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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Islamic State now running honeymoon tours of the caliphate for jihadists

Jul 23, 2014 10:12 am By Robert Spencer

Muslimcouple“Just after they got married, he took her to Anbar. These jihadists are very romantic.” However, “the two weren’t able to sit together, because ‘women sit in the back, and men at the front.'” And “the bus driver plays jihadist songs all through the ride, and the ISIS black flag flies over the bus.” This beats Niagara Falls any day of the week.

“Jihadists organise tours in their Syria, Iraq ‘caliphate,'” AFP, July 23, 2014 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

BEIRUT: Known for kidnapping, public stonings, lashings and executions, the Iraq and Al Sham (ISIS) is now expanding into tourism, taking jihadists on honeymoon and civilians to visit other parts of its “caliphate”.

Running twice-weekly tours from Syria’s Raqa to Iraq’s Anbar, ISIS’s buses fly the group’s black flag and play jihadist songs throughout the journey.

One of the first clients was Chechen jihadist Abu Abdel Rahman al-Shishani, aged 26, who took his new Syrian wife on honeymoon, according to activist Hadi Salameh.

“Just after they got married, he took her to Anbar. These jihadists are very romantic,” Salameh joked.

But the two weren’t able to sit together, because “women sit in the back, and men at the front. The bus driver plays jihadist songs all through the ride, and the ISIS black flag flies over the bus. ISIS proclaimed a ‘caliphate’ last month straddling Iraq and Syria. According to a rebel from eastern Syria, the tours started operating immediately afterwards.

It firmly controls large swathes of northern and eastern Syria, the Iraq-Syria border, and parts of northern and western Iraq.

Salameh said the group’s tour buses “start their journey in Tal Abyad (on Syria’s Turkish border) and end in Iraq’s Anbar. You can get off wherever you want, and you don’t need a passport to cross the border. “The activist, who lives in Raqa and uses a pseudonym to avoid retribution from ISIS, told AFP via the Internet the company is for profit.

“Of course it’s not free. The price varies, depending on how far you go on the bus,” Salameh said.
Armed escorts

Syrian rebel Abu Quteiba al-Okaidi, who is from the border province of Deir Ezzor, said most of those who use the buses are foreign jihadists.

“Most of them are foreigners. They communicate in English, and wear the Afghan-style clothing preferred by jihadists,” Okaidi told AFP by telephone.

“There is a translator on the bus, who explains to them where they are going. The men on the bus are not armed, but vehicles carrying armed escorts accompany the bus,” he added.

ISIS has its roots in Iraq, but spread into Syria in late spring last year.

It gradually took over Raqa city in northern Syria, and transformed it into its bastion.

In June, ISIS spearheaded a lightning offensive in Iraq that saw large swathes of the north and west of the country fall from Iraqi government hands.

Abu Ibrahim al-Raqawi, another activist living in Raqa city, said “tour buses run twice a week, on Wednesday and Sunday. It works like any bus company would, except that it treats areas under ISIS control in Iraq and Syria as one state. “He also said the bus company is “popular” among those with relatives in Iraq.

“Many people living in this area (northern Syria through western Iraq) have tribal ties stretching across the border. So they use these buses to visit their families,” said Abu Ibrahim.

Speaking to AFP via the Internet, Abu Ibrahim also said others take the bus “to do business, while some just want to take a break from the shelling in Syria”.

Syria’s war began as a peaceful movement for democratic change, but was transformed into a war after Damascus unleashed a brutal crackdown on dissent.

Many months into the fighting, jihadists began streaming into Syria.

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Filed Under: Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. ecosse1314 says

    Jul 23, 2014 at 10:19 am

    Aaaaaah its all the fault of Assad that ISIS are a bunch of brutal barbarians. There was me thinking it was the Joooos and the west.

    • Jan Fourowls says

      Jul 24, 2014 at 5:42 am

      It’s always somebody else’s fault with them, like you say, Jews or Christians or the West in general. Did we catch the part about the tourists on the buses speaking English and preferred the Afghani jihadist form of dress? I linked it last week, but 10,000 or so “Americans” going over for IS jihad including their baby mama jihadist incubators. When they come back to America as trained jihadists ready to rumble they’ll be thanking and not blaming their brother Obama for their unrevoked passports.

  2. Jay Boo says

    Jul 23, 2014 at 10:30 am

    It would not be surprising if Gulf state Arabs have pedophile Syrian bride tours booked well in advance.
    While the Syrian ISIL daddies are away the wives must sell their young daughters away to please Allah and pocket some cash away.

    • Jay Boo says

      Jul 23, 2014 at 10:32 am

      Gulf state Arabs ( also have )

    • john spielman says

      Jul 23, 2014 at 10:48 am

      absolutely , but you have to admit that such a lovely story of the muslim warriors riding with their new brides on the bus in the country while listening to music,… just brings tears to my eyes-NOT!!!
      The poor child bride -slaves of Allah, sitting in the BACK OF THE BUS while the men are in front plotting more death and destruction. JUST WISH WE HAD SOME DRONES TARGETTING SAID BUSES

      • Jay Boo says

        Jul 23, 2014 at 11:26 am

        john I can see why this would appear to be a convenient tactical target but it would be better to avoid the child bride concubines in the process.

        Anyway, in the grand scheme of things there is one issue that Muslims are terrified the outside world will discover.

        The Slave Trade Religion of Islam is rotting from within.
        Muslims do not want to admit this.
        Muslims do not want the outside world to know this.
        Muslims do not want admit Islam’s shallow emptiness.
        Islam is all about resentment built on insecure vanity .

        The Qur’an is but a forged shackle’
        Its tainted verses are links of a slave chain.

        But, listen closely
        The chains are breaking.

      • Mayla says

        Jul 23, 2014 at 11:34 am

        I’m with you on that. That would be the “upgraded honeymoon package.”

      • Mirren10 says

        Jul 23, 2014 at 11:37 am

        The article says it’s mostly foreign jihadists using the bus, so I should think the ‘brides’ would be stupid bints who converted, like the ones described in the thread about ‘mothers’ taking their children to IS.

        Drones away !

  3. Beagle says

    Jul 23, 2014 at 10:35 am

    “Syria’s war began as a peaceful movement for democratic change,”

    Yeah, the Middle East is brimming with Jeffersonian small-d democrats.

    Fool me thrice squared and then I’d be approaching John McCain levels of stupidity.

    • gravenimage says

      Jul 23, 2014 at 3:07 pm

      Yup—just what I was going to mention, Beagle.

      The idea that this was a movement for peace and democracy that just somehow took a wrong turn and became a bloody genocidal Jihad is just grimly laughable.

    • Jan Fourowls says

      Jul 24, 2014 at 5:55 am

      Islam and democracy are mutually exclusive.

      Islam: Intolerant, religiously and sexually discriminatory, hostile, violent, conquering of all non-Muslims.

      Our elected leaders know. They can either read the Quran (and an unbiased history book) to prove it or they have staff to brief them so that they know democracy will never work except as show in Islamic cultures. We are being systematically lied to as American people about Islam and terrorism on both sides of the red-blue divide (fade to a collective bruised purple).

      Fascism has become Islamofascism, as so often addressed on JW. This quotation is so apt, can’t get enough of its truth about the big lies of government:

      “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels (Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945)

      Segue again to say that you can write and/or call your elected leaders in the U.S. Congress to oppose Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ H.R. 3878 and its companion bill, Sen. Ed Markey’s S. 2219.

      The bill through the back door of policing “hate speech” would potentially criminalize all of us commenting here and shred as if never written the Constitutional freedoms of (and from) religion and free speech. S. 2219 and H.R. 3878 dovetail with U.N. Resolution 16/18 — to which President Obama in agreement with Organiz[s]ation of Islamic Cooperation (formerly Organization of Islamic Conferences), the confederacy of 56 Islamic states, purported to bind Americans in 2011.

  4. john spielman says

    Jul 23, 2014 at 10:37 am

    ” and the bus driver plays jihadist songs all through the ride” WAIT A MINUTE, I thought that music and singing was not allowed in Islam according to the Taliban of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Do we have to send the Taliban to correct these unislamic ISIS infidels?

    • Mirren10 says

      Jul 23, 2014 at 11:31 am

      I expect it’s some ghastly old imam, droning koranic verses, whilst a drum beats, dirge like, in the background.

      • gravenimage says

        Jul 23, 2014 at 3:14 pm

        Yes—those screeching Nasheeds are always Halal.

        Sometimes, of course, thuggish Jihadists bend the rules just a bit and allow violent Jihad rap. *Ugh*.

        Who says islam is monolithic? sarc/off

      • pumbar says

        Jul 24, 2014 at 12:31 am

        Didn’t we have a lovely time, the day we went to Anbar.
        Was a beautiful day, making bombs on the way;
        and all for under a pound you know…

        • Mirren10 says

          Jul 24, 2014 at 5:48 am

          🙂 🙂 !!

          Mind you, these idiots have paid more than a pound. They’ve sold themselves.

  5. mariam rove says

    Jul 23, 2014 at 11:05 am

    music and singing was not allowed in Islam…
    they make up the rules as they go…..m

  6. mortimer says

    Jul 23, 2014 at 11:17 am

    Unreal. Anyway, if they’re lucky, maybe a suicide bomber will self-destruct on the bus and the newly weds can go to jannah. A perfect conclusion to any jihadist honeymoon.

  7. Jay Boo says

    Jul 23, 2014 at 11:37 am

    I —
    just like many others before am not that smart.
    I know this to be true.
    So what.
    I like many others are no match for Islomo-connivers.
    Yet God can confound even the wise serpents of Islam with clumsy fools.
    Isn’t God great.

    Islam is such a grand mistake.

    • Jay Boo says

      Jul 23, 2014 at 11:39 am

      Who out there will dare to take the bait.

    • mariam rove says

      Jul 23, 2014 at 11:46 am

      Islam is such a grand mistake. It is not a mistake. It is a crime. M

  8. zulu says

    Jul 23, 2014 at 12:37 pm

    ISIS TO IRAQI CHRISTIANS: “CONVERT OR DIE”
    http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/isis-to-iraqi-christians-convert-or-die/3691345258001

    • Charli Main says

      Jul 23, 2014 at 1:26 pm

      to be followed by,
      Muslims to European Christians——— convert or die.

      • Jan Fourowls says

        Jul 24, 2014 at 6:04 am

        to be followed by, or possibly in synchronicity with —
        Muslims to American and Canadian Christians——— convert or die.

        But I recently commented from a faith perspective as a Christian how best, in the tradition of Harriet Tubman, to get through the coming times. Of course there could be multiple possible oligarchic plans and schemes in the works on how the oligarchs, partnering with the Muslim honchos, best would preserve their profiteering wealth and lifestyles ensconced away on islands or behind heavily armed gated community portals, so my sense of what’s coming might not play out exactly that way. We’re all only doing the best we can to figure out what to do in such upside-down times. Good for us on JW!

  9. Tradewinds says

    Jul 23, 2014 at 2:09 pm

    Awww how romantic! A walking black blanket!

  10. gravenimage says

    Jul 23, 2014 at 3:22 pm

    “Just after they got married, he took her to Anbar. These jihadists are very romantic.”
    ………………………………….

    “He took her to Anbar”—good grief, this sounds like a punchline. I had to check to make sure that this wasn’t an Onion feature.

    But why not? After all, we already have pious Muslims leaving civilized Britain in order to raise their children in this violent hell-hole.

    More:

    “the two weren’t able to sit together, because ‘women sit in the back, and men at the front.’” And “the bus driver plays jihadist songs all through the ride, and the ISIS black flag flies over the bus.” This beats Niagara Falls any day of the week.
    ………………………………….

    Indeed it does. You certainly can’t find a tour bus route *lined with severed heads* in Niagara Falls like you can in Mosul.

    And just imagine how instructive it will be for these newly-wed Jihadists to take their brides to a stoning! She’ll know right away what was in store for her if she ever got out of line…

    God, I hate Islam.

    • Mirren10 says

      Jul 23, 2014 at 5:03 pm

      ”And just imagine how instructive it will be for these newly-wed Jihadists to take their brides to a stoning! She’ll know right away what was in store for her if she ever got out of line…”

      Yep.
      And she doesn’t even have to get out of line, if he’s particularly vindictive, and the triple talaq just doesn’t do it for him. Accuse her of adultery, and voila ! Done and dusted.

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