Harper’s interviewed an ISIS fighter, Kabir Ahmed aka Abu Sumayyah, who killed eight people and himself in a suicide bombing in Iraq over the weekend.
Sumayyah tells Harkin he looks forward to the coming era of passport-free travel as the Islamic State widens its frontiers through Syria, Iraq, and beyond. He reveals that he had been imprisoned in Britain, “for the propagation of my religion.” (His criminal convictions were for stirring up hatred against homosexuals and shouting homophobic abuse at a gay-pride parade.) Sumayyah calls Britain “Dar al-Kufr,” or “the land of infidels.” He tells Harkin that among his new friends, are jihadi veterans from all over the world, including the United States. “It’s like a dream: one day we eat Eritrean, the next we eat Pakistani. We are breaking borders; we are breaking racism,” he says.
And entrenching and enforcing sexism and homophobia, along with bigotry against other religions, no religion, and secularism. Here’s a newsflash: you can break racism and sexism and homophobia and hatred of other religions and loathing of secularism. You can, and the result is much much better.
Sumayyah speaks excitedly of the new government and its personnel. “There is free medical, dental, and eye care, and the doctors are all absolutely free,” he says. “All these services are building blocks of the state.” There are orphanages and special madrassas where orphan children were taught to memorize the Koran and Islamic State military bases were also open to children, especially orphans, so they can “learn about jihad and military matters.”
Sounds like hell on earth, especially for children.
Sumayyah tells Harkin he believes that reports of mass executions of hundreds of Shia prisoners have been exaggerated, or deserved. A full 2,000 Iraqi soldiers had been given the opportunity to repent, he says, “This is the way of Islam. Everyone gets a chance to repent. But if they don’t, it’s death. It’s the same in every country in the world: it’s treason against the state.”
Nope.
It’s not treason, it’s disagreeing with fundamentalist authoritarians using their religion to seize and maintain power. Every totalitarian group has declared disagreement with the leadership as treason.
I wonder how many Christians would recoil in horror at such a statement knowing it came from a Muslim, while themselves worshiping a god who operates under the exact same idea. Far too many of them, I’d wager.
Oh dear, Ophelia. You’ve missed the point. He’s celebrating being all We-Are-The-World AND being super-sexist misogynist. It would be all decadent and stuff not to have women to crap on. I mean, that could affect him personally.
He’s working toward … something, so enthusiastically he thought blowing himself (and others) apart was a good way to achieve it. Uh… That’s a hefty price to pay to have EU-style border sharing, isn’t it? What’s next, suicide for pizza?
To me it sounds like the British National health Service, to which I and a number of my acquaintances owe our lives. Though it is being nibbled away at by successive Conservative governments.
My first reaction on reading it was “maybe they are not all bad”.
I suspect the “hell on earth, especially for children” refers not to the free medical care but to the latter half of the quoted text:
Is that free medical care available to women and girls, too, I wonder? Or is it only for people? Maybe it would be available to women if only there were some women doctors to treat them, ’cause you can’t be having your woman treated – maybe even seen or touched – by another man, can you? Pity there are few or no women doctors, of course. (Of course I hope I am wrong about this. I would be very glad to be shown that I am wrong)
I bet the free health care does not extend to birth control.
So…islamist dudebros?
Now there’s a disturbing thought…..
Irshad Manji, Ibn Warraq, and VS Naipaul have all commented on the intense Arab supremacist racism that percolates under the surface of Islam. 12 plus centuries of race-based slave trade is conveniently forgotten as well.
Kumbaya…