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

German rapper turned Islamic State pitchman killed in US airstrike

Oct 30, 2015 7:24 am By Robert Spencer

“Brothers, I call you to jihad! This is where you will find freedom! You can really live here. It’s fun here. Jihad is a lot of fun!” What kind of fun? “In France deeds were done, in Germany the sleepers are waiting. We want your blood.” That is coming, even if Deso Dogg won’t be joining in the fun.

Note how this egregious Washington Post story suggests that poor Abu Talha Al-Almani was a victim of racism, driving him to jihad.

Deso Dogg

“‘Jihad is a lot of fun,’ Deso Dogg, a German rapper turned Islamic State pitchman said. Now he’s reportedly dead from U.S. air strike,” by Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post, October 30, 2015:

For years, the hands of the militant who called himself “Abu Talha Al-Almani” still bore the black ink reminders of his former life.

“STR8,” read one tattoo. “Thug,” read the other.

“This is from the days when I lived the life of an unbeliever,” Denis Cuspert, a German rapper who became an Islamic State recruiter, told the New York Times in 2011. “Allah will erase them from me one day.”

Cuspert was killed this month in a U.S. airstrike in Syria, CNN and other outlets reported Thursday. At the time of his death, he was a German-language recruiter for Islamic State and “a willing pitchman for [Islamic State] atrocities,” according to a State Department release designating him a terrorist….

He often appeared in, and sometimes sang for, the group’s slickly produced videos. In one, he splashes water at some unidentified stream, smiling like a man on a camping trip. In another, he clutches a severed head.

The evolution of “Deso Dogg,” the hip-hop star with a chip on his shoulder, into “Abu Talha Al-Almani,” a militant with blood on his hands and an airstrike’s terrorist target is less unlikely than it sounds. Like so many of Islamic State’s western recruits, Cuspert was simultaneously disaffected and indignant, the survivor of a troubled upbringing and a tumultuous adulthood who saw something in jihad — faith, fulfillment, the promise of redemption — he lacked at home….

Cuspert often felt alienated in Germany, even as a child.

“I grew up with racism,” he told the New York Times in 2011. “Though my mother is German, some teachers back then would call me ‘Negro’ and treat all Muslim kids bad.”

In search of an identity, he joined youth gangs with other children of immigrants. Politics also gave him purpose — during the run-up to the Gulf War in the 1990s and again before the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Cuspert’s was a frequent face at Berlin demonstrations. His outrage over American foreign policy didn’t help Cuspert’s relationship with his stepfather.

Rap gave him another outlet. Cuspert released his first album in 1995 and he took the name “Deso Dogg” a few years later — “Deso” was short for “Devil’s son.” By the late 2000s he was touring with the rapper DMX and his music was being featured on German TV.

And then Cuspert found God.

It’s not clear whether Cuspert had been born Muslim — roughly 15 percent of Islamic State’s European recruits are converts. But regardless of his previous exposure to the faith, it’s clear that his interest in Islam took a sudden, extreme turn around 2010, just after he was reportedly in a life threatening car accident.

According to Der Spiegel, Cuspert’s career was flagging at that time, and friends said he seemed to be suffering from psychotic episodes. He got into martial arts, but found failure there too. Religion was “an opportunity to press the reset button,” the newspaper said. “Cuspert had sinned a lot. He liked the idea of starting over again.”

Soon after, Cuspert appeared in an online video with Pierre Vogel, an Islamic preacher looking to recruit rappers for his religious message.

“Let me suggest that you look for a different occupation,” Vogel told Cuspert, according to Der Spiegel.

In the next video, Cuspert was calling himself Abu Malik and inviting his audience to a retreat at a mosque.

“I’ll be there, too,” he said. “A weekend without disco, without fun, for a change.” He paused, then corrected himself: “You can also have fun here. It’s time for you to learn something, for yourself, for your soul, for your heart.”

Within months, Cuspert/Abu Malik had become one of Germany’s best-known singers of nasheeds, or religious songs. They brought him a following he never found in hip hop, and, in March 2011, they also brought him the scrutiny of the German government.

On March 2, 2011, a 21-year-old immigrant from Kosovo named Arid Uka fatally shot two American soldiers at the Frankfurt airport. Just before the attack, Uka wrote on his Facebook page: “I love you for Allah, Abu Malik.” And at his trial, the Times reported, Uka said that he listened to nasheeds like Cuspert’s on his way to the airport.

“It made me really angry,” Uka told the judge at his trial.

Cuspert denied any connection to Uka at the time, though he said he supported the shooting. German law enforcement banned his videos and tried to imprison Cuspert for his advocacy of violence, but were never able to get enough evidence to arrest him, according to the Times.

By 2012, he was gone. In a final video before departing for Syria, Cuspert sat on the banks of the Rhine and announced that Germany was about to become a war zone, Der Spiegel reported.

That’s the year Cuspert joined Islamic State, the State Department says, and became one of the group’s most effective German-language recruiters.

“Brothers,” he said in the 2013 video by the stream, in which he splashed and smiled, “I call you to jihad! This is where you will find freedom!” Gunfire popped in the background, and he laughed. “You can really live here. It’s fun here. Jihad is a lot of fun!”

Like so many of Islamic State’s other online pitchmen, Cuspert’s background — as a musician and as a Westerner — was part of his appeal for the group. In a video posted this April, he rapped over grisly footage of Jordanian pilot Moath al-Kasasbeh being burned alive, according to the Daily Beast.

“In France deeds were done, in Germany the sleepers are waiting. We want your blood,” he said, in a song encouraging European followers to conduct attacks in their own countries….

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Filed Under: Featured, Germany, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) Tagged With: Abu Talha al-Almani, Denis Cuspert, Deso Dogg


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Comments

  1. Truth says

    Oct 30, 2015 at 7:49 am

    Good ridence to an evil Muslim monster.

    • Sam Hawkins says

      Oct 30, 2015 at 8:25 am

      Word.

    • Kathy Brown, Esq. says

      Oct 30, 2015 at 9:13 pm

      Oh yeah, ‘good riddance’ indeed!

      Now that’s what I call a feel-good moment on my Friday night. If only they would all kill each other!

  2. Marty says

    Oct 30, 2015 at 8:16 am

    Hopefully, this sociopath will quickly achieve martyrdom and go the paradise he richly deserves.

  3. Baucent says

    Oct 30, 2015 at 8:56 am

    “It’s not clear whether Cuspert had been born Muslim”

    Then, that is poor journalism. In the context of the story it’s highly relevant.

  4. Angemon says

    Oct 30, 2015 at 9:06 am

    “I grew up with racism,” he told the New York Times in 2011. “Though my mother is German, some teachers back then would call me ‘Negro’ and treat all Muslim kids bad.”

    Of course, “treating bad” is a fluid concept in islam – maybe the teachers simply didn’t allow them to pray in the middle of their class. Or maybe the school refused to provide a certified halal alternative in the canteen when there was already a vegetarian alternative. What’s for a devout muslim to do other than play the victims, thus following the footsteps of muhammad, who claimed persecution after the Meccans started to insult allah? Sure, they did it after and as a response to muhammad insulting their gods and ancestors, but that’s beside the point, right?

    “You can really live here. It’s fun here. Jihad is a lot of fun!”

    Pffft, plagiarist…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKPmGMJ5sew

    Now he’s reportedly dead from U.S. air strike

    And boom goes the dynamite. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.

  5. Babs says

    Oct 30, 2015 at 10:08 am

    The idiot. I hope he is roasting in hell as I write, and may he be one of many.
    (Perhaps the Muslims themselves killed him because they disapproved of his name. Aren’t dogs haram in Islam?)

  6. nicu says

    Oct 30, 2015 at 12:11 pm

    Most rappers here in germany are Muslims – and belong to criminal gangs !

    And they think they are ” cool Artists ” — they are nothing !

  7. Nonblvr says

    Oct 30, 2015 at 12:27 pm

    Boo………Oh Yeah….Hoo………It is Hallowe’en after all.

  8. James Foard says

    Oct 30, 2015 at 12:39 pm

    Allah Ka-Boom!

    • Truth says

      Oct 30, 2015 at 2:20 pm

      Shish Ka-Boom!

  9. voegelinian says

    Oct 30, 2015 at 2:08 pm

    “Cuspert was born in Kreuzberg, a Berlin district to a German mother and a Ghanaian father. The father left the family while Cuspert was still a baby.[4] He was later raised in Charlottenburg, Moabit and Schöneberg. His mother remarried an African-American U.S. Army officer with whom Cuspert had ongoing conflicts.” — from the wikipedia bio

    I.e., the white German mother of this monster was approximately another Stanley Ann Dunham…

  10. KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM says

    Oct 30, 2015 at 2:09 pm

    Dogg penis in arse of pervert child rapist son-of-satan mad m0-hamhead.

  11. Paul says

    Oct 30, 2015 at 10:07 pm

    Didn’t he say that German ‘infidel’ blood was appetising to jihadis a
    few months ago, or something? Hey, dead Muhammadan, how are your
    non-existent virgins? Far be it from me to gloat.

  12. Mahendra Singh says

    Oct 31, 2015 at 1:54 am

    He was German? He looked like an Afro-American.

  13. mortimer says

    Oct 31, 2015 at 2:36 am

    Abu Talha Al-Almani had a tattoo that read “Thug”.

    No wonder he thought beheadings were ‘fun’.

    “Killing infidels is a small matter to us.” – Tabari IX: 69

    Normative Islam, rather than an aberration.

  14. Erwin Rommel says

    Oct 31, 2015 at 5:12 am

    This guy is as German as pork is Jewish!
    Just look at the picture! A real German (like me) never would pose in front of a Ford Mustang!

  15. Sam says

    Oct 31, 2015 at 7:37 am

    Now Germany will shover the family with money as compensation for allowing the poor Muslim leave the country or something like that.Nothing will change Germany will get he live jihadies back and milions more as immigrants till Europe is majority Muslim. “Inshallah”

  16. Mike T says

    Oct 31, 2015 at 9:03 am

    I weep.

  17. Jack Diamond says

    Oct 31, 2015 at 10:17 am

    Psychobabble from the Post, the article could have been written by Oprah Winfrey. Only a dysfunctional childhood can explain such things, not what is commanded by Allah Muhammad in da’ Qur’an and Sunnah.

  18. Linde Barrera says

    Oct 31, 2015 at 4:54 pm

    Glad this creep is outta here.

  19. Itinerant says

    Nov 1, 2015 at 8:16 am

    face creased with inchoate rage- rapper turned jihadi

    thought god was on high but was just the reaper’s wing
    as it banked, dull in the sun, shark-grey,
    raining hellfire by remote and
    streaming video of his annihilation;
    better now he’s ironed out- now ‘dat, dat is de bomb’.

  20. popov says

    Nov 2, 2015 at 10:40 am

    This is like the third time he was “killed”

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