ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam (21 page)

                
“
Inspire
serves more as a how-to guide for individual attacks than an articulation of an overall religious, military, and political vision,” writes Harleen Gambhir in a report by the Institute for the Study of War. Beyond that,
Inspire
lacks the sleek production values and religious justifications of Dabiq. “What you see with
Dabiq
is the combination of Islamic theological credentials with battlefield success,” Clarke noted. “ISIS really takes great care to back up everything that it does with religious justification. That’s one area where Al Qaeda got soft over time.”

                
Most terrifyingly,
Dabiq
documents the lengths to which ISIS will go to achieve their goals. Its pages are littered with pictures of the mutilated corpses of “infidels,” while their inaugural issue, “The Return of the Khilafah,” featured a photo-shopped image of Western troops engulfed in flames.

                
Ben Connable, the former head of the Marine Corps’ cultural intelligence program and a senior analyst at the RAND Corporation, says that while “Al Qaeda has hesitated in some ways [with] statements against indiscriminate bombings and attacks,” the Islamic State “has been less restrictive, and far more violent and willing to do just about anything to achieve their ends. That unrestricted behavior generates some excitement.”
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Including amongst a group of psychopathic young Westerners with a taste for hardcore hip-hop.

THE RAPPERS

“Be prepared for the battle with the infidels . . . . Dirty Kuffar wherever you are; From Kandahar to Ramallah; OBL (Osama bin Laden) Crew be like a shining star; like the way we destroy them two tower, ha ha.”

“Kuffar” refers to non-Muslims and the “two tower” reference—well, you get the picture. The above lyrics are from the song “Dirty Kuffar,” released in 2004 by Sheikh Terra (or Terror) and the Soul Salah Crew, a London-based jihadi rap outfit. “Dirty Kuffar”—which features pro–al Qaeda boasts and violent threats against the West rhymed over a dancehall beat—has become a seminal work of the jihadi rap subculture, with millions of online downloads and views since its now decade-ago release (which was accompanied by an MTV-worthy video featuring al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri shape-shifting into a lion and then-president George W. Bush turning into a chimpanzee).
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Without “Dirty Kuffar,” we might never have been subjected to the lyrical stylings of one Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, formerly known as Omar Hammami. Al-Amriki, a U.S. citizen who grew up in sleepy Daphne, Alabama, turned to radical Islam in college and eventually traveled to Somalia in 2006, where he joined the al Qaeda–linked Somali terror organization al-Shabaab. Hammami rose through the ranks of al-Shabaab to become one of its commanders and chief propagandists before being killed in 2013 by the group after a falling-out over its direction.
³³
Although designated a global terrorist by the U.S. government, al-Amriki was known more for his rapping than his battlefield exploits. He appeared in a series of YouTube videos in which he served up amateurish raps designed to recruit, in particular, young American Somalis to join al-Shabaab (and judging by the flow of Twin Cities Somalis overseas to wage jihad, he appears to have had some success). Songs such as “Blow by Blow” and “Make Jihad with Me,” delivered clumsily by al-Amriki, were far from lyrical masterpieces.
³⁴
Yet the American native was on to something: the use of hip-hop music—no stranger to violent imagery—to entice Western youths to join in the ultimate “Thug Life” of violent jihad.

Leave it to ISIS to take a nefarious idea and run with it. As we saw earlier in this chapter, Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary—the masked ISIS terrorist believed to have carried out the vicious beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and other Islamic State hostages—was once a London-based rapper. His songs (usually performed under the name L-Jinny), which can still be viewed on YouTube, featured the kind of violent, angry, and alienated lyrics typical of the genre.
³⁵
In the videos, “L-Jinny” raps in a London street accent and is frequently clad in a hoodie and baseball cap with flat brim, much like his American rap counterparts.

As someone who listened to his fair share of hip-hop in high school and college in the 1990s (during what is considered a Golden Era for the genre), I can report that L-Jinny is a spectacularly bad rapper, both in lyrics and delivery. A notch above Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, to be sure, but let’s just say the Grammys aren’t going to come calling anytime soon. That said, Abdel Bary/L-Jinny, who alluded to himself as a misfit in his songs, clearly yearned for the spotlight. His quest for fame, combined with his obvious fondness for cold-blooded murder and his terrorist pedigree (Abdel Bary’s father was an al Qaeda associate who is serving time in an American prison for his role in the 1998 Africa Embassy bombings), brought him to Syria in 2013, where he has gained notoriety for his graphic tweets and alleged skill at hacking off the heads of bound ISIS hostages. And he is not the only rapper whose career has taken a similar trajectory.

Denis Mamadou Cuspert, a German rapper who performed under the stage name “Deso Dogg,” enjoyed the kind of recording success that Abdel Bary could only dream about. He released a trio of successful albums and toured with platinum-selling American rapper DMX before converting to Islam in 2010 and taking the name “Abou Maleeq.” After his conversion, the tattooed former hip-hopper quickly gained the attention of German authorities with his anti-Western, pro-terror rhetoric and was found guilty of illegally possessing weapons.
³⁶
He left Germany for Egypt and then moved on to Syria, where he eventually pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Reports swirled in April 2014 that Cuspert/Deso Dogg had been killed in a suicide bombing carried out by jihadist rivals in Syria.
³⁷
As of this writing, that has not been confirmed. But dead or alive, Deso Dogg’s propaganda value to ISIS is obvious, as a 2011
New York Times
profile written while he still lived in Germany showed:

          
German terrorism investigators see Mr. Cuspert, 35, as a threat who provokes young people angered by what they see as a Western campaign against Islam. . . . “After establishing rapport through music, he introduced radical ideology to an audience already receptive to him,” said Raphael F. Perl, who runs the antiterrorism unit for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. . . . [His] message in videos posted on YouTube and jihadi Web sites . . . have made Mr. Cuspert popular among Al Qaeda supporters in Europe and elsewhere. As evidence of his reach, a man who goes by the name Abu Bilal in the tribal areas in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region said of Mr. Cuspert: “The brother’s voice has reached the hearts of many people here, too.” Mr. Cuspert gives speeches all over Germany, and young people are drawn to elements of his personal story, including his membership in Berlin street gangs—he said he used to be a “real bad boy”—and the notion that he finally found the “right way.” . . . Security officials say that young people who are clicking on his videos do not realize that what they are listening to has been inspired by a radical jihadist theology based on the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam.
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A former hip-hop star and gang-banger, Deso Dogg has tons of jihadi cool and street cred to spare. And in ISIS’s frenzied, social media–centric world, image is everything.

THE HIPSTER

Those curls. Those glasses. That sword.

The image of Islam Yaken mounted on a horse, brandishing a curved scimitar as he let out a war cry recalled the earliest days of Islam, when it roared out of the Arabian desert to conquer everything in its path.

Yet the photo of Yaken—which quickly became iconic among global jihadists after it was posted to his Twitter account in the summer of 2014—had a very contemporary flavor. It wasn’t just the rifle slung over his shoulder, or the storefronts in Raqqa, Syria, seen in the background. It was Yaken’s look. His flowing, corkscrew curls and stylish, black-rimmed glasses looked more suited to a SoHo coffee shop than the battlefields of the Middle East. The jarring spectacle of a guy one step removed from skinny jeans riding on a horse and waving an Arabian sword provided major propaganda value for ISIS. Yaken perfectly epitomizes how the group has one foot planted in the seventh century and another in modern day popular culture: an irresistible combination for a growing number of adventure-seeking, tech-savvy Western extremists. ISIS killers will lop off your head and in the next moment tweet out a sardonic selfie on their iPhones.

Although Yaken is an Egyptian native who may have never even set foot in the West before traveling to Syria, his story is relevant here because it is so similar to those of an untold number of Muslims from Europe and the U.S. who have answered ISIS’s call. Yaken reportedly attended a private high school in an upscale Cairo suburb and earned a law degree from Egypt’s prestigious Ain Shams University in 2013.
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Fluent in English, French, and Arabic, he was a bodybuilding enthusiast who posted shirtless photos of himself on social media sites and enjoyed popular music.
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In a 2011 tweet, a still-secular Yaken wrote, “Kissing burns 6.4 calories a minute.” Talk like that in the Islamic State and you’ll be kissing your head goodbye.

It’s unclear where the cosmopolitan Yaken took a turn for the sinister. He is said to have been a supporter of Egyptian president and Muslim
Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi prior to Morsi’s ouster in 2013. Was Yaken radicalized, like so many young Muslims before him, by the Brotherhood’s violent teachings of jihad and martyrdom? Did Yaken, like another fellow Egyptian native, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, grow frustrated with the Brotherhood’s slow-and-steady approach and their participation in the political process and yearn for violent confrontation and the immediate overthrow of non-Islamist Arab regimes?

If that was the case, he found what he was looking for in Syria, where ISIS was waging holy war not only against secular dictator Bashar al-Assad, but against anyone else—Muslim and non-Muslim alike—who refused to yield to the dark vision of ISIS.

“Islam Yaken’s story is freaking scary,” tweeted one former classmate of Yaken’s after the sword-waving photo surfaced.
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No scarier than that of the similarly fresh-faced Tsarnaev brothers, perpetrators of the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and wounded some 264 more. The young pair sported a Westernized look and appeared thoroughly assimilated—at least, on the surface.
Rolling Stone
magazine even featured a photo of the younger brother, Dhokthar—then nineteen years old—on the cover of its August 1, 2013, issue staring straight ahead in a dreamy rock star pose, sporting a thin moustache and goatee and long, curly hair that partially covered his face. “The Bomber,” read the breathless caption beneath Tsarnaev’s photo: “How a popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam and became a monster.”
Rolling Stone’s
portrayal of a terrorist murderer as a sort of misunderstood, brooding teen pinup drew widespread outrage, including from Boston mayor Thomas Menino and several national pharmacy chains and New England–area grocery and convenience stores that refused to carry the magazine.
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How long before
Rolling Stone
—which has essentially become a leftist propaganda rag masquerading as a serious music journal—features a glam ISIS cover with Abdel Bary and Deso Dogg striking their naughtiest hip-hop
poses? Think about it: whereas dreamy Dhoktar Tsarnaev possesses no known lyrical skills, the ISIS rappers were actual recording artists, which means
Rolling Stone
can even award their albums fawning five-star reviews! If you’re eager to give Islamic jihadists the rock star treatment for your impressionable young readers, it doesn’t get any more cutting edge than ISIS—masters of social media and thoroughly plugged in to the Millennial generation. From severed heads rolling to
Rolling Stone:
a natural progression for ISIS in today’s morally depraved media climate. Sales of
Rolling Stone
’s Tsarnaev issue, by the way, were double the magazine’s usual sales, despite boycotts from some national retail stores.
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Memo to ISIS: jihadi cool sells here in what used to be known as Western civilization.

There is no shortage of young Muslims in Europe and North America who are being fed Islamist ideology in Muslim Brotherhood–connected mosques—and who will be eager for scimitar-ready jobs once they get bored with the MB’s gradualist approach to reestablishing the caliphate. These are twisted, heavily indoctrinated young minds that are not repulsed, but turned on by the severed heads of innocents. They want jihad
right now,
and lots of it—and ISIS is capitalizing in a major way. As one Western security source told me: