Over at The Geller Report, I address an increasingly common claim among Leftists and their Islamic supremacist allies:
Last Thursday, Egypt executed Abel Habara, the leader of an Islamic State-aligned jihad group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, for his leading role in several jihad massacres. In response, the Islamic State (ISIS) vowed “a volcano of jihad” against Egypt. And so once again we saw a jihad group acting as if it had been provoked to jihad by the actions of its foes – echoing the claim of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party and the establishment propaganda media, that President-elect Donald Trump’s supposedly hateful and incendiary rhetoric toward Muslims aids in jihad recruitment.
The establishment media has been running a series of stories since the election with the not-so-hidden subtext that Trump’s policies regarding Muslims will only make the global jihad worse. They claim he provides fodder to the jihadis that they can use to recruit Muslims who might otherwise have been peaceful. The political and media elites have internalized the idea that various things we do provoke the jihadis — Trump’s rhetoric, the proposed immigration ban, drawing cartoons of Muhammad, etc. — and if we just stop doing them, all will be well.
But is this really true? The Abel Habara case offers an instructive analogy. He was executed for his jihad activity. Because he was executed, the Islamic State vowed more jihad activity. See, any pushback, any resistance to the jihad threat is taken by Islamic jihadis as a new provocation. They will throw it up at those who are resisting as being the cause of more jihad: Because you have executed our man, or Because you want to limit Muslim immigration, or Because you have bombed our training camps, or what have you, we will rain down death upon you. But the execution didn’t provoke the jihad, as Habara himself was waging jihad already. The execution is just the latest pretext for jihad. There was a different pretext before Habara was executed, and there will be another later.
Yet there does seem to be more to the idea that Trump is provoking jihadis. After all, Abu Omar Khorasani, an Islamic State commander in Afghanistan, said this about Trump: “This guy is a complete maniac. His utter hate towards Muslims will make our job much easier because we can recruit thousands.”
It is true that the Islamic State and al-Qaeda often recruit on the basis of grievance narratives against the West. Maybe they will be able to draw some fighters to their cause by invoking the specter of Trump. But to assume that all would be well if Trump and others would simply stop saying things that provoke Muslims would be naïve. The Islamic State recently explained why in an article in its Dabiq magazine:
Even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam.
This the coup de grace to the claim that Trump is enflaming the jihadis: the jihad imperative is not based on how good the infidels are to the Muslims. The Qur’an simply commands Muslims to wage war against and subjugate infidels, and not just those unbelievers who resist jihad attacks or commit various “provocations.” It makes no exceptions for those who do not fight back, or who do not fight back effectively, or who watch their words. The fact is that they wish to rain down death upon us no matter what we do.
If Hillary Clinton had been elected and had continued the Obama administration’s policies of denial and willful ignorance toward the jihad threat, and had she also facilitated a massive new influx of Muslim migrants, the jihadis would not have been pacified. In fact, they would have been bolder than ever. Their primary motivation for hating us has nothing whatsoever to do with our statements. They hate the United States because we are not a Muslim government that implements Islamic law.
The mainstream media’s avid propagation of the idea that Trump’s victory has cheered the jihadis tells us more about the media’s agenda than it does about the jihadis. Those who decry Trump’s rhetoric as needlessly “provocative” don’t realize, or don’t care to admit, that if we do actually curtail our behavior to suit Muslim sensibilities, the jihadis will not be pacified, but emboldened at the sight of what they will see our weakness. To change our behavior to suit them will only make them more aggressive and demanding — and lethal.

Richard Paulsen says
No. No rhetoric. True that the more you succumb thte worse it will be. The religious faith deciding, Always conquered others. At different times trying to invade Europe. Now more successful than ever and not militarily. Even U.S.A. and all the Western world their aim.
Christian belief telling the believers to turn the other cheek and to love your enemy not good to defend freedom.
Freedom takes defending in the firmest ways.
Richard Paulsen says
732.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/361045/battle-tours-raymond-ibrahim
1448
https://global.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Kosovo-1448-Balkans
1529-1683
http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna
And so on.
TR says
Richard, I agree!
Kindness is taken as a sign of weakness.
God only gave us two cheeks and these jihadis have already smacked both.
Richard Paulsen says
Right.
Ernie Banks says
I think Robert missed this one. Jihadis kill more Muslims than anyone else. Converting to Islam offers no protection. If you profess Islam, then they appoint themselves as The Keepers of the True Faith, and judge you according to Sharia. More often than we care to imagine, they determine the penalty is death, and cut off your head.
So they wage war against the unbelievers, and they wage war against the believers too. Face it: they think that killing others makes them holy.
moray watson says
Jihadis do not kill muslims, jihadis kill apostates.
gravenimage says
Muslims have always slaughtered other Muslims, as well as Infidels.
Angemon says
Well, if one ignores, willingly or not, the centuries of jihad waged by muslims against non-muslims that preceded Trump’s jump to the political scene, one might believe the nonsensical rhetoric about Trump “playing right into the hands of terrorists” because it plays right into their pre-established beliefs. But ignorance is not an excuse in the age of the internet.
Ciudadano says
Jihadists have been killing people long before DT utter the word Islam. Jihadists provocation is in Islamic scriptures. JIhadist violence is just the tip of the iceberg. The body of the iceberg is islamic culture of intolerance againts non-muslims emanating from islamic scriptures and history.
JIhadists violence is just one many ways islamic intolerance materializes. There are “334 million persecuted Christians in the world, according to Aid to the Church in Need”. Most of them in islamic countries. Non-muslims daring to live in islamic countries endure in a daily basis harassment, threats, discrimination, arson, bulling, abductions, forced conversions, etc.
There will be jihadist while islamic intolerance and human right violations persist in islamic countries. Islamic intolerance is not going to change until an universal pruning of islamic believes and scriptures.
Dave Flang says
Well, the Germans and other European countries will be happy to know that Trump is responsible the killings. Liberals never make mistakes and are in effect gods that should be worshiped because of their wisdom and knowledge.
It’s over for godless America and all that is left is to support Israel..
common sense says
BHO= looking at a Muslim POTUS the enemy feels emboldened. They kill with joy.
Trump= a voice of opposition the enemy now are angry. They will try to kill with anger.
At least we are getting under their skin, either way their supremacy is WAY beyond arrogance and they are just the same aholes no matter who is POTUS.
They should be less effective with Trump in the WH.
Alicia Sinclair (@CJRyan7) says
An awful and unforgiveable outbreak of logic and fact, reason and deduction here Mr Spencer.
Which is a hate crime and might upset the chickens in the coop-coming home to roost later on.
I myself have a sad face, and am shining a red, yellow and black light(don`t ask) onto a neighbours Mercedes to show how much your article has upset me.
IS will surely be scared of THIS. I am.
Walter Sieruk says
Anything can “provoke’ a jihad- minded Muslim. For example, if a person ,during this time of year ,set of a Christmas tree a jihadist /Muslim might take “offense” at that and therefore be “provoked.” Another example is that in some area’s of Indonesia and the Middle East a person not being a Muslim is enough to “offend ” and “provoke” a devout Muslim. The other year of yahoo.com all I did was keyboard a comment under an article about “American Homeland Security.” the very simple fact that “We as American’s should not live in fear or be afraid to go places or do things because of fear of Islamic terrorism, yet we still should keep a balanced view on things and be aware of our surrounding to be on the lookout for anything that seems not to look right. As in ‘What’s wrong with this picture ?’ The is something wrong is seen inform the police about it…” That little comment I keyboarded must of offended a Muslim who was also a jihadist. For he became, so very, “provoked ” that he keyboard threats of violence in response to my comment. The point is that “Evil is always looking for an excuse.” Therefore ,the words of Donald Trump are the problem. The problem is Islam with its violent and deadly jihad.
gravenimage says
Yup.
DFD says
So what? Muslims are offended by our very existence. I think it would be a good idea for us to be offended. I am warming up towards Trump, ‘had my reservations. But it appears he may follow his words with the corresponding actions, we (Europeans too) can only hope.
TH says
The only thing Muslims understand is overwhelming and it is the only thing that can prevent them from taking over the West, plus Westerners who believe in something, the only thing worth believing is Christianity.
Crusades Were Right! says
“Love trumps hate”
Trump trumps chumps!
; ¬)
gravenimage says
🙂
David says
NO!
underbed cat says
Dabliq magazine prints the truth of their beleifs…..which reflects the doctrine, ironically the left the dosen’t beleive.what is available to know. it is islam…..So the large amounts of new mosques get built in the U.S, and Europe, which harbor the doctrine, teach it, and create the pious. They are welcomed into the workforce, and work for many cities. states and have the appearance of success as refugees with cash and skills. The dawah continues, with multiple births, demands for housing, money and food,. While governments work to accept and provide for the newcomers, some plot to deceive, deflect and destroy. .And eventually they act and try to establish power..to run for office and work towards a caliphate state, with terror, upon which people beleive has nothing to do with with such nice people, And I beleive we can recognize the state of the U.S… once you understand the enemy.
No it is not Trump…he just recognizes the ruse.
TJFreedomjihad says
Here, with RCH, is testimony to reality, perspective, a thousand years of bloody, thieving, destructive, torturing supremacist history created by civilization’s pure vermin losers, and some larger detail of it. Nothing has changed with the gang’s ideology, nor ever can, since that is well proscribed from the beginning. Only the utter destruction, decimation of the gang will change it, as history repeatedly demonstrates, and unfailingly demonstrates, identical to what was done to the slightly lesser loser gang of nazis, and to all who claim membership-muslims, knowingly or just stupidly. They are dedicated to the thieves’ excuse for supremacy, for those thieves who are predators upon civilization’s victims of history, with hatred, destruction, and enforcement by force of terror, unabated forever.
That muslims are historic marauding losers, can be understood in that the hated, worthless gang of the Italian mafia, has an excuse of nobility, if any at best, wherein islam, another gang, can never have any nobility, ever. Nor the German’s version of a gang, nazism. This 1400 years eternal hatred, destruction, that is core tenant to the gang islam, must be destroyed, utterly humiliated, so no crumb of an excuse of the criminally corrupted term ‘honor’ can ever be imagined attached to islam, in any way, by anyone! History unfailingly has been repeatedly teaching that muslims respect only ‘raw harshness’ and destructive power. Ever. They thrive among the uneducated, the miseducated. Muslims must submit to their slave master mohammad ally, Christians dedicate themselves to God.
Even education on the rarer occasions, does not of itself prevent or remove, the muslim gang attraction, to some, especially men. Or there would be no MD’s, Ph.D.’s and others, who retained muslim membership. The credentials of education do not allow them, utterly miserably fail for most, to demand to examine closely, the deceit, lies, and half-truths, to find the full awful tragic truths of their gang, islam. And too, the loser’s hatred born sometimes of jealousy, that anti-Semitism embraces, it must be added, augments the fundamental hatred of the muslim gang, as it had the nazi gang, and likewise, must be blotted out, as an unsupportable conspiracy theory, a typical ‘fake news’ of history. What is especially sad is when any Christians who are fundamentally born of Judaism, which after all, Jesus was, support stupidly, any such lineage hatred, suicidally.
Remember, there were two primary beliefs to give any hope of order to unseen mysteries beyond one’s hands and eyes, of the time, which were the established paganism, and likewise Judaism. Paganism more went along with harshness of life, and Judaism dealt more actively in a monotheistic familial way, bringing an element of love, and Godliness unto life. Jesus, Christianity, brought far more upon the elements of Judaism, unto goodness, more thoroughly, more rigorously unto one another especially through his Self-Sacrifice. And characterizing God, Jesus, and Salvation, unto a more human understanding of those mysteries, which we live among, just the same as our previous generations. Now, we just see more deeply of the mysteries, than could be imagined for 2000 years, or 100 generations ago! Nothing in science, cold un-explaining, un-unifying, science, actually touches upon any explanation of those deep un-ending mysteries. Neither Einstein, a fairly wise individual, nor Hawking, has solved, nor any other human.
Bottom line remains, with the muslim gang, it is pretty much summed up following,
….“BUT THE COUNTRY DID NOT RISE TO THE OCCASION, AND OUR ENEMIES KNOW THAT WE FOUGHT THEM ON THE CHEAP. THEY KNOW THAT WE DID NOT, WOULD NOT, AND WILL NOT TOLERATE THE DISRUPTION OF OUR NORMAL WAY OF LIFE. THEY KNOW THAT THEY DID NOT SEIZE OUR FULL ATTENTION. THEY KNOW THAT WE HAVE HARDLY STIRRED. AND AS LONG AS THEY HAVE THESE THINGS TO KNOW, THEY WILL NEITHER STAND DOWN NOR SHRINK BACK, AND, FOR US, THE SORROWS THAT WILL COME WILL BE GREATER THAN THE SORROWS THAT HAVE BEEN.” -http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/war-in-the-absence-of-strategic-clarity/
somehistory says
It’s logical. When a bully is successful in his bullying and gets what he wants, he bullies harder and more often. When an abusive husband is successful in subduing any tendency in his wife at fighting back, and she cowers and whimpers that she loves him, he is only emboldened to do worse things to her.
moslims are the ultimate bullies…see how they bully their wives and children…and they are only emboldened when someone treats them kindly after they commit rape and murder. They feel it is their *right* to have everything they want and do anything they want to when they want to, to anyone they want.
They are from their father, satan the devil. They act just as he does and commands them.
Peggy says
You have also described the Balkans as well. Centuries of Islamic oppression, finally getting rid of the Ottoman Empire only to lose their land to Muslims once more.
The world watched and did nothing to help the Christians over there. Like you said, the west has only just begun to experience Islam and it’s Islam in it’s infancy yet.
We, in the west, must do all we can to stop them. Do we wish to go through centuries of Islam oppression before we learn?
My heart was breaking when in the 90s Christians were made to be the bad guys and “poor Muslims” were the victims and Christian lands were handed over to them to have. I couldn’t believe that the west, being Christian, was turning their back on Christ and supporting Muslims. I couldn’t believe that the west was so naïve and knew nothing of history of Islam and how it needed to be stopped not helped.
Yes, Pakistan was a result of Muslim conquest. There are still too many Muslims inside India who are not going to stop until they take more. Is the west going to support HIndus or Muslims over there? Have we learned anything yet?
Serbs are going to be remembered in history as genocidal maniacs because they went in hard on the Muslims of Srebrenica. What the western crooked MSM didn’t report is that Muslims were butchering Serbs (including women and children) in the villages surrounding Srebrenica and having a go at genocide themselves which resulted in the response from the Serbs who went hard on them. Does anyone really still blame the Serbs for having enough of Islam and the evil it has brought to them for centuries there?
The west must help liberate non Muslims from the evil where ever it can. We have to stop them once and for all. We cannot leave it for next generations. Pakistan has to be stopped and their nuclear capacity eliminated. Maybe Muslims inside India will pull their heads in then.
Guest says
Everything provokes jihadis
ibrahim itace muhammed says
mr spencer,all muslims will be provoked to resort to jihad war to confront mad donald trump,because no muslim will tolerate the nonsense of ridicling our noble prophet muhammad as a state policy in the name of freedom of speech.the main stream muslims will not go into hiding like terrorists who resort suicide bombings killing innocent people.we will openly confront mad trump,smoke him out,getting runing,track him down and take him to mental assylum.the nukes he threatened to use will not work.many muslims are now conducting scientific research to counter trump’s brigand style.wait and see
Ciudadano says
“no muslim will tolerate the nonsense of ridicling our noble prophet muhammad”
So, how do muslims tolerate reading muhammed’s stories, like the one about the talking donkey?
Frank Courtney says
Your “noble prophet muhammad” was the opposite of noble. According to the evidence in your cult’s literature, the Hadith, he was a murderer, plunderer, rapist, slaver, misogynist and paedophile *.
He said “I was made victorious by terror”. He has been the blueprint for Islamic terror for his followers for 1400 years to the present day. He is the example and motivator followed by all jihadist terrorists.
He was far from noble and was the inverse of the “Perfect Man” as you believe:
He was a narcissistic psychopath and a fake prophet.
* http://www.faithfreedom.org/challenge.htm for Hadith references.
gravenimage says
Appalling apologist for Muslim savagery ibrahim itace muhammed wrote:
mr (sic) spencer,all (sic) muslims(sic) will be provoked to resort to jihad war to confront mad donald (sic) trump,because (sic) no muslim (sic) will tolerate the nonsense of ridicling (sic) our noble prophet muhammad (sic) as a state policy in the name of freedom of speech.
……………………………
The irony is that Trump himself had a depressingly weak response to Muslim death threats over freedom of speech in criticizing the “Prophet” at the Muhammad Cartoon Art Show in Garland.
But what does muhammed care? As long as the West has freedom of speech, it is a target. Actually, even this is a canard–as long as we are Infidels living freely, we are a target.
Note that muhammed likes to characterize Jihad terrorists as “Takfiris”–but then he acknowledges that we are to be considered targets by *all* pious Muslims.
As for the “Prophet” himself, he was a warlord, a pedophile, a caravan-raider, a slaver, a rapist, and a mass-murderer–every decent person *should* criticize such a savage.
More:
the(sic) main stream muslims (sic) will not go into hiding like terrorists who resort suicide bombings killing innocent people.we (sic) will openly confront mad trump,smoke (sic) him out,getting (sic) runing,track (sic) him down and take him to mental assylum.
……………………………
Notice what muhammed considers civilized–what a barbarian!
More:
the (sic) nukes he threatened to use will not work.many (sic) muslims (sic) are now conducting scientific research to counter trump’s (sic) brigand (sic) style.wait (sic) and see
……………………………
Note the projection–that Trump’s talking about keeping out violent Jihadists is “brigandage”,
As for Muslims “conducting scientific research”, I won’t be holding my breath on that one…
“Why Muslim cultures lag behind”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/05/why-muslim-cultures-lag-behind
Champ says
Bravo, Robert. Thank you for stating the Truth about islam and company.
Manuele says
IF THE BASTARDS OF MUHAMMAD DO, GOOD. IT SHOWS THAT THEY ARE INSECURE AND I HOPE WILL HOLD TRUE TO WHAT HE SAID. AND AS FOR THE LEFT, THEY ARE NOTHING BUT A BEETLE DUNG ROLLED AROUND BY A BEETLE THAT NOT ONLY SMELLS FOUL BUT EVERYTHING ELSE STICKS TO IT..
gravenimage says
Robert Spencer: Does Trump’s Rhetoric Really “Provoke” Jihadis?
……………………
All Trump has said is that he will act to keep Jihadists out of the US. If Muslims are “provoked” by this, it just proves there is a problem…
gravenimage says
Oh, the West has suffered at the hands of Islam many times before. Just not for a while, and many here do no know their history.