When we stayed at their recruitment house, there were 50 new fighters who came every day," Todenhoefer said. "And I just could not believe the glow in their eyes. They felt like they were coming to a promised land, like they were fighting for the right thing.
"These are not stupid people. One of the people we met had just finished his law degree, he had great job offers, but he turned them down to go and fight ... We met fighters from Europe and the United States. One of them was from New Jersey. Can you imagine a man from New Jersey traveling to fight for the Islamic State?"
He has also published a brief account on his personal website, and says he has 7 main points to make. With Google Translator, you can mostly make them out.
The three that struck me the most: First, he is absolutely convinced that G.W. Bush created ISIS by going to war against Iraq. Second, ISIS cannot be defeated militarily, and the airstrikes are just creating more recruits. Only the Sunnis can beat ISIS, but right now there is no motivation for them to do that. Even though some are scared of ISIS, ISIS treats them better than they were treated under the Malaki regime. Only if that changes, and Sunnis become treated fairly in Iraq, are they likely to develop the will to fight ISIS.
His third point is the scariest: He says ISIS is intent on conducting the largest religious cleansing in the history of mankind.
Safe will be the 1% of Muslims who accept their view of Islam. Also safe: Jews and Christians, because they are "people of the book." They will just have to pay a tax of several hundred dollars a year. (Muslims also pay a tax but it's a different one, and the poor are exempted.)
Who will be killed? Everyone else: "All Shiites, Yazidi, Hindus, atheists and polytheists." He left out Buddhists, but I suspect they go too. Also on the list: Moderate Muslims who espouse democracy, particularly in the West. Should ISIS conquer a Western country, the moderate Muslims will be killed with the others. (This is because ISIS objects to man-made laws taking precedence over laws that come from Allah.)
Moderate Muslims will be given a chance to repent and embrace ISIS' view of Islam, but it has to be done before their country is conquered. Afterwards, it's too late.
The only chance of this 'infidels', to escape the death, is voluntary repentance and voluntary conversion to 'True Islam'. .... And that only as long as their countries are not captured.
Obviously, at the present time, no Western country is remotely close to being conquered by ISIS. That's an ISIS fantasy.
But France may deserve special mention. It has both the largest Jewish and Muslim populations of any European country, and has been experiencing an up-tick in attacks on French citizens. Just this weekend there was a driver who ran over several pedestrians in five separate incidents, shouting "Allahu Akbar", and another incident in which a man walked into a police station brandishing a knife, injuring three officers before being killed. He too allegedly yelled "Allahu Akbar." Still, police say the attacks were not the product of terrorism, and caution against generalizing from the incidents because both perpetrators were mentally disturbed. One had recently been released from a psychiatric hospital.
But French police also say more than 1,000 French citizens have had contacts with ISIS or other extremist jihadist groups.
There has also been a 100% increase in antisemitic attacks in France this year, including an attack this month at a residence. The woman was raped, the man was beaten, and their credit cards were stolen. The attacker told them it was because "Jews have money." The alleged perpetrators were later apprehended and are charged with hate crimes.
Also as I wrote the other day, ISIS released two videos last week featuring fighters speaking in French (in one, the fighter threatened to execute captured Lebanese soldiers and in the other, the fighter gave a recruitment speech, railing against nationalism.It's called "A Message to You, O Believers" or in Frnch, "Recevez Ce Message.") Last month, ISIS released a video with three french fighters burning their passports and advocating the killing of Westerners. This week, ISIS released the first issue of its magazine in French, "Dar al-Islam" (available here.)
Roger Cukierman, the head of CRIF, a French umbrella group for Jewish organizations, for decades has taken the position that Jews have been in France for 2,000 years and would never leave, en masse. Last weekend, at a rally, he struck a different chord when he said (to applause by the crowd):
“Jews will leave in large numbers and France will fall into the hands of either Shari’a Law or the Front National.”
The Front National is a right-wing extremist group. While I hope both Cukierman and Todenhoefer are over-hyping the danger and success potential for ISIS (that France will be ruled by Sharia law or right wing extremists, and that ISIS is powerful enough to embark on the largest religious cleansing known to mankind), it remains that ISIS is a danger.
I think the biggest obstacle to preventing the outcomes they warn of is the approach being taken by the U.S. and other countries. Airstrikes, U.S. military intervention, mass incarceration and executions of captured terrorists (such as Pakistan is now planning) are not going to achieve success at degrading or destroying ISIS. They are just a bump in the road for ISIS and they serve as a rallying cry to others.
In treating ISIS simply as a terror organization, rather than examining its beliefs and goals, capitalizing on cracks in its ability to govern, and figuring out ways to demarginalize the economically and socially disadvantaged youth who are most susceptible to its propaganda, ISIS and other groups, will continue to spread. Hopefully the governments of the world will wake up before the words of Todenhoefer and Cukierman become a reality.
