God Willing

"We decreed to the Children of Israel that if anyone kills a person -- unless in retribution for murder or spreading corruption in the land -- it is as if he kills all mankind, while if any saves a life it is as if he saves the lives of all mankind."
Qur'an (5:32)

"Set out for jihad in the name of Allah and for the sake of Allah. Do not lay hands on the old verging on death, on women, children and babes. Do not steal anything from the booty and collect together all that falls to your lot in the battlefield and do good, for Allah loves the virtuous and the pious."
Accredited hadith quoting Prophet Mohammad

These are the types of examples of the purity of Islam, its humanity and its peaceful nature, that most Muslims exhort non-Muslims to regard as the true face of Islam. The Islam they insist is a religion of peace. And of course, brotherhood and justice accompany peace. This is their Islam, the faith that not merely complements their lives but in actual fact, is their lives, for their surrender to Islam is so complete that it informs every gesture, every thought, every sentiment they hold dear.

The Taliban, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda and Islamic State, let alone Hezbollah and Hamas, do not represent their Islam. Although in fact, it is Islam and its precepts that guide the actions of those terrorist groups, since they ascribe all that they do to their faith in Islam. All faithful Muslims are bidden to demonstrate the strength of their faith by engaging in jihad. As a proselytizing religion, Muslims are expected to spread the faith, and jihad is one method whereby this is achieved.

In the case of the Islamic State, there were among those they have abducted from the West some who agreed to become Muslim, but having done so, their lives were no more saved than those who did not convert; each were beheaded as examples of what kuffars could expect from the faithful of Islam.

And within Islam one is never too young to be recruited to jihad. Hamas members enjoy dressing their children from infants to pre-teens in army fatigues. Summer camps operated by Hamas teach teens how to use deadly weapons as terrorists of the future.

According to a United Nations report published last November in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria, children watch screenings of execution videos and are exhorted to take part in public stoning events. The recruiting and indoctrination of young children is common, with boys as young as 14 deployed to carry out suicide missions.

The latest video of a child committing a barbaric act consonant with the ISIS vision of jihad is that of a boy estimated to be ten years of age.



He is dressed in fatigue trousers and wears long hair over a cherubic face, but the handgun he holds, a semi-automatic, looking large in his small hands gripping it, is the real thing. The small boy walks toward two men, shooting them in the back of their heads. Before they are shot the men identify themselves as Jambulat Mamayev and Sergey Ashimov, accused by ISIS of spying for Russia's Federal Security Service. "Uncovering an enemy within" is the title of this video.

After the men fall dead, the child is seen to raise his hand in triumph, then he tramples over the corpses, and walks away, mission completed. In an earlier video released by ISIS the same little boy introduces himself in Kazakh as "Abdullah", during the training of child soldiers in Kazakhstan. The little boy says "I will be the one who slaughters you, O kuffar [non-believer], I will be a mujahid, inshallah."