This video highlights yet again why it is so wrongheaded for Obama and other Western leaders to claim that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is the basis of its case to the world and its appeal among Muslims. To ignore and deny that is to give up any means of understanding correctly the Islamic State’s motives and goals.
“ISIS taunt America in new video urging them to ‘bring it on’ as they vow to bring fire on their enemies once ’80 banners’ have been raised against them and mock US soldier suicides,” by Ted Thornhill, MailOnline, November 25, 2015:
Barack Obama recently dismissed ISIS as ‘a bunch of killers with good social media’ – and appears to have prompted a sickening response from the terror group which mocks US soldiers’ suicide rates.
A new video released by the Islamists also claims the Prophet predicted ‘Islam’s enemies’ would be destroyed by ‘the flames of war’ when the number of banners opposed to them – a reference to the international coalition – reached 80.
Currently, 60 nations officially oppose ISIS.
The video taunts America, urging the nation to ‘bring it on’ before adding ‘your numbers only increase us in faith’.
In a desperate effort to worry the world’s sole superpower, the video points out that 6,500 US soldiers commit suicide every year and claims that its territory is bigger than the UK.
The Hollywood-style voiceover goes on to say that ISIS is ‘counting your banners’, a reference to the flags of the nations ranged against it in the international coalition it calls a ‘coalition of devils’.
It says: ‘Our prophet said [they] would reach 80 in number and then the flames of war will finally burn you on the hills of death.
‘Gather your allies. Plot against us and show us no respite. Our ally is the greatest. He is Allah and all glory goes to him.’
The video boasts that Isis ‘sows fear’ into the hearts of US soldiers and says that America is ‘too weak’ to put boots on the ground.
It concludes that ‘our ally is the greatest, he is Allah and all glory goes to him’….
Michael Copeland says
The makers of the film are denying the Koran – a capital offence.
The earth is shown at the end as a sphere.
The Koran says it is flat, laid out like a carpet.
Westman says
“The video boasts that Isis ‘sows fear’ into the hearts of US soldiers and says that America is ‘too weak’ to put boots on the ground.”
Tell us again, who is living in underground tunnels, hiding from the “weak” US?
Undaunted says
I don’t think we can infer from tunnels that ISIS is afraid and hiding. Tunnels between firing points as depicted in the video at another JW post allow them to move fluidly in the battle space without exposing themselves to enemy fire. Some call it “rhyzome maneuver” and is discussed in depth here:
PrayerWarrior says
Counter-Terrorism: The Mayhem You Do Not Hear About
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htterr/articles/20151125.aspx
Talks about the value system the Syrian immigrants are going to bring with them. “The flood of illegal migrants (African, Afghan and Arab) into Europe is causing culture shock all around. This is because most of the refugees come from cultures that tolerate many forms of child and wife abuse that are frequently prosecuted felonies in Europe (and the West in general). The shortage of interpreters and fear of being branded “culturally insensitive” has European police and social workers inclined to look the other way.”
Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, has written
(http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/toxicval.htm)
about this value system, naming it ‘Thar’ (Arabic for ‘blood vengeance’). He calls it “The Worlds Most Toxic Value System.” It pre-dates Islam, and is also found in varying degree in non-Muslim countries, but the thing about Islam is that reinforces this value system. You don’t see it much in Western Countries because it is the direct opposite of Christianity and what developed from Christianity.
Westman says
Thanks for the reference. Finally a name, “Thar”, for regressive cultures that support honor killing and the historical structure that defines it. This should be required reading for sociologists and military planners.
dumbledoresarmy says
Interesting article. (I found the whole thing and read it).
I think the author misses something, though, when he says this:
“Many historians trace our [western] concept of the individual to the medieval concept of chivalry, which created an elite class that was expected to model its conduct on an internalized code of ethics – and sometimes even did…”.
The *ultimate*, bedrock source of our western (and it isn’t pagan greco-roman or tribal northwest european) concept of the responsible individual, the responsible person – who has worth and dignity qua human being, who is morally responsible before God and humanity, whether male or female, poor or rich, successful or a ‘failure’ – goes all the way back to Sinai; it is Biblical. Tom Cahill has a very accessible discussion of the subject in his deeply-moving book, “The Gifts of the Jews”.
An interview with the author, here, which touches on some of the ground, but I totally recommend the book itself.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/july98/cahill_7-23.html
ANCESTRAL APPRECIATION
A good companion piece to Cahill, and driving home the same point, is Berman’s “God’s Alliance With Man’, which analyses the Sinai covenant from Exodus, in light of its contemporary ME context…a context which reveals just how totally revolutionary, sui generis, the Hebrew concepts and story are. To call it ‘the Sinai revolution’ is an understatement. Every country that has been touched by Christendom…which is born from and depends on that Jewish matrix …has been shaped more or less by that revolution.
http://www.azure.org.il/article.php?id=131
David Bentley Hart, an American theologian who works within the Eastern Orthodox tradition, is very good at expounding the Christian development of the same core insights. In his book ‘Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies’, one of the key chapters is entitled “The Face of the Faceless”; he speaks of “the scandal that many pagans naturally felt at the bizarre prodigality with which the early Christians were willing to grant full humanity to persons of every class and condition, and of either sex.”
And in that regard, since Islamic societies are the most crushing of the individual and the most addicted to ‘that’, it is interesting to reflect on the story of Nonie Darwish, ex-Muslim. Two things that she singles out, when she remembers and analyses the process that took her out of Islam, were the representation of a typical church wedding, in a western-made film that she saw when she was a teenager, and her encounter (probably after coming to America) with Jews who explained to her the meaning of the great Fast day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. She *knew* that the marriage she was seeing in the movie was *different* from anything in her own culture, that it involved a different way of being (and she could see, of course, that there would be no polygyny; this marriage was one-one). And she *knew* that Yom Kippur – involving searching self-critique and reflection – was utterly different from the culture she’d grown up in.
Interestingly, too, when Ayaan Hirsi Ali charts the process that took her out of Islam, she credits western children’s stories that she read in the school library in Kenya, along with the classic novels and also the trashy romances that she devoured as a teenager, with showing her a different way of being. The romances kept her soul alive, fostered her hunger for love and freedom, counteracting the brainwashing she was getting from silver-tongued Muslim Brotherhood operatives in Islamic study sessions. She describes the moment of decision – “do I proceed to Canada to enter the arranged marriage with a stupid cousin that my family is decreeing, or do I flee to the Netherlands and ask for asylum?”- as her coming to realize that she could ‘choose’ “like a person in a book”. Like the people in all the typical western books – fairytales/ folk tales, classic and popular children’s and young adult and adult fiction – in which she had steeped herself for the previous five years and more. First her imagination and subconscious were liberated; the rest came afterward.
Manuel Franco says
moar all your base are belong to us1
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says
At 3:10 is the statement, “your [kufr] banners, which our prophet said would reach 80.” What is the reference for this number in Islamic scripture (aya or hadith)? Also, at 3:20, the word Dabiq appears on the screen, but the narration sounds like “D’uh!” (i.e., where is the “BEEK” of the last syllable?).
I like the narrator’s “guts and glory” tone of voice. He must have studied a lot of commercials like
JIMJFOX says
‘Our prophet said [they] would reach 80 in number and then
the flames of war will finally burn you on the hills of death.
“burn you on the hills of death”. Hmmm…. I think a demonstration
of this scenario is needed. Small tactical nuke by Tomahawk, or very
big thermobaric weapon delivered to an ISIS- occupied outpost.
Followed by a polite request-
“What does allah want you to do next? Would you like some more?”
Jay Boo says
Muslims must shake their bloodied fists and always focus their attention on ‘the other’
They look “OUTSIDE” because they have nothing “INSIDE”
Just like their evil buffoon, Muhammad.
? says
Soldiers are only as strong as the people leading them allow them to be, currently US presidents and policy has been dismally feckless and woefully ineffective. “Fighting for Liars, fornicators….” (and I’ll add weaklings to this list) In a world where males soldiers were encouraged to wear high heels and “walk in her shoes“, presidents waste time and money on expensive missiles and politically correct policy, why wouldn’t they think Americans are weak? Not that I have a foolproof solution but it seems to me the best way to do this is to:
1 identity the problem-Islam and the flaws thereof.
2 cut them off at the root- now that the problem has been identified, Muslims like any other malevolent group can be monitored, mosques breeding terrorists can be shut down, and those who support them can be identified, humiliated, punished severely and ultimately deported.
3 utilize fear against the enemy- in a street fight, fear and intimidation tactics are pro werful weapons against the enemy, in war which is essentially a street fight on a much grander scale the use of fear tactics have helped societies win in the past- fear of super weapons, large animals, rumors of cannibalism, and fear of the utilization of taboos religious or social. It is not wrong to threaten the enemy with pigs/pig products, an informal burial, and other taboos. These are not the sort who would consider basic human rights or abide by a piece of paper responsible for politically correct wars, the only thing that gets through to them is violence and fear.
finish the job- with their base of support cut off and measures set to curb any further support, send in troops to raze the bases to the ground and “sow the land with salt”
As the saying goes: “Desperate times call for desperate measures” — I have said nothing new, these are desperate times and we don’t need to waste money on expensive missiles, and plans that literally do not have an endgoal of comple victory–the enemy will only get stronger and the bloodshed will never stop.
This is the reaping 666
Renee says
Your Allah is not my God.
My God does not glorify war and death and hate.
You do not like the West but use all their technology. Hypocrites.
Angemon says
A step up from the “JV team”…
The OIC – Organization of Islamic Cooperation – has 57 states spread over four continents (counting “Palestine” as a state). Since ISIS is allegedly not islamic and is allegedly distorting islam, shouldn’t all of them officially oppose it?