Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Podcast

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter Nine Podcast Five

Belgium
A recent cover [of a British satirical magazine] proclaimed, “Cameron to bomb ISIS heartland,” with a fighter pilot saying, “Belgium, here we come! Private Eye magazine, 2016
 
“A ghost town, a mummy of a town, it smells of death, the Middle Ages, and tombs.” Charles Baudelaire’s description of Brussels, circa 1860
 
Small Belgium, located in the heart of Western Europe and home to the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union, has more Islamic State (IS) foreign fighters per capita than any other Western country. It is home to many symbols of Western military, cultural, political, and social power. It also has more Muslims per capita than any other country in Europe. Half of the country’s Muslims live in Brussels. Islam mobilizes more people in Brussels than the Roman Catholic Church. Most of Brussels’s Muslims are from Morocco (70 percent).
 
As in other European countries, the Muslim population in Belgium is young. Nearly 35 percent of Moroccans and Turks in the country are under eighteen, compared with 18 percent of native Belgians. Since 2008, the most popular name for baby boys in Brussels has been Mohammed. It is also the most popular name for baby boys in Belgium’s second-largest city, Antwerp, where an estimated 40 percent of elementary school children are Muslim. If there is any Western country that exemplifies the Great Replacement, the transition from a secular to a Muslim Europe, it is Belgium. By early 2016, Belgium’s intelligence services had identified 451 Jihadists. They were, largely, not poor. Only one in six Jihadists came from an impoverished background.
 
Muslim–Non-Muslim Relations
 
Belgium was never an imperial power, except for its holdings in the Congo, nor was it associated with militarism. Nonetheless, Brussels was targeted because, in the words of the State, “Crusader Belgium “has not ceased to wage war on Islam.” Most Belgians were unaware of this image, and many Europeans asked how a country known for its beer, chocolate, and bureaucracy could become a European hotbed of radicalization and extremism. In many ways, Muslims and non-Muslims live very separate lives in the country.
 
To tourists, the Molenbeek area of Brussels feels like a South Asian or modern North African city. It spans 6 square kilometers and, with a population of nearly 100,000, is nearly twice as dense as the average Brussels neighborhood. The Bataclan murders in Paris were planned there, and approximately a hundred men and women from Molenbeek left to fight in the Middle East.
 
Belgium has been a hotbed of radical Islam for more than a decade, breeding organizations like Sharia4Belgium, which want, as their name proclaims, to have Sharia introduced in Belgium. They are loud, intimidating, and belligerent. When the Bataclan murders occurred, one leader of the group said, “We couldn’t hold our joy.” That November 2015 attack in neighboring France panicked Belgium as well. The metro was closed down. Prime Minister Charles Michel said authorities feared a “Paris-style” attack with explosives and weapons at several locations despite the hundreds of soldiers patrolling the city, home to the EU and NATO.
 
But Belgians are concerned about the many attacks that receive little or no media attention. For example, youths threw a petrol bomb under a Christmas tree, setting it aflame. As they ran away, the teens could be heard yelling “Allahu Akbar.” “Today they will set fire to a Christmas tree, tomorrow they will behead a Christian,” wrote one man.
 
The Caliphate
 
The Caliphate used Brussels as its center of planning and operations for two mass murders—the Paris killing of November 2015 and the Brussels attack of March 2016. In the Brussels attack, one of the three chief perpetrators, known as the “man in the hat,” was born in Syria and came to Europe as a refugee in 2015. The Islamic State bragged that it was sending cadres disguised as refugees to Europe to conduct operations.
 
Belgian security officials are worried that the State is planning a primitive biological attack. Security officials found rotting animal testicles in a terror suspect’s backpack. Such material can be used to poison food supplies or to create a deadly concoction aimed at spreading fatal diseases. The Brussels prosecutor issued a statement saying, “The rucksack contents . . . could at no time have been used to make a biological weapon.”
Profile Thirty-Seven: Brussels Is on Fire
 
“I will tell you, I’ve been talking about this a long time, and look at Brussels. Brussels was a beautiful city, a beautiful place with zero crime. And now it’s a disaster city. It’s a total disaster, and we have to be very careful in the United States.” Donald Trump, in reference to the Brussels attack of 2016
 
It was an apocalyptic scene with blood and dismembered body parts scattered. Witnesses heard some men yelling in Arabic before the nail-filled bombs rocked the Brussels airport and the subway system, killing dozens. Witnesses described the ceiling caving in and blood everywhere after two explosions in the departure hall at Brussels Airport. The Islamic State struck with suicide bombers, and the entire country went into lockdown. All flights were canceled, arriving planes and trains were diverted, and Belgium’s terror alert level was raised to maximum. Authorities advised people in Brussels to remain in place, bringing the city to a standstill. Security was also tightened at all Paris airports.
 
“Brussels is on fire” is a hashtag used to express Islamist triumph. The most common remark under the hashtag was “You declared war against us and bombed us, and we attack you inside your homeland.” After each additional attack, ISIS supporters celebrated by writing “Allahu Akbar.” The popular hashtag was inspired by a similar one created by Caliphate supporters after the November 13 Paris terror attacks: “Paris is on fire.”
 
In a British prison, terrorist convicts shouted “Allahu Akbar” after learning of the attack. Some burst into song and dance to celebrate the slaughter. According to one source, the Council of Belgian Imams rejected a recent initiative to pray for the souls of the victims of the Brussels terror attacks on the grounds that praying for non-Muslims ran counter to Islamic law. Several days after the attack, Belgians organized a “March against Fear.” However, it was canceled due to security concerns.
 
Summary
 
For the French, 2015 and 2016 were years of terror. There were shootings, bombings, beheadings, stabbings, and a spectacular vehicular murder. After the murder of Father Hamel, one of his parishioners, a middle-aged woman, expressed the anxiety of many of her country: “Nowhere in France is safe anymore.”
 
In April 2016, Belgian security services conceded that there were probably dozens more Caliphate supporters in the country. European intellectuals asked themselves and their audiences what the small Central European country had done to deserve the attacks and the hatred of their Muslim countrymen. When the killings came, Belgium went into shock. But some Muslim leaders refused to offer a prayer for the dead because it was counter to Islamic law. Others celebrated the slaughter. According to Belgian interior minister Jan Jambon, “a significant section of the Muslim community danced” when attacks took place. Belgians who were fighting for the Caliphate in the Middle East tweeted their joy to former neighbors. From Syria, one said, “We will drink your blood to the last drop.”
 
 
 
 

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon - Chapter Nine Podcast Four

.In this excerpt from Chapter Nine, we examine the response of  French leaders to the upsurge in killings and turn to the growing influence of Islam in France and Belgium.
 
Foreign Fighters
 
French foreign fighters, along with other Westerners, are reeling from a series of military setbacks in Syria and Iraq and have been battered by multiple airstrikes. The Caliphate is hemorrhaging foreign volunteer fighters, keeping intelligence services on edge. By June 2016, at least 248 French Jihadis had returned to France, while 666 were still in the Middle East. Other seasoned, dedicated fighters have also returned.
 
The proportion of French women in the State has increased to 35 percent of French members. Observers speculate that women in the Caliphate are being groomed for more violent activities in the Middle East and in France. Already active in domestic operations, logistics, and recruiting, they are likely to become more violent.
 
French counterterrorism leaders anticipate further attacks by individuals who detonate powerful bombs concealed in vests. Individuals would attend crowded events and shopping areas and detonate the explosives. The goal is to immobilize France. Islamic State is likely to use car bombs and other explosive devices as it seeks to carry out more atrocities in France.
 
Profile Thirty-Six: French-Speaking Political Leaders
 
Marion Maréchal-Le Pen—“Either We Kill Islamism or It Will Kill Us”
 
She has been described as a combination of Joan of Arc and Brigitte Bardot. French Member of Parliament Marion Maréchal-Le Pen assumed office at age 22, becoming the youngest parliamentarian since 1791. Four years later, she is one of the NF’s most promising politicians. Heir to a two-generation conservative family tradition, she is the niece of NF leader Marine Le Pen and shares many of her aunt’s views—respect for Western, particularly French, civilization; a strong Catholic identity; and a conviction that France is in a life-and-death struggle with political Islam. “Either we kill Islamism or it will kill us again and again. You are with us and against Islamism, or you are against us and for Islamism.” Her fan base is largely composed of young, traditional Catholic men, who compare Le Pen alternately to Joan of Arc and Brigitte Bardot.
 
Tall, blonde, and attractive, she is more popular than ever and, like Aunt Marine, has distanced herself from her grandfather’s anti-Semitic barbs. After a French priest was murdered in his Norman church, she joined the army reserves in her constituency and invited her countrymen to join her. She enlisted to take the war to the Islamic State and intends to do so in a military uniform and, if need be, with arms.
 
Some Europeans are concerned about an emerging dynasty. One writer spoke of the “Poison le Pens.” “Maréchal-Le Pen, like many on the far right, slipped in under the radar. Would it be enough to hope the voters will swiftly push her back again at the next available opportunity?” She may be voted out, but that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Too many of her countrymen look to the “golden girl of the right” for national leadership.
 
Belgium’s Yves Goldstein—No Chagalls, Dalis, Warhols, or Dreams
 
Yves Goldstein is a council member from the Belgian town of Schaerbeek and chief of staff to the minister-president of the Brussels Capital Region. He does not share Le Pen's political pedigree, but he faces similar challenges. Belgium and France face unprecedented and increasingly frequent outbursts of Islamic radicalism and violence. However, unlike Le Pen, he largely blames Europeans, not Muslims, for the tinderbox. If Marion Le Pen embodies an invigorated pushback against the mounting Islamic presence in Europe, Goldstein exemplifies the multicultural bridge builder.
 
The council member insists his country’s young Muslim rage is driven by ethnic alienation and poverty. The attacks have little to do with true Islam. Radicals cherry-pick violent verses to militarize the unemployed young. But, according to Goldstein, the real driver of radicalization is alienation. As for the terrorists, “religion for them is a pretext.”
 
The youth have no connection to the larger society because that society has excluded them and encouraged them to ghettoize. “We failed!” he said. “We failed in Molenbeek and Schaerbeek, too, to ensure the mixing of populations.” This failure, in turn, bred anger, crime, and radicalization. “We have neighborhoods where people only see the same people, go to school with the same people.” The youth of Molenbeek, he said, live “in a little box” that needs to be opened up.
 
This, he explains, is why there is such support for the Caliphate among Muslim communities in Belgian cities. According to his estimates, 90 percent of the high school seniors in Molenbeek and Schaerbeek described the Brussels attackers as “heroes.” Goldstein’s parents were Holocaust survivors who found refuge in Belgium, but all the Jews have now left Schaerbeek, and the last two synagogues are being sold and may be converted into mosques. In his 2012 election campaign to Schaerbeek, the Socialist Goldstein was accused of “stabbing Palestinians in the back.”
 
But Goldstein wants, above all, to integrate Muslims. For Goldstein, the most powerful antidote to narrowness and intolerance is liberalism. Western literature and art can draw alienated Muslims out of their cultural islands. He further argues that just as the West can draw inspiration from the classics of Islam’s Golden Age, so can Belgium’s Muslims find cultural enrichment in the West. Goldstein laments, “These young people will never go to museums until 18 or 20—they never saw Chagall, they never saw Dalí, they never saw Warhol, they don’t know what it is to dream.”  
 
 
 
 
 

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter Nine Podcast Two

Welcome to an excerpt from Jihad and the West, Black Flag over Babylon by Mark Silinsky, with a foreword by Sebastian Gorka. It was published by Indiana University Press in Bloomington and Indianapolis. This reading is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security. This excerpt comes from chapter nine and examines two cases of Westerners who became militant Islamists.
The statistics are stomach-churning: almost 250 innocents have been murdered in France in the past eighteen months by terrorists—more than the total number of French nationals killed by them in the entire twentieth century.
While police, military, and paramilitary personnel are prepared and alert for attack, many French engaged in civil society are not. Many attacks come without warning and are directed against persons completely unconnected with national security. Some Islamist attacks are difficult to explain. A man-and-woman couple armed with a knife and an axe and shouting “Allahu Akbar” attacked a charity leader at a soup kitchen near Paris. The attackers allegedly called him an “infidel dog,” but the charity leader fed Muslims out of compassion.
The look of Paris changed after the 2015 attacks, with more dog patrols, random checks at gates and in terminals, video surveillance cameras, and “profilers”—police officers, sometimes in plain clothes—around public transportation venues. Steps may go further; right-wing politicians reiterated calls for preventive detention or electronic bracelets for suspected Islamists, longer prison sentences, shutting down mosques, and deporting radical imams
The Caliphate
Pro-Caliphate activists have partnered with French Islamist organizations from the beginning of the State. They have shouted support for the Caliphate at demonstrations and waved the “black flag of Jihad,” which quotes the Shahada—“There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” By January 2016, France was host to 8,250 radical Islamists, a 50 percent increase over the previous year. As in Britain and France, Islamists have infiltrated the civil services, police forces, and armed forces. According to one report, police officers broadcast Muslim chants while on patrol. France is between 9 and 11 percent Muslim, and 16 percent of French citizens have a positive opinion of the Caliphate. This percentage increases among younger respondents, spiking at 27 percent for those aged eighteen to twenty-four.
 
Profile Thirty-Four: A French Girl and a French Woman
In France, more teenage girls than boys joined the Caliphate in 2016. Among recruits, women began to outpace French male residents preparing to travel to the Caliphate or who had already done so.
“The Story of A”
It is sometimes difficult to determine which factors drive the transition from conventional politics and everyday life to a full embrace of the Caliphate’s beliefs, values, and aspirations. Some teenagers who live uneventful, seemingly normal lifestyles have become Caliphate propagandists or gunmen. But the full-turn conversions and blood lust of some converts beggar the imagination. This is the story of “A.” Because A is not an adult, her full name was not released, but authorities did reveal that she was Jewish, one of two known French Jews to join the State, and she had been raised in a religious home. Her parents were described as “loving and open,” and she was an outstanding student until she found Islam online. She began to wear a veil, but this did not mask her increasing hatred of the West, France, and Jews.
 
A is certainly an anomaly within the Islamic State's spiritual ranks. According to a French anthropologist who extensively studied French women in the State, most converts to Islam come from atheistic homes with spiritual voids. But A was raised in a religious home. Her parents don’t know what happened to her. A feels obligated to kill her parents because they are not Muslim. Many people convert to Islam, very few of whom feel compelled to kill their parents.
A’s mother and father moved to a new apartment because of their daughter’s Jihadi ties, and they keep their address a secret. They are worried about their daughter attacking them, as she has repeatedly sworn to do. Perhaps some Friday, as they are lighting candles, breaking bread, and saying prayers over their Sabbath meal, their daughter will storm into their home brandishing a butcher knife and lunge at them, shouting, “Allahu Akbar.”
Emilie’s Manhunt
Emilie converted to Islam at age seventeen and changed her name to Samra. She began wearing a niqab because she believed it would help her attain the highest level of paradise. However, she began wearing it only after the French government banned it in 2012. A female journalist remarked that without her heavy clothing, Emilie/Samra is strikingly pretty. She takes Islam very seriously, and when Emilie thought her son was possessed by a demon, she shook her boy, yelling, “Jinn [a jinn is a spirit], leave my son!” According to Emilie’s account, the jinn quickly left her son.
 
As with many European converts to Islam, Emilie had a tough childhood. She lamented, “My father has erased me from his heart.” He left the family when Emilie was two years old, and her experiences with men never improved. She described her life as “a series of failures.” She dropped out of school and became both a Muslim and a barmaid. She married an Islamic man who impregnated her, but he beat her, sold drugs, and went off to prison.
 
She looked for a new man and advertised for a “virile and pious Muslim.” One suitor claimed to be a former friend of bin Laden, which initially impressed Emilie because she admired bin Laden and mourned his death. But Emilie later became convinced that this man had never met bin Laden and had made up the story to get her into bed. After he published a selfie with a naked Emilie, she broke off the relationship.
Emilie hoped to travel to the Islamic State to find the right kind of man. But police were on to her, froze her bank account, and kept an eye on her. She supports violence against nonbelievers, including those killed in Paris. Nonetheless, she insists, “I am French, born French. I consider myself a human being. I am no monster.”
 
 

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon - Chapter Nine Podcast Three

 
Attacks
 
The Islamic State has aggressively targeted France. In 2015, Islamic State spokesperson Abu Muhammad al-Adnani demanded, “If you can, kill a disbelieving American or European—especially the spiteful and filthy French—or a Canadian.” Why were the French singled out as particularly “filthy”? According to the Clarion Foundation, there are several reasons. First, France fights. Its soldiers have been battling Jihadis around the world, from Syria to Timbuktu. The French approve of the French armed forces' intervention in Iraq, and 70 percent support the air strikes in Syria.
 
The Caliphate views France as a leading infidel state and one committed to destroying its organization and similar Islamist organizations around the world. Furthermore, French leaders, unlike many other Western leaders, have asserted that their country is at war with a variant of Islam. The French ambassador to America later clarified, saying, “We are at war with radical Islam. It means that right now . . . Islam is breeding radicalism, which is quite dangerous for everybody.” This language is much sharper than that of most other Western leaders.
 
Further, the Caliphate and other Islamists despise French civilization, which is centered on and helped create the Western canon. France is the home of the Enlightenment and promotes liberal values. In 732, France held the thin line of European civilization at the Battle of Tours. Later, the nobility and commoners fought in the Crusades. Some symbols are unendurable to the Caliphate. The acerbic, anti-religious Charlie Hebdo weekly, the Bataclan theater, home to Western music, police and military personnel, and Bastille Day are hateful signs for Islamists.
 
In July 2016, a Tunisian Jihadist plowed a rented eighteen-ton truck through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France. At full throttle, the driver zig-zagged through spectators who had come to enjoy the fireworks and patriotism. The driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, was shot dead while yelling “Allahu Akbar,” but not before killing eighty-four people, including ten children, and injuring over a hundred more. Babies lay dead in the street, having been jolted from their buggies, which were crushed during the mile-long killing spree. There were twenty-seven nationalities among the dead. Before the blood was cleaned from the pavement, the Caliphate’s fans flooded social media with posts celebrating the event.
 
The Caliphate claimed responsibility. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, who agree on very little, viewed the carnage through the same lens. Secretary Clinton said, “I’d even call this World War III. It’s a very different kind of war.” Her rival, Trump, echoed the same words: “This is war.”
 
Profile Thirty-Five: “Kiss the Devil”
 
Some survived the rampage in Nice by pure chance. “I was supposed to be there on Friday night,” said a twenty-eight-year-old journalist of the web magazine French Metal who struggles with survivor’s guilt. “I had a ticket but couldn’t find anyone who wanted to go. It was pure chance.” She lived, but several of her friends died, and she wept in front of a makeshift memorial at the Bataclan theater in Paris. Others wept, too, for the eighty-eight people who were killed and the scores more who were wounded.
 
The theater was one of six attack sites where coordinated shootings and suicide bombings killed at least 129 people. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks. The terrorists shot anything that moved in the theater, which has hosted artists from Edith Piaf to Prince. Elsewhere in Paris, on November 13, 2015, their Caliphate-connected associates killed without mercy anyone they believed to be non-Muslim. They struck cultural targets in Paris’s vibrant east end, which teems with nightlife. A local woman explained, “They were attacking culture—music, celebrations, everything fanatics don’t like.”  The group Eagles of Death, a California heavy metal band, had played a favorite, “Kiss the Devil.”
 
As they shot into the audience, the killers laughed, played with some musical instruments, and asked, “Where’s the singer? Where are the Yanks. Some of the doomed were shot while huddling in dressing rooms. Some of the survivors played dead. Others threw their bodies on the injured, young, or female to save them. Some of the victims died quickly and others slowly, having bled out on the floor. For some it was a family catastrophe. A thirty-five-year-old mother clutched her son against her, probably saving his life. But her mother, the boy’s grandmother, was killed.  The killers kicked the fallen victims to check for signs of life. One man lived thanks to his artificial leg.
 
Very quickly after the attack, Western leaders assured the world that it had nothing to do with Islam. Others said they refused to fight hate with hate, words that would presage US Attorney General Lynch’s sentiments after the Orlando killing, less than one year later. One Frenchman told the Caliphate, “I will not give you the gift of hating you.” His wife, Helen, had been murdered with the rest. The widower said, “I do not know who you are, and I do not want to know. You are dead souls.”
 
T
 

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter Nine Podcast Three

 
This reading continues to explore tensions and pathologies in Muslim-non-Muslim relations in Britain and Germany. We hear European girls and young women pleading to be heard.
 
The Caliphate Abroad, Part Two: The French Speakers
 
“It took Hitler 10 years to control France. But our state shook France in an hour from the north to south. May Allah bless you O soldiers of the Caliphate.” A Caliphate supporter’s tweet after a French priest was beheaded, July 2016
 
Introduction
France and Belgium have proportionately large Muslim populations. They are also venues for Caliphate attacks and breeding grounds for Islamism. The Islamic State struck both countries in 2015 and 2016 and changed the lives of their citizens.
 
France
 
Muslim–Non-Muslim Tensions
 
In France, relations between Muslims and non-Muslims have long been strained. The French absorbed many French nationals who fled Algeria in the 1960s. Subsequently, waves of North Africans arrived in the following decades. Elites predicted assimilation on the basis of earlier successes. But relations, always tenuous, became tense by the twenty-first century, as discussed in chapter 2.
 
By the new millennium, many leaders and opinion-makers in Europe were nervous about growing Islamic communities. French intellectual Alain Finkielkraut coined the term “homesick at home.” He and his compatriot, Eric Zemmour, sometimes called the “Rush Limbaugh of France,” write wistfully of “les Trente Glorieuses,” the thirty years following liberation from the Nazis until the leftist cultural ascent of the mid-1970s. In 1965, few Europeans could have imagined that their compatriots would be too afraid to sketch religious cartoons a half-century later. Fewer still could have imagined that groups such as the Islamic State would appeal to European Muslims who were raised on the Continent and were often well educated.
 
Today, French intellectuals still speak in hushed tones about Islam, lest they offend the sensitivities of a watchful and politically active Islamic constituency. As mentioned in chapter 3, some critics are scared they could be harmed, fired, or taken to civil or criminal courts for making the wrong comment about Islam in France. Bridget Bardot was threatened with prison and fined for opining that France was “being invaded by sheep-slaughtering Muslims.” Michel Houellebecq was tried for defaming Islam in 2001, when he called it “the most stupid religion.” These high-profile cases serve as warnings to critics of radical Islam.
 
In Britain, Germany, and the United States, ordinary people have become more alarmed by Islam than politicians or intellectuals. After two deadly attacks in 2015, the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan killings, the image of Muslims plummeted in the eyes of the French, even among socialists. The image would dive even further after the truck attack on the Riviera. By spring 2016, 47 percent of the French saw Islam as a threat to French identity, and many wanted to halt mosque construction. This has bolstered the fortunes of right-wing politicians in France, particularly Marine Le Pen of the right-wing National Front (FN), who is expected to run for president in 2017.
Patrick Calvar, the head of France’s general directorate for internal security, warned that his country was “on the verge of civil war” between Muslim communities and French nationalists. Gilles Kepel, a political scientist and specialist in Islam, also claimed that France is on the verge of a major social explosion because of Muslims’ failure to integrate into French society. Islamic fundamentalists despise social liberalism and sexual license, which helps explain honor killings and Sharia patrols. The Islamic State has called for attacks on symbols of Western sexual decadence, such as swinger clubs, but it finds any criticism of Muhammad even more offensive.
 
The killing in Nice was particularly explosive. Unlike cosmopolitan Paris, Nice is politically and culturally conservative. Many of the non-Muslims are descended from the white Algerian population, known as “pied noirs.” Nice also has a large Muslim population. Said one observer, “If you wanted to light the fuse of race war in France, Nice would be a clever choice.”
 
 
 

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter Eight Podcast Nine

Welcome to an excerpt from Jihad and the West, Black Flag over Babylon by Mark Silinsky, with a foreword by Sebastian Gorka. It was published by Indiana University Press in Bloomington and Indianapolis. This reading is presented by Kensington Security Consulting, which brings education to national security. This excerpt comes from chapter eight and explores the mental health of Western Islamists.
 
The Caliphate
 
            Before 2016, some of the Caliphate’s recruiting was loud, open, and unmasked. There was unfettered street proselytizing, and when young men traveled in packs, they were sometimes emboldened. For example, a group of seven men sang a war chant favored by the Islamic State and tried to recruit fellow passengers while riding on the Berlin U-Bahn railway. They were singing one of the Jihad nashids, mentioned earlier. Some of this was caught on video and posted on social media. This further tarnishes the image of the migrants, but it draws some troubled young German men to the ranks of Islamists, where they find camaraderie. According to the German military security service, twenty-nine former German soldiers have traveled to Syria and Iraq, and twenty-two soldiers were classified as Islamists, as of spring 2016.
 
            In 2015 and 2016, German police arrested many suspects for terrorist-related activities. They expect more. Some security officials speculate that the Caliphate will plan a sustained attack using the Mumbai model. This was a sophisticated three-day attack, in Mumbai, India, in which simultaneous sites were struck, including a railway station, a Jewish institution, two hotels, and a restaurant. It garnered world media attention, and the Indian military and paramilitary forces appeared unprepared and incompetent. Some killers acted independently; others were more coordinated. German security is also concerned about Istanbul-style attacks, and so is the German public. One survey found that almost two-thirds of Germans expect an attack like those in Istanbul or Brussels to happen at a German airport.
 
Returning in Singles and Doubles
 
            The Caliphate ordered its support base to kill at will and with fury. Its tactics of choice were shooting, stabbing or gutting with a knife, running over, hurling victims from a building, choking, or poisoning Western symbols of authority. Their followers responded with random, unexpected, and lethal attacks. This has caused great social anxiety, particularly for police officers who want to patrol the street but often cannot do so for fear of their safety.
 
            German police units are facing something unprecedented. There are stabbing sprees of random pedestrians, similar to those committed by Palestinians in Israel. For example, in Hanover, a fifteen-year-old girl with a German passport and Moroccan ancestors, as well as suspected ties to the Caliphate, stabbed a police officer in the neck. The stab came as a bolt from the blue.
 
            The Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack on board a train in Germany in mid-July 2016 that left three people seriously injured, according to the terrorist group’s news agency. The announcement came hours after an axe-wielding teenage Afghan refugee attacked passengers on a train. He was shot and killed by police. During an investigation, officials said they found a hand-painted flag of the Islamic State group in the attacker’s room. During the attack, he yelled “Allahu Akbar.”
 
            German courts are ramping up to handle cases of residents and nationals returned from Middle East fighting. Germans are trickling home in singles and in pairs, hoping to reintegrate into the society they left. The Federal Criminal Police Office estimates that 820 people with German passports have left Europe to fight in Syria and Iraq with the Islamic State, and by January 2016, an estimated 250 fighters had returned. According to a former Jihadi who served the Caliphate, those who return are “treated like heroes” in the Muslim areas of Germany.
 
            When German fighters return, they sometimes face the justice system. Referred to in the German press as “Jihadi tourists,” they chose to return to Germany because they were “disappointed” with the Islamic State. In 2014, a court sentenced a twenty-year-old man who had traveled to Syria to fight alongside a group associated with the Islamic State to three years and nine months in juvenile detention, marking the country’s first conviction of a returned Jihadist. Another Caliphate fighter who returned to Germany was sentenced to four and one-half years in prison for belonging to a terrorist organization. The twenty-five-year-old German national traveled to Syria in October 2013 and later swore allegiance to the Caliphate. He participated in interrogations and served as a prison guard. He may have killed people, and German authorities are determined to find out. He is Harry S., profiled below.
 
Profile Thirty-One: Harry S.—When They Return
 
            The case of Harry S. illustrates the challenge Western societies face when Western Caliphate fighters return home. Harry S. was put on trial in Germany for belonging to a terrorist organization. Baptized as a Catholic, he grew up in a poor part of Bremen. His parents emigrated from Ghana to Germany and then London to build a better life. Harry S. certainly had above-average intelligence and studied engineering at university for a while. Something happened to him emotionally, he converted to Islam, and his religious Christian mother threw him out of her house. But London’s mosques welcomed him, and so, too, did minor criminal syndicates. Serving as a lookout for a robbery, he was arrested and imprisoned, where he was radicalized. Upon release, he returned to Bremen, married, and resolved to travel to Syria to fight the Jihad, which he did.
 
            Harry reported that he underwent several arduous phases of commando training. There were 10 training levels. “Hardly anyone reaches the last; most die before that.” However, he wanted to leave because of the suffering he witnessed and the lack of compassion. “Humanity—that is of interest to nobody.” In Palmyra, his nerves were shattered, and his conscience jolted as he watched blindfolded prisoners standing in rows, riddled with bullets. A few weeks later, he fled to Turkey and then to Germany, where he was arrested at Bremen Airport.
 
            German prosecutors are not convinced that Harry’s stories are truthful. His account of events has changed, and his sudden pangs of morality are dubious. Did he voluntarily leave the commando school, or did he wash out? In Palmyra, did he merely witness the killings, or did he take part? Is there evidence to support his claims? Certainly, other Westerners who return home will face similar questioning. Harry could face up to ten years in prison for belonging to a terrorist organization. Regarding the foreign fighters remaining with the Caliphate, Harry has greater respect for the French than for the Germans. The French rushed the enemy and blasted their weapons into their battle lines. The French had élan. The Germans were more reluctant. In Harry’s words, when it came to fighting, “the Germans always got cold feet.”
 

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon Chapter Eight Podcast Eight

Emily, 2015
            In October 2015, “Emily” of Rotherham, England, wrote an open letter to social services. She, like Bibi, weeps with the frustration, anger, and fatalism of a girl who feels powerless and is convinced that the civil service and civil society have abandoned her.
 
To the medical professionals who did nothing—Were you blind to my bruises, multiple sexually transmitted infections . . . You gave me treatment, I took the medication but how could it work when I was being raped by the same men every day . . . Were you deaf to my pleas for help? Did you even listen when I told you what was happening? No. You had me down as a sex worker.
 
            To the school as a whole—Did you never wonder why I missed so much school? While you were teaching students math, science, and English. I was in a cold room of a half-renovated flat. Lying naked on a bed while approximately eight men were taking turns raping me.
 
            To the policeman who told my mother I was a known prostitute when she came to you for help—I was a child. Is there such thing a child prostitute? You were the most insensitive officer I ever met, and the only reason I can think of for you being how you were, is that maybe you were covering up out of fear of causing racial tension?
 
            To the politically correct government who refuses to see that Muslims are a problem, the idiots that think Islam is compatible with our ways—Think again. Open your eyes to the million girls already raped and trafficked by Pakistani Muslim gangs. I wait and I wait. I wait for justice, it’s never served.
 
From Willkommenskultur to Pegida
 
            By summer 2016, polling revealed that, in the view of many Germans, Muslim migrants were no longer very welcome. The era of Willkommenskultur, or Welcome Culture, quickly faded. By then, less than a third of native Germans, or 32.3 percent, still wanted more immigrants, and half strongly associated the migration with terrorism. Some Germans saw the million-migrant inflow as the latest twist in a continuing cultural death spiral, reflecting a deep national self-loathing. Importing Muslims to serve as a vast labor pool for menial jobs was, in this view, shortsighted and, ultimately, self-destructive. For them, Eurabia is a teeming Muslim ghetto within Germany. It is poor, unassimilated, angry, and religiously supremacist. They fear Yugoslavian-style balkanization and, then, disintegration.
 
            Fearing Islamic swamping of German society and anger at censored dissenting voices, antimigrant activists established Pegida, short for Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident. Some called it blatant racism, and its controversial leader did not help his cause by calling foreigners “cattle” and “trash.” Some intellectuals have argued that Pegida has become a catch-all movement for frustrated Europeans who are turning to nationalism to cope with social trends they do not understand or welcome. Others do not see an alternative.
 
Militant Islam
            The number of Caliphate supporters in Germany continues to grow. Germany’s domestic security services set the number of radical Salafists at over 8,000 in September 2015, and it could be over 10,000 by summer 2016. By summer 2016, 60 percent of the new arrivals had no documentation, making it difficult and sometimes impossible to verify their claims of nationality and age. The radical element in Germany is growing. Some of the Islamist groups have canvassed the refugee centers for those who share their radical views or those who look like easy marks for conversion to the cause. Under the flag of humanitarian assistance, radicals recruit for the Caliphate, and the police are challenged to stop it or even fully understand it. Guarding against the Caliphate or other Islamists is fraught with problems.
 
            First, German police, like other European police and security forces, often cannot verify the identity of migrants. In 2015, the German border police were only able to obtain 10 percent of the migrants’ fingerprints. Hundreds of thousands of migrants could not be identified by their travel documents, many of which were forged.
 
            Second, it is difficult to monitor and penetrate domestic Islamist cells, some of which recruit for the Islamic State. There are civil liberties that hamper investigations. There are well-known figures in the German Islamist movement, but many take care to avoid language that might be perceived as threatening. But by late July 2016, many Germans were anticipating a mass killing, like those suffered by Britain, France, Spain, and Belgium. According to a poll released on July 22, 2016, 69 percent of Germans believed that a terrorist attack would hit Germany “soon.” They were right. Later that day in Munich, an Iranian-German, previously unknown to German security professionals, killed nine victims and then himself. Germany had joined the killing club.
 
Profile Thirty: A Long, Hot Summer
 
            Munich had not seen anything like this since the 1972 Munich Olympics. Ali Sonboly, eighteen years old, lured children to a McDonald’s by offering free food. Perhaps the tactic worked; most of his victims were in their teens. He killed nine and then killed himself. Sonboly was an Iranian-German, who didn’t precisely fit the mold of Caliphate killers. Most Iranians are Shia, and the Islamic State is Sunni. After an investigation, the Munich chief of police said, “There is absolutely no link to the Islamic State.” It was a “classic act by a deranged person” and described an individual “obsessed” with mass shootings. When the shooting started, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer initially speculated that a “right-wing” anti-refugee shooting was taking place. At MSNBC, Chris Matthews explained that Germany was undergoing a “nativist attack.” But why, then, did Sonboly yell “Allahu Akbar”?
 
            Two days after the McDonald’s attack, a twenty-one-year-old Syrian refugee killed a forty-five-year-old Polish woman with a machete and injured two other people before being arrested in the southern German city of Reutlingen. Authorities said the assailant and victim knew each other from working in the same restaurant, and the incident was not related to terrorism. Others are not sure.
 
            One day after that, a Syrian man, whose asylum bid had been rejected in Germany, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State on his cell phone. He then tried to get into an outdoor music festival so he could explode his bomb-laden backpack. Having been turned away, he blew himself up outside a wine bar instead, injuring fifteen people. The perpetrator was identified as Mohammad D. The Bavarian interior minister said that he didn’t know if this man “planned suicide or if he had the intention of killing others.” The BBC headlines ran, “Syrian Migrant Dies in German Blast.” The BBC changed the headlines after being mocked on social media. Readers snickered at what they saw as the anodyne and empty wording of the headline. The revised column read, “Syrian Asylum Seeker Blows Himself Up in Germany.” The Caliphate attacker explained his motive. He did it so “Germans won’t be able to sleep peacefully.” Many don’t.
 
            July 2016 ended in an explosion near a migrant processing center near Munich. At first, the police suspected that right-wing extremists had detonated the bombs. But witnesses described several “Arab-looking men” seen fleeing from the scene. By the end of the month, the motive was still unknown. The summer of 2016 rocked Germany as few summers since unification. Rage at the chancellor spewed across the social networks, coining a new hashtag of contempt—”#Merkelsommer.”
 
 
 
 
 

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon - Chapter Eight Podcast Seven

Germany
 
Muslim–Non-Muslim Relations
 
“Of course there are Muslims in Germany. But Islam is not part of the German mainstream culture.”  Alexander Dobrindt, the general secretary of the Christian Social Union, 2011
 
            History follows Germany, and many Germans are sensitive about their global image. Germany never had the colonial associations Britain or France had with the Middle East, although there were some connections in the twentieth century to Muslim states and people. The Ottomans were allied with Germany as a member of the Central Powers in World War I, and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a guest and a minor, though enthusiastic, collaborator of Hitler in World War II. But Germany’s connection to the Muslim world began to develop in earnest during the post-war economic boom, when Turks were invited to live there as guest workers.
 
            For reasons that will be debated for years, Chancellor Merkel invited over one million refugees to settle in Germany and put down roots. She called this influx “an opportunity for tomorrow” and urged her fellow Germans to be “self-confident and free, humanitarian and open to the world.” Amid the world’s greatest refugee wave since World War II, some Germans drew hope from history. In the wake of World War II, twelve million refugees in Germany had fled the Russian army’s onslaught. They were absorbed and helped build the German Economic Miracle of the 1950s and early 1960s. Many Germans were confident that their model could be replicated with their new Muslim neighbors.
 
            But many Germans were unprepared for the current influx of people and are bewildered by Chancellor Merkel’s decision-making. Some offer an economic explanation, noting that Germany’s birth rate is well below replacement, which may lead to an insufficient domestic workforce. Others have suggested that the chancellor wants to purge any lingering traces of German war guilt. There are other, less conventional explanations. Some have turned to psychology, suggesting that, having no children of her own, the chancellor, as leader of a country, has adopted millions of children.
 
Kultur Kampf
 
            Many Germans openly welcomed their new neighbors. Germans gave migrant children teddy bears and candy and offered parents assistance with housing and directions. Some German families took in refugee families and donated their own possessions to donation centers. In November 2015, an Ernst & Young study concluded that Germany would not be able to provide shelter for a projected 370,000 migrants fleeing Middle Eastern misery. The migrant population had soared to many times that figure less than one year later.
 
            However, problems became increasingly apparent. Initially, the press ran stories about cultural idiosyncrasies and clever anecdotes. For example, German nudists were forced to dress when a refugee shelter was built next door. Public swimming pools in Germany struggled with certain Muslim swimming customs; some banned the burka-bikini, or “burkini,” as potentially unhygienic. However, serious problems soon emerged between the cultures. Germans could establish separate swimming times for the sexes, but there were thousands of reports of mass groping by those with “migrant backgrounds.” In Munich, public pools, for instance, published cartoons warning migrants not to grope women in bikinis. The sex-pest dust-ups flared in summer 2016. Sharia patrols yelled at women and children in a nudist swimming pool, calling them “sluts” and “infidels” and saying they should be “exterminated.”
 
            Other anecdotes are ominous. In the summer of 2016, a Muslim set a German woman’s hair on fire at a train platform. Why? According to the Muslim, “She wasn’t wearing a hijab.” Earlier, a Jewish man wearing a kippah, a traditional Jewish head covering, was beaten and kicked by Middle Eastern–appearing men. The victim volunteered at a refugee center in Cologne, where they welcomed Middle Eastern immigrants.
            If any single event drew public attention to the cultural clash, it was the New Year’s Eve 2016 celebration in Cologne, which led to more than 1,000 complaints of molestation. Women and girls reported thefts, molestation, and harassment by Middle Eastern–appearing men. Cologne’s mayor dismissed the assaults as cultural misunderstandings and poor policing.
 
            One of the victims was 15-year-old Bibi Wilhailm, a German girl, whose cri de coeur was censored by Facebook on charges of hate speech. Bibi recounted being harassed by Muslim men. “You [Muslim men] have no right to attack us because we are wearing T-shirts . . . why should we, children, have to grow up in such fear?” She continued, “The politicians live alone in their villas, drink their cocktails, and do nothing . . . Please, do something.” In England, another girl, far more violated than Bibi, pleaded for her voice to be heard. Below are their words.
 
Profile Twenty-Nine: Two Anglo-Saxon Teenage Girls
 
Bibi’s Plea to Germany and Its Men  “You have killed Germany.” Bibi, 2016
 
This comes from a 15-year-old German girl. 
 
“I am almost 16. I would like everyone to know what is going on, what I am authentically feeling at this moment . . . And I am so scared everywhere. . . . It is just very hard to live day-to-day life as a woman. I just want to say that I am not a racist. But one day, a terrible thing happened at the supermarket. I ran all the way home. I was so frightened for my life. There’s no other way to describe it.
           
But more importantly, I cannot understand why Germany is doing nothing!. . . Men of Germany, these people are killing your children, they are killing your women. We need your protection. We are so scared, we don’t want to be frightened to go to the grocery store alone after sunset. One day, my friend and I were walking down the street, and a group of Arabs were protesting and demonstrating. They shouted, ‘Allah! Allah! Allah is the one God! Kill those infidels! Allah Allah!’ What should I do? Should I wear a burka? Why should I have to convert to Islam. . . .
 
            The life of Germany has changed because these people cannot integrate. We give them so much help. We support them financially and they do not have to work. But they only want more babies and more welfare and more money. Men of Germany, please, patrol the streets and protect us. Do this for your women and your children. If you do that, I believe that we will have a chance. Thank you, Angela Merkel, for killing Germany! I have no more respect for you, Merkel. . . . You have killed Germany!
 
 
 
 

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon - Chapter Eight Podcast Six

Militant Islam
           
Britain, like the United States, France, and Belgium, has been victimized by Islamic terror for years. The government has tried to fight, as Prime Minister Cameron called it, the “poisonous Islamist ideology,” while being respectful to Islam. Nonetheless, four out of ten British Muslims want Sharia law introduced into parts of the country. A fifth of the Muslims surveyed expressed sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of the suicide bombers who attacked London. In 2006, then Labour MP Sadiq Khan bewailed how many Muslims “feel disengaged and alienated.” Less than one decade later, there would be twice as many British Muslims fighting for the Caliphate as there would be British Muslims serving in the British armed forces, and Mr. Khan would be Lord Mayor of London.
 
            By fall 2015, British security forces were monitoring more than 3,000 homegrown Islamic extremists. Half of the Islamists on terrorist watch lists live in London, especially in the capital’s east and west, and most others live in the West Midlands and Manchester. Despite efforts to assimilate Muslims into the mainstream of British society, the number of violent suspects under surveillance has risen by more than 50 percent since 2007. Only one in three British Muslims would inform the police if they believed a fellow Muslim was connected to a terrorist organization. British Muslim organizations are, at best, ambivalent about cooperating with police and security forces. Some leaders have disparaged the Prevent Strategy, a national program designed to reduce radicalism. Prevent was based on four pillars: stopping terrorist attacks, preventing people from becoming terrorists, protecting Britons against terror, and mitigating the impacts of terrorist attacks.
 
            Daily trials, arrests, convictions, sentencing, incarceration, and parole of Islamic extremists are part of the British justice system. But there is angst about where to incarcerate the incorrigibly radical, particularly those who are Caliphate supporters. Some criminologists recommend housing them collectively to isolate the contagion or militancy. Others are concerned about the optics of a British Guantanamo Bay or “The British Alcatraz.”
 
Profile Twenty-Eight: Banned in Britain
 
The Home Secretary will seek to exclude an individual if she considers that his or her presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good.
 
Statement from the British Home Office, BBC News, 2012
 
            What do Americans Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Michael Savage have in common? Beyond despising Islam, they share the dubious distinction of being banned from Britain. They are not alone. Duane “Dog” Chapman, a husky, roughly hewn American celebrity bounty hunter who used the “N” word once too often; Albert Speer, the Nazi war criminal; L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology; Pablo Neruda, a Nobel laureate in literature; and Fred Phelps Sr., who founded the antihomosexual Westboro Baptist Church, were all on the eclectic banned-persons list, though at different times. Menachem Begin was on it, then off it, then back on it, and then off it when he died. The list keeps American Klansmen and neo-Nazis off British shores. Many Muslims and leftists petitioned then-Secretary May to keep Republican candidate Donald Trump out of Britain. As the prime minister, her decision is pending.
 
            Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan was banned. Over the years, Farrakhan has applauded Sharia-driven violence and poured scorn on whites and Jews. But in 2001, then-attorney and now-mayor Sadiq Khan had the decision overturned.Khan described the judge’s decision as “brave and sensible.”
 
            But Geller, Spencer, and Savage do not understand why Louis Farrakhan is permitted to visit Britain while they are not. They claim they never advocated violence. In fact, Spencer and Geller planned to lay a wreath at a memorial to British soldier Lee Rigby, who was beheaded by Islamic jihadists in spring 2013. However, the British government wrote to them, “Your presence here is not conducive to the public good.” The government called their rhetoric “Islamophobic.” All are still fighting the ban, and Geller said, “The Magna Carta is dead.” As for the petition to ban Republican nominee Donald Trump from British shores, Geert Wilders said, “Welcome, Donald Trump, to the company of Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and myself.”
 
Radicals in the Ranks
 
            Many elements of Muslim civil society partner with British authorities. But some who advise the British government are themselves radicalized. Some Islamists enter the British civil service intending to advance their agenda, while others are radicalized while serving. Others are not employed by the government but serve as advisers. Some are unmasked by their own sloppiness, while others are exposed through investigations.
 
            The Caliphate likely has other activists working in the government. Accounts supporting the Caliphate can be traced to offices within the national civil service. Far more alarming is the Caliphate’s penetration of the military. A navy officer who trained at one of Britain’s most prestigious maritime colleges joined the State and brought with him an exhaustive knowledge of Britain’s navy and commercial fleet. “This suddenly raises the specter of IS damaging shipping,” said former Royal Navy chief admiral Lord West. Veterans of other services have also shown sympathy for the State. Two radicals, neither of whom served in the military, one still emboldened and one repentant, are profiled below.
 
Profile Twenty-Nine: A Tale of Two Britons
 
Anjem Choudary—Black Flag over Downing Street
 
            British activist and lawyer Anjem Choudary was arrested in August 2015, and many Britons do not understand why it took so long to incarcerate him. Britain’s most notorious radical Muslim preacher was formally charged with enlisting British citizens to support the Caliphate.
            For years, prominent on the radical Islamist scene, Anjem Choudary promised, “One day, the black flag of Islam will be flying over Downing Street.” He is very vocal about this goal. Though a practicing lawyer, he despises any man-made laws, particularly those of his own country. “Who said that you own Britain anyway? You belong to Allah. Britain belongs to Allah, the whole world belongs to Allah. There isn’t anywhere on the earth that I won’t propagate God’s law.”
 
            He has no time for individual countries, which he considers man-made and, therefore, inauthentic political constructs. Countries will “not be liberated by individuals, but by an army. Eventually there’ll have to be a Muslim army. It’s just a matter of time before it happens.” He has many followers.
 
            He promises that the Islamic State offers a delightful lifestyle. “Close your eyes and imagine a society in which everybody has free food, clothing, and shelter. You haven’t got a house? Here is your house. You don’t have to go live in a cardboard box outside the council for a few weeks before they give you a house. You don’t have electricity? Here is free electricity. Here is free water. What else do you want? Do you want a salary? Here, take some money. There is no society like that.”
 
            He hates the Pope, whom, in his words, should be killed for criticizing Muhammad. He seemed pleased with the killing of drummer Lee Rigby. Choudary told his followers that Rigby is being tortured in hell. He said, “If an adult non-Muslim dies in a state of disbelief, then he is going to the hellfire.” He proclaimed, “It’s Cameron who’s guilty, not me.” In September 2016, at the Old Bailey, Choudary was convicted of “inviting support for a proscribed organization.” The proscribed organization was the Islamic State. He was given a five-and-one-half-year sentence.
 
Abu Muntasir—“I Am Sorry”
 
            The “godfather” of the British Jihadis has openly wept in regret for brainwashing young British Muslims to kill in the name of Islam. In the 1980s and 1990s, Abu Muntasir recruited scores of young men to fight in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Burma, Bosnia, Chechnya, and in other distant wars in the name of Jihad. “For me, I always had an inner voice telling me that a lot of this is not right.” He grew to hate himself for promoting Jihad. In recent years, he has partnered with other ex-radical recruiters, including ex-skinheads, gang leaders, and Islamists, to halt the spread of radicalism.
 
            Emmy-winning filmmaker Deeyah Khan made a video about Muntasir and several former extremists. In the film, Muntasir admitted that he encouraged British Muslims to fight abroad and die for Islam. But his conscience began to haunt him when he imagined those whom he recruited as mangled corpses and amputees. Muntasir was convinced that killing or hurting people was contrary to his nature. He had to stop, and he did.
 
            Today, he warns the West of radical Islam. “There is grooming [referring to the radicalization process]. . . . So the parents need to have more communication with their children, they need to have more of an overseeing aspect of how to be a good parent.” As for his past, Muntasir sighed, “Why I have never been arrested, I don’t know.”
 
The Caliphate
 
            As mentioned in chapters 5 and 6, British subjects are well represented in the ranks of the Caliphate. At home, British police and security forces try to balance civil liberties with public security. The Caliphate can fly its black banner in London because, as its former mayor said, “Britain is a free country.” Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London, opined that carrying the flag was “not necessarily the worst thing in the world.” But some Londoners see this as cavalier and have pressed the police to be more aggressive. London police failed to arrest a man who draped himself in an Islamic State flag and strolled past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. On his shoulders was a small child waving a smaller State flag. Some Britons saw this as trespassing the bounds of free speech and wading into the danger zone of incitement. They ask themselves, “What will come next?” Germans ask the same questions.
 
This concludes a reading from Jihad and the West, Black Flag over Babylon, by Mark Silinsky, with a foreword by Sebastian Gorka. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to continue listening to other chapters. The book is available online or at major bookstores worldwide. Dr. Silinsky’s latest book, “Cauldron of Terror – Hamas, Israel, and the World," will be available for purchase in early spring 2026. This reading does not represent the official position of any agency or individual within the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.  
 
 
 

Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon - Chapter Eight Podcast Five

Great Britain
“Many people born in Britain have little attachment to the country, which makes them vulnerable to radicalization.” UK Prime Minister David Cameron, referring to some Muslims
 
Muslim–Non-Muslim Relations
 
The Muslim population of Britain surpassed 3.5 million in 2015, representing approximately 5.5 percent of the overall population of 64 million. Britain has the third-largest Muslim population in the European Union, after France and Germany. As the number of Muslims in Britain swells, so do concerns about their influence in society. Many Britons, particularly the less educated, are concerned about a social transformation they cannot prevent.
 
As discussed in Chapter 4, this tension is reflected in the media, particularly in tabloids and on radio and television talk shows. The year 2016 marked the tenth-year anniversary of the publication of Melanie Phillips’s Londonistan. Her disquieting neologism “Londonistan” resonated with many public intellectuals and became a buzzword in debates about Islamic influence. Non-elites organized among themselves.
 
Largely in response to the growth of Muslim populations, the English Defence League was launched in May 2009 among the working class. It was widely loathed by the intelligentsia but resonated in many rough-and-tumble neighborhoods. Its creator, Tommy Robinson, was physically assaulted on video by Islamists in his hometown of Luton. Britons increasingly share his concerns about the march of Islam. A 2010 survey found that 63 percent of Britons did not disagree with the statement “Muslims are terrorists,” and 94 percent agreed that “Islam oppresses women.” Three-quarters of those interviewed believe that Islam is bad for Britain. The numbers are higher today.
 
In cities, many working-class parents fear that their daughters will become prey to Pakistani child-rape gangs and prostitution rings, and that municipal officials will be hampered by fear of being charged with anti-Muslim animus. The autobiography Girl for Sale described the sexual exploitation of Lara McDonnell, who was victimized by a Muslim pedophile gang when she was only thirteen years old. Some youths fear their nation’s future. A 2015 survey of ten-to-sixteen-year-old British children revealed that 35 percent agreed that “Muslims are taking over England.”
 
Police and security forces find themselves hindered in conducting anti-terrorism planning. From patrolling the streets to entering homes to interviewing suspects to conducting training exercises, all activities must be conducted with religious sensitivity. In an antiterrorist exercise conducted in 2016 to test emergency response capabilities, a participant pretending to be a Caliphate operative yelled “Allahu Akbar.” The chief constable who ran the exercise was forced to ask forgiveness from the Muslim community. He apologized, “On reflection, we acknowledge that it was unacceptable to use this religious phrase immediately before the mock suicide bombing, which so vocally linked this exercise to Islam.”
 
Other Britons are less contrite than confused. Many cannot understand why some of the brightest, most ambitious, and high-achieving young British Muslims support the Caliphate. They do not understand why a prestigious, left-oriented school would produce suicide bombers, as described in the following profile.
 
Twenty-Seven: The Old School Tie—The Holland Park Martyrs and the “Socialist Eton”
 
If there is any British secondary school that could lay claim to the title of alma mater for Caliphate Britons, it would probably be London’s Holland Park School, which is also a good example of the red-green partnership in schools and on campuses discussed in Chapter 3. Dubbed the “Socialist Eton,” Holland Park embodies multicultural London. In the words of the academy, “Latin mottos gave way to egalitarian ideals.” It has attracted the children of the trendy rich, such as Anthony “Wedgie” Benn; powerful socialist politicians, such as Prime Minister Tony Blair and Roy Jenkins; and the progeny of left-oriented public intellectuals, particularly those connected with the newspaper The Guardian. The school calls them “socialist grandees and a smattering of literati and glitterati of West London.”
 
Holland Park boasts impressive educational statistics. Many of its graduates, from all ethnic backgrounds, perform well on standardized tests and in university admissions. Some continue on to Oxford or Cambridge. But by May 2015, what set Holland Park apart from other schools was its five alumni who had died fighting for the Islamic State. At least six former pupils from Holland Park School left Britain to become Islamic fighters or have been linked to terrorism. Former female students have also been arrested for supporting the Caliphate.
This is confusing for most of the academy’s graduates. They remember a Holland Park that promoted poetry, multiculturalism, and inclusion. Many warmly reminisce about their old school. Their salad days bring memories of long hair, rock and roll, stealing a smoke, and making out. One graduate stated, “Contrary to popular opinion, we didn’t have bomb-making classes at Holland Park Comprehensive.”