The Surgeon General’s warning, “cigarette smoking can be dangerous to your health,” never rang truer.
“Life under Isis in Raqqa: The city where smoking a cigarette could see you publicly flogged, imprisoned and even decapitated,” by Heather Saul, the Independent, February 13, 2015:
Residents of a city besieged by Isis have described living under strict bans on alcohol and cigarettes, with anyone caught smoking publicly flogged, handed huge fines and even reportedly executed.
The group enforces a strict interpretation of Islam in areas in Syria and Iraq under its self-declared ‘caliphate’. Some ultraconservative versions of Sharia denounce the habit as harmful and therefore haram (forbidden).
Raqqa, in Syria, is one of the group’s biggest strongholds.
A leading figure with Isis’s police force was recently found in Deir-al-Zor beheaded and with a cigarette in his mouth, with the sentence “O Sheikh this is munkar (hateful and evil thing)” written on his body.
Abu Mohammed Hussam, one of the founders of the Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) activist group, described the severity of punishments for being caught smoking cigarettes.
“The first time he will be arrested and flogged (40 lashes),” he told The Independent. “If he smokes again, he will be whipped and imprisoned. On the third occasion, he will be taken to a camp in the countryside and fined a large sum of money.”
Isis swiftly shut down shops selling cigarettes and water pipes after Raqqa fell and banned street vendors from selling smoking materials. One man described militants bending his fingers with pliers after being caught smoking in the street to Al Monitor.
The group also released a series of statements from the so-called Isis ‘Preaching Office’ describing the health problems that made smoking ” a slow suicide”….
Megan says
Our leftists must feel so wistful.
Sheri says
Can you imagine all those people going “Cold Turkey”? Heads are going to roll!
M S case says
Speaking of smoke…………….Now that we really don’t need mid east oil…………I wonder what it would be like if all their oil wells were afire……..The smoke would cover the sun for no telling how long Just wondering???? not suggesting, well maybe…..
vlparker says
Those muzzies sure do know how to cut the cancer rate.
Rita says
Being the biggest cancer themselves, they dont want any competition.
Angemon says
But-but-but, jihadis like Coulibali’s wife post on social media that living under islamic law is wonderful, and that muslims should come and join the islamic state!
One of two things is happening: either the people in the social media have been reading their Mark Twain or the people running Raqqa are buying the ideas of “Western islamophobes” and because of it are applying laws that “have nothing to do with islam” (as Obama, Cameron or Merkel would put it).
gravenimage says
Leave it to pious Muslims to make cigarette smoking seem benign or even life affirming in comparison to the Islamic alternative.
And more Muslim “morality”—smoking is a “hateful and evil thing”, but flogging, torturing, or beheading someone for smoking is the will of Allah.
God, I hate Islam.
JamesonRocks says
I quit smoking in 1989. Perhaps I should start again…
No Fear says
I smoked the Quran and I didn’t get stoned.
particolor says
And cant get the taste of Goat S**T out of Your mouth !! 🙁
Ill bet You don’t smoke another one ?
Peggy says
The people these must be so well behaved for fear of getting killed that Jihadists have run out of victims. Now they have to impose more rules in order to get more victims. The only thing that makes Jihadists feel good is killing so they have to find more reasons for it.
When people stop smoking what next? What other crimes are going to be punishable by death?
Godwin says
Smoking is a crime but beheading is not. This is one good way to reduce the muzzy population. Called it Divine arrangement ?
Peggy says
Just read that hands were chopped off for using mobile phones. Yep, they just keep outlawing more things in order to justify their blood lust.
Jack Holan says
I am being dead serious, we now have a means to add anarchy to the authority structure of IS. This small insignificant article is a goldmine. Don’t bother bombing them so much. Start running soft-drops of cigarettes and alcohol in areas controlled by IS. It won’t defeat them by any means but it add stress to their morale and cause discipline problems.
particolor says
At 35 Bucks a FN Packet here in Australia They can buy their Bloody own Ciggy’s !! 🙁
Mr. Slugworth says
Completely agree. It’s an obvious solution. Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves. Shia vs Sunni, sects within sects, clan versus clan, and now smoker versus non-smoker, and so on, murderously ad infinitum. When there is no local infidel, they have only to turn on themselves.
Arthur says
I would bet that the leading cause of death in the Islamic Caliphate is the Islamic Caliphate–much more dangerous than smoking.
Kathy Brown, Esq. says
What thoroughgoing tripe this is!
When I was in London with my late [British] husband? We stayed in a posh hotel on Knightsbridge Lane. There, my wonderful husband said, ‘Watch the Arabs”.
These men-in full Arab regalia mind you!-appeared to have left their Korans at home. Because when cocktail time came, it was unwise to get caught in their rush for the Bar….
There, they proceeded to get, not intoxicated; not even stinking. They got filthy. They got falling-down drunk. And when my husband went to the mens’ room, they made filthy gestures to me and every other young woman in the room-quickly ceasing, of course, when our men returned.
This is the muslim abroad.
So forgive me all, if I fail to get misty-eyed at the starched spit-and-polish morals of Is-Slime. I’ve never seen such utter duplicity in all my life.
dlbrand says
Kathy Brown, Esq. says: “I’ve never seen such utter duplicity in all my life.”
It’s called Islam.
Edward Cline says
Anti-smoking sentiment here in the U.S., egged on by the federal and state governments, is such that I’m sure the neo-puritans would just love to have the same powers as ISIS has to punish smokers. It’s the same in the U.K., France (!!!!), Germany, and the rest of Europe. Anti-smoking advocates have an Islamic state of mind, as well.
Mirren10 says
“The first time he will be arrested and flogged (40 lashes),” he told The Independent. “If he smokes again, he will be whipped and imprisoned. On the third occasion, he will be taken to a camp in the countryside and fined a large sum of money.”
From pathos to bathos …
duh_swami says
‘Interpretations’? Versions’? How many versions of the Quran are there, and have they all been interpreted? What is the difference between them?
I don’t quite understand the opposition to tobacco. if Allah didn’t want people to smoke it, why did he invent it and the Bic lighter? After all, Allah knows best, doesn’t he?
particolor says
They didn’t even know what Tobacco was until Drake bought it back from America 13 Bloody Hundred Years after the Book of Love was Forged !! 🙁
James O'Donnell says
Islamic State Health Warning: Smoking will seriously damage your health.
Lesley says
I’m against people smoking cigarettes, too, and I’m grateful for designated non-smoking areas… But these yahoos running around the desert in their pajamas, refusing to shave or clean up, selling human beings into slavery, raping women and children, beheadings, and burning people in cages– they’re okay with that, but smoking cigarettes defiles their ‘purity’?
I agree with Jack Holan above that we should start flooding the Islamic State with cigarettes…
Joseph says
Lesley, I smoke, and I agree with you that it is a bad habit. But yea they are a little backassward. However, that is not my point, defilement and evil comes from within the person. Leaving religion out of this I believe that even atheists believe this one.
So the question is does evil reside in the heart or does it come from cellphones and cigarettes?
Bukkdem Jizheads says
Lesley, traveling to western Iraq might be a great way to quit. Someone could make a fortune running a smoking cessation clinic.
Smuggling cigarettes to Georgia might be a lucrative opportunity as well. They are about to pass a $1.60 tax increase per pack. It will be amusing to watch their revenue plunge.
Kathy Brown, Esq. says
Lesley: There’s no call for you to be ‘against people smoking cigarettes’. It’s sufficient that you have available to you non-smoking areas as you note.
I smoke occasionally, and that’s for me to decide. My hometown, NYC, got the ball rolling some years ago, with utter idiocy such as outlawing smoking in the open air! Or in one’s own car! As Edward notes: There is a fascistic bent to a great deal of the non-smoking sentiment.
The ‘Slimes, predictably, have taken it beyond the pale. Perhaps soon they’ll eviscerate anyone who’s overweight? Presuming gluttony is forbidden by the pedophile mo-ham?
Uncle Vladdi says
See? I told you muslims were liberals LOL! Raping captive children is OK, but smoking = death penalty!
M S case says
I still say the smoke we need will come from burning oil fields
Joe Shmo says
They could stick photos of people beheaded by ISIS for smoking on the warning labels of our cigarette packs. A guaranteed way to restrict smoking and hopefully Islam.
Kathy Brown, Esq. says
Oh Joe: The visual suggested by your post is just hilarious!
However Megyn Kelly said, the other night when talking to brain-dead Jen Psaki, that ISIS has signs up stating, ‘Death To The Jews!’ and ‘Death To America!’. Apparently ISIS posts those signs as we do ‘Stop’ signs, etc. So hey-given that, perhaps ISIS would favor such ‘warning signs’! (!?)…
Like they even conceive of admonitions those blood-maddened savages.
Sam says
http://www.rediff.com/news/report/there-a-group-far-more-dangerous-than-isis/20150215.htm
Has anyone heard of Hizb-ut-Tahrir
HuT has an armed wing called Harakat ul-Muhojirinfi Britaniya that is training its cadres in chemical, bacteriological, and biological warfare.
Founded in Jerusalem in 1952 and headquartered in London, the group has branches in Central Asia, Europe, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia, where it has managed to garner great influence.