Email |  Print | RSS | Comment |  

Thursday, September 24, 2015

This article was originally published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC). It’s reprinted here for your convenience.

Overview

An article in the September issue of Dabiq, ISIS’s monthly English-language magazine, attacking the Muslim flight to the West (Source: Dabiq magazine number 11).

In response to the wave of refugees fleeing to Europe, ISIS recently initiated a media campaign strongly criticizing Muslims emigrating from Syria, Libya, and by implication Iraq as well, to the West (Europe and the United States). To wage the campaign ISIS and its operatives and clerics have used its English- and Arabic-language media.

ISIS regards the exodus of from its Islamic Caliphate to Christian Europe and the United States as particularly threatening (despite the fact that according to ISIS, most of the refugees flee from areas controlled by “infidels,” among them Kurds and Shi’ites, and in general from areas controlled by the Syrian and Iraqi regimes). ISIS has based its media campaign primarily on Islamic religious precepts, which regard the emigration (hijra) of Muslims from Islamic countries (dar al-Islam or Dārul-Islām) to countries ruled by “infidels” (dar al-kufr or Dārul-Kufr) as a “dangerous major sin.” Thus, according to campaign claims, the Islamic state is a home for all Muslims, while those who migrate to Europe lose their religious identity and are exposed to the “indecency” and police brutality of the European countries (in one of the videos produced by ISIS and the article in its magazine Dabiq there are scenes of police violence against refugees at border crossings in Eastern Europe).

Encouraging worldwide Muslim migration to the Islamic Caliphate declared by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is important in ISIS’s ideology and strategy. On July 1, 2014, two days after he declared the establishment of the Caliphate, al-Baghdadi issued a recorded speech calling on Muslims to migrate to it [perform hijra], claiming it was a religious obligation.^[1] He therefore called on Muslim clerics, army men and managers, academics, doctors and engineers around the globe to join the Islamic State. Thus the flight of Muslims from the Islamic State to Western countries is in complete contradiction to that Islamic religious duty.

However, ISIS’s strong objection to the emigration of Muslims also has practical aspects and is not only a religious duty. The flight of residents from the territories controlled by the Islamic State and from various battle zones in Syria is liable to deplete the population, especially of its middle class (whose members have the cultural and financial capabilities to flee). That is liable to cause practical difficulties for ISIS, since it relies strongly on a small core of operatives. It is also liable to harm ISIS’s ability to wage its many wars and control broad swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq. In addition, the intensive media coverage of the flight of Muslims may undermine the narrative of the Islamic State’s “success story” which its media strive to promote.

Moreover, ISIS, which strongly objects to the migration of refugees from Syria and Iraq, has itself contributed greatly to their massive flight westward. Its cruelty and attacks on religious and ethnic groups it regards as “infidel,” and its brutal enforcement of Muslim religious law (Sharia) on populations under its control may render its campaign ineffective. That is because the population, which is under pressure both from ISIS and other military and militia forces in Syria, Iraq and Libya, is being forced to flee.

At this point we do not know if ISIS will try to translate its rejection in principle of the refugees’ flight into practice. In ITIC assessment, as the wave of refugees increases, ISIS is liable to take steps on the ground to halt the flow, at least in Islamic State territories, and may even encourage Muslim refugees to return to areas under its control.

Below is an Appendix with examples from ISIS’s media campaign against the flight of refugees to the West.

Appendix

Examples from ISIS’s Media Campaign against the Flight of Muslim Refugees to the West

Overview

In September 2015 ISIS initiated a campaign in its Arabic and English media criticizing the Muslim refugees fleeing to the West (Europe and the United States) from Syria, Iraq and Libya. ISIS clerics military operatives from Syria, Iraq and Yemen participated in the campaign. Examples follow.

Article in the September 2015 Issue of Dabiq^[2]

Dabiq is ISIS’s monthly English-language magazine aimed at target populations in the West. It published an article in the September 2015 issue attacking the flight of refugees to the West (the campaign does not deal with Muslim refugees fleeing to Arab-Muslim countries such as Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey). It condemned the migration of refugees, based on the Islamic obligation to perform hijra, and used quotes from the Qur’an, the hadiths (the Islamic oral tradition) and Islamic thinkers. The article stressed that as Muhammad migrated to Medina, today Muslims must migrate to the Islamic Caliphate and not to the “apostate-ruled” West: “Hijrah is an obligation from Darul-Kufr to Darul-Islam.”

According to the article, “unfortunately,” some Syrians and Libyans are prepared to expose themselves to danger and risk their lives, their souls and the future of their children by emigrating to the lands of the “Crusaders” (i.e., the Christian West), which are ruled by atheistic warmongers. Thus emigrating to the West is a “dangerous major sin” because it could be the first step in “abandoning Islam for Christianity, atheism or liberalism.” The article claims the children and grandchildren of the refugees would forget Arabic, the language of the Qur’an, and be exposed to permanent threats of “fornication, sodomy, drugs and alcohol.”

Therefore, it should be known that voluntarily leaving Dārul-Islām for dārul-kufr is a dangerous major sin, as it is a passage towards kufr and a gate towards one’s children and grandchildren abandoning Islam for Christianity, atheism, or liberalism. If one’s children and grandchildren don’t fall into kufr, they are under the constant threat of fornication, sodomy, drugs, and alcohol. If they don’t fall into sin, they will forget the language of the Qur’ān — Arabic — which they were surrounded by in Shām, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere, making the return to the religion and its teachings more difficult.

Exploiting threats and scare-tactics. A picture illustrating what happens to Syrians who flee to Europe (Source: Dabiq magazine number 11)

Videos Calling on Muslims Not to Migrate to the West

Further examples of the ISIS campaign to prevent emigration:

1. ISIS’s Saleh al-Din Province in Iraq issued a video of an ISIS-affiliated cleric criticizing Muslims leaving the Islamic State for other countries. He called on them to return, claiming that for religious reasons their flight was unacceptable and that those who left would not find peace of mind but would rather be exploited by the countries they fled to (Isdarat al-dawla al-islamiyya, September 16, 2015).

An ISIS-affiliated Sunni cleric in Iraq criticizes Muslims who leave the Islamic State (Isdarat aldawla al-islamiyya, September 16, 2015).

2. ISIS’s Al-Furat Province in Iraq issued a video of an ISIS operative delivering a sermon in a mosque. He praised migration to territories under Muslim control and strongly opposed the flight of Muslims from Syria to the West (Akhbardawlatalislam.wordpress blog, September 17, 2015).
3. ISIS’s Homs Province in Syria issued a video of an ISIS operative praising the migration of Muslims to dar al-Islam, the region under Muslim control where Islamic religious law (Sharia) is enforced. He strongly opposed dar al-kufr (i.e., the West). The video shows a refugee camp where Syrians were allegedly given pamphlets about Christianity. It also shows scenes of police brutality against refugees at border crossings in Eastern Europe (Archive.org file-sharing website, September 17, 2015).
4. ISIS’s Hadramawt Province in Yemen issued a video of an ISIS operative delivering a sermon in a mosque. He said Muslims should migrate from the lands of the infidels to dar al-Islam, and not the opposite. He claimed that those who lived in the infidel countries lived according to local laws and would be exposed to “indecency” (Akhbardawlatalislam.wordpress blog, September 17, 2015).

ISIS operative from the Hadramawt Province in Yemen praises migration to the Islamic State and opposed migration to the West (Akhbardawlatalislam.wordpress blog, September 17, 2015)

Notes:

[1] Hijra is an important term in the history of Islam, linked by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to the declaration of the Islamic Caliphate. It refers to the migration of the prophet Muhammad and his first followers from Mecca to Al-Medina in 622 AD, who fled because of persecution. Thus hijra became a symbol of the policy of Muhammad’s faithful followers of isolating themselves from the sins and perversions of society, as well as a symbol of the glory of Islamic society at the source and the birth of Islam (Uriah Forman, Islamioun, Tel Aviv/IDF/Maarachot Publishing, 2002, p. 322 [Hebrew]).

[2] Source: Dabiq11_201509.