And the Islamic State applicants, herded into a hangar somewhere at
the Syria-Turkey border, turned out to be overwhelmingly ignorant.
The extremist group could hardly have hoped for better.
At
the height of Islamic State’s drive for foot soldiers in 2013 and 2014,
typical recruits included the group of Frenchmen who went bar-hopping
with their recruiter back home, the recent European convert who now
hesitantly describes himself as gay, and two Britons who ordered The Koran for Dummies and Islam for Dummies from Amazon to prepare for jihad abroad.
Their
intake process complete, they were grouped in safe houses as a stream
of Islamic State imams came in to indoctrinate them, according to court
testimony and interviews by The Associated Press.
“I realised that
I was in the wrong place when they began to ask me questions on these
forms like ‘when you die, who should we call?”’ said the 32-year-old
European recruit, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity for fear
of reprisals.
He said he thought he was joining a group to fight President Bashar Assad and help Syrians, not the Islamic State.
The European, whose boyish demeanour makes him appear far younger than his age, went to Syria in 2014.
He said new recruits were shown IS propaganda videos on Islam, and the visiting imams repeatedly praised martyrdom.
Far from home, unschooled in religion, having severed family ties and
turned over electronic devices, most were in little position to judge.
An
AP analysis of thousands of leaked Islamic State documents reveals most
of its recruits from its earliest days came with only the most basic
knowledge of Islam.
A little more than 3000 of these documents included the recruits’
knowledge of Shariah, the system that interprets into law verses from
the Koran and “hadith” — the sayings and actions of the Prophet
Muhammad.
According to the documents, which were acquired by the
Syrian opposition site Zaman al-Wasl and shared with the AP, 70 per cent
of recruits were listed as having just “basic” knowledge of Shariah —
the lowest possible choice.
About 24 per cent were categorised as
having an “intermediate” knowledge, with just 5 per cent considered
advanced students of Islam.
Five recruits were listed as having memorised the Koran.
The
findings address one of the most troubling questions about IS
recruitment in the United States and Europe: Are disaffected people who
understand Shariah more prone to radicalisation? Or are those with
little knowledge of Islam more susceptible to the group’s radical ideas
that promote violence?
The documents suggest the latter.
The
group preys on this religious ignorance, allowing extremists to impose a
brand of Islam constructed to suit its goal of maximum territorial
expansion and carnage as soon as recruits come under its sway.
Islamic State’s most notorious new supporters appear to have an equally tenuous link with religion.
Mohamed Lahouaiyej Bouhlel,
who killed 85 people by ploughing a truck into a Bastille Day crowd in
Nice, France, was described by family and neighbours as indifferent to
religion, volatile and prone to drinking sprees, with a bent for salsa
dancing and a reported male lover.
Unlike Omar Mateen,
the Orlando attacker, Bouhlel did not make a public declaration of
allegiance to Islamic State, much less prove he had direct ties to
extremists in the war zone. Still, the group was quick to claim both as
foot soldiers.
‘Islam was used to trap me like a wolf’
The
AP analysed the IS entry form documents of around 4030 foreign recruits
who crossed into Syria when the group was rapidly expanding and seizing
territory in Iraq and Syria in 2013 and 2014.
At that time, the CIA estimated the extremist group had between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria.
Among
the documents were forms for nine of 10 young men from the eastern
French city of Strasbourg, all recruited by a man named Mourad Fares.
One
of them, Karim Mohammad-Aggad, described barhopping in Germany with
Fares. He told investigators that IS recruiters used “smooth talk” to
persuade him.
He’d travelled with his younger brother and friends
to Syria in late 2013. Two died in Syria, and within a few months, seven
returned to France and were arrested.
Mohammad-Aggad’s brother, 23-year-old Foued, returned to Paris and was one of the three men who stormed the Bataclan in a night of attacks November 13 that killed 130 people.
“My
religious beliefs had nothing to do with my departure,” Karim
Mohammad-Aggad told the court, before being sentenced to nine years in
prison.
“Islam was used to trap me like a wolf,” he said.
IS data shows Karim and his brother Foued were among eight in the Strasbourg group listed as having “basic” knowledge of sharia.
Expressing
a common sentiment shared by many Europeans of North African descent,
Mohammed-Aggad told the court he felt like an immigrant in Algeria and
“a dirty Arab” in France.
After just a few months in Syria, he
said he left IS because he was treated by the extremists as an
“apostate” — someone who had renounced his religion.
Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan said a close look at the IS group’s top
commanders shows that many had no religious credentials but, instead,
they once held senior positions under Saddam Hussein’s secular Baathist
government.
Ramadan teaches Islamic Studies at Oxford and has
written numerous books on Islam and the integration of Muslims in
Europe. He says Muslim scholars must demonstrate that what IS teaches is
wrong.
“The people who are doing this are not experiencing
martyrdom, they are criminals. They are killing innocent people. Nothing
in Islam, nothing ever can justify the killing of innocent people,
never, ever.”
The gay European recruit said he converted to Islam because he was interested in the culture and it was easy.
“It only required one prayer and no prior understanding of Islam,” he said.
“There was no hierarchy and it was all about living a good life.”
As a convert with almost no knowledge in Islam, he says he was easy prey.
“People like me were tricked into something that they didn’t understand. I never meant to end up with IS.”
source:news.com.au
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