ISIS, Neatly Explained

"It’s difficult to uncover the truth without taking a risk, and I had needed authentic footage for a planned book about the ISIS. That’s something you only get by going there. In fact, I have done so for each of my books and thus traveled to areas of conflict many times. Moreover, I had received a security guarantee from the “caliphate”. There just was no way to know if it was genuine! Hence, all of my friends and family smelled a rat and tried to discourage me from taking the journey. But I always follow my gut feeling."
"The guarantee turned out to be genuine, and the ISIS stuck to their agreement during our visits to Mosul and Raqqa. Though, we were under surveillance by the secret service for most of the time and had to hand over our mobile phones and laptops. Also, all of our pictures and photos were inspected at the end of the journey. ISIS deleted 9 out of approximately 800 photos to protect relatives of foreign fighters. That’s what censorship is."
Jurgen Todenhofer, German journalist, writer

Jurgen and Frederic Todenhofer -- Among Islamic State jihadists

Mr. Todenhofer returned from his sojourn briefly embedded with the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham both in their Syrian capital of Raqqa, and visiting Mosul, in Iraq. He wanted to experience an inside, fly-on-the-wall view of what ISIS truly is prepared to go about doing, other than merely terrifying ethnic minorities and horrifying the world at large with its well-publicized in-house-produced propaganda demonstrating that the tender sensibilities of the West can easily be aroused with the vision of atrocities.

As a tool to assure Western onlookers, fascinated and repelled by the Islamic State's methods of easing journalists and would-be humanitarians out of the land of the living, using them as an example of jihad to strike fear in the hearts of those who do not and will not worship Islam in complete puritanical surrender, and to titillate and enthrall others in the world of the West who find their violently vicious exploits compelling and welcoming their propaganda has been effective. For the latter the slickly-produced and sickening videos act as an invitation they are swift to accept.

Mr. Todenhofer made his tentative but sincere proposal to the powers that be within Islamic State, and his desire to be among them for a short period of time was rewarded by an assent. His purpose was to personally obtain inside information for which only a personal, albeit dangerous exposure to their presence within the Islamic Caliphate of Caliph Ibrahim [Iraqi-born Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi] would lend credence to the book he means to write, setting out their organization, aspirations, motivations, methodology and appeal to Sunni Muslims.

There is a great similarity between Islamic State, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda in their fervently dire interpretation of an Islam that hearks back to its 7th-Century beginnings as a scimitar-wielding horde of Bedouin, led by a proselytizing prophet whom Allah called upon to finally introduce the last chapter of the ineffable spirit of a monolithic god demanding strict obeisance to his sacred self.

Prophet Mohammad simply completed the journey that the Almighty began, first with Moses, then with Jesus, and in that last stage, Islam was meant to obliterate its predecessors, subsuming them into its divinely ordained orbit. So as far as ISIS and Caliph Ibrahim are concerned any who do not submit to Islam in the purifyingly fanatical manner they ascribe to Mohammad's vision, do not deserve to live, but they may live if they solemnly swear: "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammad is His messenger"; the Shahada.

Saudi Arabia, with the Kingdom's vast oil wealth, invested in the building of Wahhabist madrassas all over the world, from Somalia to Afghanistan, Norway to New York City. The alumni of those madrassas made up the present-day fighters of Islam, dedicated jihadists, prepared to use their lives as tools of terror and sacrifice themselves as martyrs to attain Islam's final destination, that of a universal caliphate dominating world affairs. Though they are nowhere near that journey's end, they do even now dominate world affairs in a sense with their dedication to jihad personified in terror attacks, and exemplified by Islamic State.

Purity is demanded of those living within the caliphate in Iraq and Syria, just as the reign of the Taliban which sheltered al-Qaeda and dominated Afghanistan, required women to wear full coverings and veils, and to remain out of the public sphere; venturing out of doors only in the company of male relatives; just a tad more straitened than what pertains in Saudi Arabia itself. Men are to wear beards, and girls must 'marry' Islamic State fighters, sometimes of their own romantic volition and occasionally forced to by their fathers in search of political and economic advantage.

Just as Saudi wealth funded al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it also funds Islamic State. But Islamic State also has broad support among fundamentalist Sunnis, including those Iraqi Sunnis who feel themselves to have been unjustly deprived of their due by the Shiite-dominated regimes in both Iraq and Syria. Throughout history, ironically enough, Shiites, the minority major division in Islam, were held to be more brutal in their attacks against minorities, both ethnic and religious, than the larger Sunni majority in mainstream Islam.

From his relatively brief but revealing sojourn with Islamic State, Mr. Todenhofer, who was given entree and the freedom to observe -- since Islamic State is nothing if not eager to be in the spotlight of world attention, and an informed book of their actions and intentions would represent yet another arrow in their quiver of propaganda -- came to seven significant conclusions, which he shared with the international press, and wrote of in his blog.



His first impression and warning to the West was its underestimation of the threat represented by ISIS, and the tendency to portray its jihadists as adventure-seeking opportunists. They are, he states, invested with enthusiasm for their role in Islamist history and fully confident that their goal will eventually prevail. The strength of their belief in their totalitarian ideology, aided by their brutal methods is their assurance that they can do anything and gain their objectives.

They enjoy the confidence of knowing that, thanks to their reputation and their drive to succeed they attract an ongoing succession of recruits from all over the world; not necessarily the impressionable youth that the West focuses on who are shiftless and uneducated, but young Muslims who have achieved a high degree of academic education with good, solid professional futures beckoning them in England, Sweden, Russia, France, Germany and the United States.

Mr. Todenhofer's ten days of observation left him with the indelible impression that the Islamic State caliphate functions very well in providing internal security and social welfare; an impression that many other informed sources will most certainly quibble with. He states that the support given ISIS by Iraqi and Syrian Sunnis illustrates they have no reason to resist their occupation, considering it preferable to the demeaning treatment they suffered under by Shiite regimes. In Mosul, he states, only Sunnis remain since the flight of the city's Christians, Shiites and Yazidis; therefore no opposition.

He also points out the Islamic State caliphate's longer, larger, more advanced agenda to indulge in a "religious cleansing" of a type never before encountered throughout world history. All non-believers and apostates are to be killed, their women and children enslaved. The targets for obliteration are Shiites, Yazidis, Hindus, Atheists and Polytheists, amounting to hundreds of millions of offcast human lives undeserving of life. Sparingly compassionate, however, with the 'religions of the book'; the so-called Abrahamic trinity of Islam, Judaism and Christianity who may exist, paying jizya.

The insider-inspector spoke of a version of Islam he holds is rejected by 99 percent of the world's ummah of 1.6-billion. This German journalist harbouring an intention to write the definitive book describing the Islamic State and its caliphate, echoes the sentiments of the forgivingly compassionate Western liberals who hold as he does that Islam is a religion of compassion, citing 113 of 114 suras with the opening of "In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful", apparently willing to overlook contradictory passages in perfect tune with ISIS' view of Islamist conquest.

Pointing out that a population of three million in Mosul is controlled by a mere five thousand ISIS jihadis, Mr. Todenhofer speaks to the ideological influence of Islamic State, shared and accepted by the residents of Mosul. Bombing Mosul to destroy the Islamic State jihadis would not destroy their hugely-accepted message and mission, so evidently shared by the greater numbers of Iraqi Sunnis. Mr. Todenhofer is convinced the presence of ISIS has a direct relation to Western conflict imposed on the Middle East; as though the West is the source of the conflict, not sectarian hatreds among Muslims and the belief in the superiority of Islam above all other religions.

He is right, when he points out that Islam must cure itself. But there is no sign as yet on the horizon that this is about to happen, much less than that the powers in the Middle East, Arab and Muslim, are prepared to take any meaningful action to remove both the Shiite Alawite murderous regime of Bashar al Assad in Syria, or the atrocity-loving Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham.

As for the fears in Europe and North America of the havoc that can or potentially will be caused by returning jihadists, he feels that the fear, though realistic is overblown. And that the right-wing as he puts it, reaction to Islam in Europe, and their fears of terrorism coming home to roost with the return of jihadis from the foreign fields of conflict are deliberately overstated to instill fear and loathing against Muslims settled far from their places of origin.

While he concedes that ISIS represents a threat to world peace on a global scale, he places the blame for their existence squarely on former President George W. Bush's ill-advised invasion of Iraq, conflating Saddam Hussein's tyrannical bloody regime with the assault by al-Qaeda on the United States on September 11, 2001. Very neatly relieving the world of Islam from responsibility, the typical fall-back to a liberal explanation of the faults of the West.