamic state.10
A few days after the demonstration, Choudary admitted that the pro-ISIS agitators were his students, telling a radio interviewer, “Yes . . . I’ve known them for several years. They’ve attended many demonstrations . . . many lectures of mine. Very good chaps.”11
Ah, very good chaps. Fish, chips, Khilafahs. All very English, you see.
Choudary—born in England to parents of Pakistani descent—is undeniably charismatic. A former solicitor, he’s a witty fast-talker steeped in the intricacies of radical Salafist ideology. His Twitter feed, which he updates regularly, is one way he reaches his network of followers. The tweets, as reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) are vintage Choudary: “They include calls for jihad; calls for shari’a law to replace democracy, including stoning to death and cutting off criminals’ hands; for the conquest of the West; for non-Muslims to pay the jizya tax to Muslim rulers; support for terrorist attacks inside the U.S. and U.K.; he expresses his delight in manifestations of Allah’s wrath against the West, such as ‘tornados, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes,’ and calls for Western leaders, including President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron, to convert to Islam.”12
Choudary’s grievance-laden rants on Twitter and elsewhere have had an effect. An investigation by Britain’s Daily Star newspaper found that a growing number of misguided “good chaps” have been led astray by Choudary’s teachings and straight into the arms of ISIS:
We can . . . reveal new links between young Muslims fighting for the ISIS group and preacher Anjem Choudary.
Former followers of the terror sympathiser have been recruited to join the rebels fighting in Syria and Iraq.
Choudary boasted that young men he has taught have joined Isis, an outfit notorious for beheadings, crucifixions and amputations.
And the Kent-raised radical says it is “no shame” that extremists based in France, Belgium and even Australia and Indonesia share his dream of a global Islamic state.
We can reveal former members of Choudary-backed groups on the continent, including Sharia4Belgium and Sharia4France, are signing up for jihad after meeting the London cleric.
. . . an unrepentant Choudary, 47, told us: “Although we don’t recruit people to send abroad we are not surprised if they want to go abroad and stand with their Muslim brothers and sisters who are being killed and whose land is being occupied. Surely it is a noble thing to want to liberate Muslim land? I have no shame whatsoever in saying these people were at times in some way or other affiliated with us.”13
During our Skype interview, I pressed Choudary about the Daily Star report:
STAKELBECK: You have been accused in the British media of recruiting for ISIS and it’s been reported that some of your followers have actually gone to Syria to join with this group. How do you respond to that?
CHOUDARY: Well, you know, nobody has actually gone to date to Syria or Iraq having informed me beforehand. I mean, I have discovered that there are some people there, and by all accounts the people who are there who I know are just living there as citizens. They have decided that they want to live under the Sharia. They want to experience the Islamic State. They want to bring up their children according to Islam. . . . after the establishment of the Khilafah, I think you will find people are flocking there because they want to live under the Sharia. Remember, you have, now, a state there. Millions of people are living there, Christians, non-Muslims, Jews, Muslims, Yazidis are living there.14
Yes, the Islamic State is just one big multi-religious utopia. The abundance of reports detailing how non-Muslims are being slaughtered and harassed by ISIS? The footage of Christians, Yazidis, and Kurds fleeing their homes in terror with nothing but the clothes on their backs in the face of ISIS advances? The endless images of beheadings and mass executions? Choudary told me it’s all just Western propaganda driven by imperialist, anti-Muslim bigotry:
The Christians, by all accounts, are now coming back to Mosul. They prefer to live under the Sharia . . . and you find in fact that the Muslims and the non-Muslims who are actually living . . . under the Islamic State are quite happy now. They are having their basic needs of food clothing and shelter provided. Their life, their honor, their wealth is protected . . . in terms of the Islamic State, their basic needs are being met. The structure is there in terms of the Caliph, his assistants, the governors in the areas, the judges—you know, you can see from many clips that they have completely eradicated all of the vices in that particular area. By all accounts, I cannot see any reason why the people would not accept Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the Caliph.15
I’m sure the supposedly sharia-loving Christians whom Choudary describes, along with the Yazidis who have seen their wives and daughters sold into sex slavery by ISIS, could come up with a few reasons why al-Baghdadi would not be welcome in their towns and villages.
Anyone with a shred of common sense scoffs, as I did, at Choudary’s disinformation campaign, seeing through it as the shameless pro-ISIS propaganda that it is. Indeed, it was tough to keep a straight face during stretches of our interview. After all, a cursory Twitter search will turn up loads of photos of ISIS beheading, raping, and pillaging Muslims and non-Muslims alike—and these are tweets proudly posted not by U.S. government agencies, but by ISIS fighters and their supporters. Yet Choudary has a script and he’s sticking to it—and he has the ears of hundreds, if not thousands, of radicalized Muslims across Europe who take what he says very seriously when he describes the Islamic State as he did to me during our interview:
. . . people are so happy. They have basic needs. They have free houses. Gas, electricity, water, etc. is free of charge. I mean, nobody in the world, really, has this at the moment. We are living in times in Britain and even in America, the countries with the largest GDP, where people don’t even have security for their homes. Their whole life they just work . . . and their basic income does not meet their everyday living expenses. And yet, it is a completely different scenario [in the Islamic State]. I am very happy. I would like to live in a society like that.16
So, apparently, would many other Muslims who have left comfortable lives in Great Britain behind to travel to the Middle East and join ISIS’s growing terrorist army.
There’s a reason it has been called “Londonistan.”
According to most estimates, around five hundred British Muslims have traveled to Syria or Iraq to join up with ISIS and other Islamic terrorist groups.17 Others place the number as high as eight hundred British ISIS recruits, while one British MP has said that at least fifteen hundred Brits have trekked to the Middle East to join ISIS over the past few years.18
To put it in even starker terms, one out of every four Europeans fighting alongside ISIS hails from Great Britain.19 Indeed, twice as many Muslims are now fighting for ISIS as for the UK military.20 Many of these battle-tested British fighters have already returned home after completing their jihadi apprenticeships in Syria.21 Their next move is anyone’s guess—perhaps they’ll join Anjem Choudary on Britain’s welfare dole. Or maybe they’ll use some of the tricks they learned fighting with ISIS to carry out attacks on British soil. The UK’s Islamism problem is so acute—and such a threat to spill over into other Western countries—that the Obama administration, in a rare instance of being proactive, not reactive, in the face of the jihadist threat, reportedly sent a special unit of CIA officers to Britain to investigate. According to Britain’s Daily Mail,
It is unusual for the CIA to send a team to the UK: the agency usually relies on information passed to it by MI5 or MI6 or by its agents stationed at the American Embassy in London.
. . . Professor Anthony Glees, of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at Buckingham University, said the mission . . . showed the level of concern in Washington over the issue, which he claimed was rooted in the UK’s “lax” immigration policies.
“The US is worried about the British situation. They fear there might be a knock-on effect for them,” Prof Glees said.
. . . “The Americans regard the UK as a disaster because of our lax stance on immigration which has allowed this militancy to take hold.”
. . . sources also admitted that the move revealed a growing lack of trust in Washington over MI5 and MI6’s ability to provide a reliable assessment of the security threat presented by young Muslims under the sway of imams who are radicalised and then recruited to fight in religious wars around the globe.
The Obama administration has become increasingly anxious that young American Muslims could follow the same pattern. There are strong links between British and American radicals and the sources say the CIA feels British efforts to identify and unmask them have been inadequate.22
Don’t look now, but America has its own problems with “lax immigration policies,” not to mention a wide-open southern border that ISIS could drive a caravan of pickup trucks through. If things continue the way they’re going, we’ll get to where Britain is soon enough. And to put it bluntly, our cousin across the pond is a jihadi wonderland.
How bad are things in the UK? During my trips to Britain over the past few years, I’ve interviewed 1) An al Qaeda–linked, U.S.–designated global terrorist named Saad al-Faqih, 2) An al Qaeda–linked radical named Yasser al-Sirri who was wanted in the United States and Egypt on terrorism charges, 3) Noman Benotman, a former Libyan terrorist leader and associate of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and 4) Anjem Choudary, who needs no introduction.23 And that’s not even mentioning the various Muslim Brotherhood types and Hamas supporters with whom I’ve shared a spot of tea.
Benotman, to his credit, has since disavowed al Qaeda. He has transformed his life and left Islamism behind and now works against jihadists. The others, however, remain hardcore Islamist radicals with documented ties to the global jihadist movement. Yet none of my face-to-face interviews with them were conducted behind prison walls. Rather, all of these men are living comfortable lives in London, moving about freely in the land of Churchill and Thatcher (who are likely turning in their graves as I write this). And even Abu Qatada, long considered al Qaeda’s top spiritual leader in Europe, lived in London for years and collected welfare benefits before finally being deported to Jordan in 2013. British taxpayers were no doubt thrilled to see him go.
Great Britain circa 2015 is a place that Churchill would not recognize and that Thatcher fought doggedly to prevent. It’s a place where Mohammed is the most popular name for male babies;24 where soldiers are murdered on the streets in broad daylight by Islamic fanatics; where Anjem Choudary shouts for sharia law while leeching off the very government he’d like to see overthrown; where some eighty-five fully functioning sharia courts operate in major British cities;25 and where hostile Islamist enclaves have been established in London neighborhoods. As I wrote in my 2013 book, The Brotherhood:
In Europe, many . . . areas become no-go zones for non-Muslims where sharia law is enforced and even police are hesitant to enter. The Tower Hamlets section of East London, in the shadow of London’s financial district, is well on its way to no-go status. I’ve walked the streets of this area on numerous occasions, spent time in its outdoor bazaars, and observed the massive flow of South Asian immigrants in and out of Friday prayers at the vast East London Mosque—which serves as the de facto British base for Jamaat-e-Islami, considered the South Asian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s a stunning experience to see thousands of predominantly Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims dressed in Islamic garb spill out of the mosque and swarm the streets of East London, giving the area a distinctly non-Western, Islamicized feel. In the summer of 2011, Islamists (reportedly in league with our old friend Anjem Choudary), put up posters around Tower Hamlets proclaiming it a “Sharia Controlled Zone” where “Islamic rules are enforced.” They wasted no time in getting busy “enforcing.” Harassment of non-Muslims—particularly homosexuals, women, and alcohol consumers—at the hands of self-proclaimed “Muslim London Patrols” has become a regular occurrence in East London.26
The same people who survived Hitler’s blitzkrieg seventy-five years ago and were famous for their stiff upper lips now seem doomed to succumb to Islamization—led into it by the British elites:
All of this is happening against the will of native-born British citizens. According to a 2013 report by a London think tank, British Future, one out of three Brits sees the culture clash between immigrants and indigenous Brits as the primary cause of the country’s problems. Seventy-five percent would like to see a reduction in immigration, with 51 percent desiring a large reduction. Granted, Britain gets immigrants from around the world, but it seems likely that Catholic Poles, French job seekers, or other Europeans are less difficult to assimilate than sharia-governed Muslims. Between 2001 and 2011, the Muslim population of the UK doubled—from 1.5 million to 2.7 million (and those numbers don’t include the country’s many undocumented Muslim immigrants). In only ten years, Muslims grew from 3 percent to nearly 5 percent of the British population. And there are no signs that British politicians have the will or desire to turn off the spigot.27
Is it any wonder, given how Britain has utterly failed to assimilate the waves of Muslim immigrants that have come to its shores, that British recruits to ISIS seem to be popping up everywhere? They’re chopping heads, appearing in propaganda recruitment videos, tweeting prolifically, and yes, dying for the cause—as of this writing, about twenty British citizens have been killed fighting for ISIS and other jihadist groups in Syria.28
A trio of British jihadists even had responsibility for guarding high-value ISIS hostages (Westerners who could fetch a large ransom or be used for propaganda effect)—including American journalist James Foley. The London-accented threesome came to be known among the hostages as “The Beatles,” with Foley’s beheader dubbed “Jihadi John.” Those who were lucky enough to be freed—thanks to ransoms paid—later said that their British captors were extraordinarily cruel and ruthless. As the Daily Mail reported, “Both [British hostage John] Cantlie and [James] Foley were ‘water boarded’—an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, in which the victim is strapped down with their mouth and nose covered with cloth, before large quantities of water are poured over their faces. They were also given electric shocks, and shot with Tasers, stunguns which cause temporary paralysis, after being dragged from their cells to be ‘punished’ for any behaviour their captors deemed a breach of their rules.”
Their British captors, “did the most appalling stuff in the world—they were psychopathic.” They pitted their prisoners against each other in “some sick pastiche of the film Fight Club” forcing them to box against each other and then torturing the men who lost the boxing matches.
Even other ISIS members apparently thought the Britons were going too far. “But the British Islamists, who spoke with London accents, were too enthusiastic in their torture of the hostages for the taste of their fellow jihadis. It is understood they were at one point taken off the job of guarding the Westerners because of their brutality. ‘The British jihadis got into trouble because they were considered to be so brutal,’ the [Daily Mail’s] source said.”29
In other words, these British ISIS jihadis were among the worst of the worst—a uniquely sadistic crew that stood out even among the most sadistic terrorist group in memory. In previous centuries, the British Empire exported Judeo-Christian values and Western civilization to some of the darkest corners of the world. How far the mighty have fallen. Britain today is a leading exporter not of the Gospel or Shakespearean literature but of Islamic terrorism—indeed, no fewer than twenty-eight countries have suffered jihadist attacks carried out by British citizens.30 That is an astounding indicator of the depths to which British society has plunged in the twenty-first century. The widespread riots and coordinated street violence carried out by young toughs in cities and towns throughout Great Britain for several days in August 2011 recalled the nightmare vision of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. The 1962 novel, which was later made into a controversial film—banned in Great Britain for its graphic violence—by director Stanley Kubrick, envisioned a nightmarish UK of the future when violent young thugs ran amok. However, neither Kubrick’s film nor the book ever envisioned one crucial detail: that a large chunk of the derelicts of the future would be driven into a murderous frenzy not by drugs or alcohol but by Islamist ideology. Forget “Singin’ in the Rain.” Try “Allahu Akbar.”
Great Britain today has lost its once-proud culture, its traditional Christian faith, and its pride, only to see the vacuum filled by a bleak mixture of Islam, left-wing political correctness, violent street gang culture, and hedonistic celebrity-worship (are you listening, America?). Is it any wonder, then, that products of this increasingly dark society are joining ISIS and gleefully torturing innocent people in a manner that makes the Droogs of A Clockwork Orange look like the Wiggles?
Shiraz Maher, a former British radical who left Islamism and now monitors ISIS’s European—and specifically, British—foreign fighters, described for the Wall Street Journal the sort of “chaps” ISIS is attracting from every corner of the UK. As the Journal reports, “The typical British Islamic State terrorist is male, in his 20s and from a South Asian background. ‘He usually has some university education and a history of Muslim activism,’ Mr. Maher adds.” Maher divides the British jihadists into three different “personality types”: “The first is the adventure-seeker. ‘They’re in jihadist summer school or camp,’ Mr. Maher says. ‘“I’m with my buddies, we’re hanging out and we have these great weapons—AK-47s, RPGs.”’” Members of this group have frequently been “involved with U.K. gangs or drugs, and they might consult Islam for Dummies before traveling to Syria.” These are the guys who post selfies in which they’re “eating fast food, swimming and playing soccer in Syria”—basically as a recruiting message to their friends in Britain, evidence that life with ISIS is better than their lives in London.
The second type are “the ‘really nasty guys,’ Mr. Maher says, ‘the ones who will show off a severed head on Facebook and say, “Yeah, I just beheaded this son of a bitch.”’ These guys, Mr. Maher adds, ‘should definitely never come back.’”
Third is a category of “‘what you might call idealistic or humanitarian jihadists for want of a better phrase,’ Mr. Maher says,” inspired by compassion for suffering Muslim populations. Unfortunately, as Maher points out, these fighters eventually “‘become hardened’” by their experiences in ISIS and “‘no longer mention the innocents they came to rescue. “The land belongs to Allah,” they now say. “We’re here to impose Islam.”’”31
The Islamic State has drawn British Muslims from all backgrounds and walks of life. From twenty-year-old medical student Nasser Muthana to sixteen-year-old twin sisters Salma and Zahra Halane (who traveled to Syria to become “jihad brides” for ISIS)32 to former National Health Service doctor Shajul Islam33 to rapper (and beheader extraordinaire) Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary to a former British banker who explained his decision to join ISIS thus: “[The Islamic State is] the only place where the shari’a of Allah is applied fully. I hate democracy and the self-indulgence of the rich. . . . I hate inequality . . . I hate the corporations who are trying to destroy this world because of tyranny.”34
Yes, better to destroy the world through the sharia-fied tyranny of ISIS—which, as we saw in chapter two, is raking in the dough at a pace that would make many of those mean old corporations blush. But since when does a committed Islamist let facts stand in the way of a revived caliphate?
That caliphate, as we’ve already seen, needs women in order to flourish—and leave it to Britain to answer the call. As of this writing, at least sixty British women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four have reportedly traveled to the Middle East to join ISIS since 2013 alone, making Britain the leading European source of female jihadists in the fledgling Islamic State. Like their British male counterparts, they’ve earned a reputation for brutality, even overseeing brothels where ISIS fighters routinely rape non-Muslim Iraqi women and girls imprisoned as sex slaves.35 In a sickening example of the utter depravity of these “women of ISIS,” one of them, a British medical student named Mujahidah Bint Usama, took to Twitter and posted pictures of herself clad in a white doctor’s jacket and holding up a severed head as a group of young children looked on. The message accompanying the gruesome image read, “Dream job, a terrorist doc.”36
Mind you, this female doctor of death hails from the same country that once produced Florence Nightingale. Think the sun isn’t setting on Great Britain?
The recruitment of British Muslims into ISIS’s ranks has become such a widespread problem that British authorities seem perplexed as to how to handle it. London counterterror police have called on families, religious leaders, and the public to out the extremists in their midst.37 But their plea for help is unlikely to move the majority of Britain’s increasingly insular, radicalized Muslim population. Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposed anti-terror legislation that would seize the passports of British citizens seeking to fight overseas with ISIS and bolster authorities’ ability to track ISIS supporters on British soil is a belated step in the right direction. Nevertheless, investigators have their work cut out for them as “preachers, battle-hardened returning fighters and jihad sympathisers” work to recruit young Britons. According to the Guardian:
Examples of on the ground recruitment have been seen in Cardiff and Birmingham—amid wider evidence that the UK is being specifically targeted by those with links to ISIS in Europe.
. . . In Birmingham a leaked police report . . . . reveal[ed] that extremists are providing support and facilitation for those wishing [to] travel abroad to fight. The report, written by former assistant chief constable Sharon Rowe . . . says: “Influential extremists continue to operate in Birmingham, promoting extremist ideologies.” Rowe said they were operating from locations including gyms, restaurants and cafes, which are “used to facilitate extremist activity by allowing key figures to operate and promulgate their message.”38
As we’ve seen in the case of Anjem Choudary and his al-Muhajiroun network, some of this activity is happening right under UK authorities’ noses. Take thirty-five-year-old “hate preacher” Abu Waleed—yet another Choudary crony—who was seen at an outdoor barbeque in Wales in June 2014 where the black flag of ISIS was flown and an attendee was spotted with the ISIS symbol emblazoned across his shirt.39 Abu Waleed, who has been linked to at least three young Brits who have traveled to Syria to join ISIS, gave a January 2014 lecture that nicely summarized what life will look like for non-Muslims under the Islamic State: “If a Muslim comes out on the day of ‘Eid and sees an infidel with nice clothes, the infidel has to take his clothes off and give them to the Muslim. When an infidel walks down the street, he has to wear a red belt around his neck, he has to have his forehead shaved, and he has to wear two shoes that are different from one another. He is not allowed to walk on the pavement. He has to walk in the middle of the road, and he has to ride on a mule. . . . So everyone is going to become Muslims. That, my dear brothers, is the Islamic state.”40
In another lecture, Abu Waleed said Muslims want to “make sure David Cameron comes on his hands and knees, and gives us the jiziya [tax paid by non-Muslims in Islamic states].” He also vowed that in an Islamic society, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Kate Middleton—“the whore, the fornicator”—would be covered up in Islamic garb.41
Remember: these diatribes were delivered by a British citizen, on British soil—a citizen who (you guessed it) reportedly collects welfare benefits from the British government for himself, his wife, and his three disabled children.
The current state of recruitment to jihad was perhaps best described by a twenty-one-year-old British university student named Hamzah Parvez. The former London resident—who’s now fighting alongside ISIS—recorded an Islamic State recruitment video aimed at UK Muslims in which he called our time, “the golden era for jihad.”42 Of course, if you’re a young British Muslim in 2015 with a hankering for holy war, Parvez was merely repeating what you already knew.
While most clear-thinking citizens of the UK—Muslim and non-Muslim alike—are fully aware of which way the winds are blowing, I often speak to audiences in the United States that are stunned to learn that the nation that is closest to us culturally has descended into such an atrophied, Islamicized condition. They wonder if Great Britain, generally considered America’s staunchest ally and a stalwart of Western civilization, can turn things around. I answer with sadness that I am not optimistic. Yes, British Prime Minister David Cameron talks tough, saying that multiculturalism has failed, promising to curb immigration, and proposing tough new anti-terror laws. Yet the flow of immigration from Muslim countries into the UK continues, seemingly unabated. Extremist preachers continue to openly ply their trade and radicalized young British Muslims are lining up to go to Syria and Iraq and join ISIS.
Also problematic is the fact that Cameron, like President Obama, likes to play armchair imam, refusing to honestly identify the enemy Britain faces and choosing rather to say, laughably, that ISIS jihadists are “not Muslims.” He’s also fond of repeating the standard “Islam is a religion of peace” platitude that has become so depressingly commonplace among clueless Western leaders who have never picked up a Koran, let alone read one.43
Then, there is this gem, courtesy of Al Jazeera: “Britain is set to the [sic] become the first non-Muslim nation to raise money by issuing a government bond-style ‘Sukuk’ compliant with Sharia law as part of a bid to transform London into a global capital of the Islamic finance industry.”
Cameron “unveiled the scheme along with plans to launch an Islamic market index at the London Stock Exchange.” As he told the World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF), “Already London is the biggest centre of Islamic finance outside the Islamic world, but today our ambition is to go further still. . . . I want London to stand alongside Dubai and Kuala Lumpur as one of the great capitals of Islamic finance anywhere in the world [emphasis added].”44
Does this sound like a leader—or a nation—that is truly prepared to confront the Islamist threat, in all its nefarious forms?
“If we can’t count on the Brits anymore, who can we count on?” discouraged American audiences ask me.
Other than the obvious answer, Israel, that is becoming an increasingly tough call. Unfortunately, Britain’s suicidal obsession with multiculturalism, with tolerating the intolerant, and with distancing itself from its Judeo-Christian heritage, is far from an isolated case. Europe’s elites have promoted policies that have led to isolated, self-segregating Muslim communities springing up across the Old Continent. Many disaffected young European Muslims living in these areas have noticed ISIS and the new caliphate it is building with interest.
And ISIS has noticed them.