Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 29

DAESH 52. Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi’is of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 23. 53. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then president of Iran, as reported in Richard Ernsberger Jr., Ladane Nasseri, and Alan Isenberg, “Religion Versus Reality: Who Is This Man—a Mystic, a Bumbling Political Novice or an Imminent Threat to Iran’s Established Order?” Newsweek International, Atlantic Edition, 12 December 2005; and Kamal Tehrani, “Majera-e Shegeftangiz-e Nameh-e Moaven-e Aval-e Rais Jamhour be Imam Zaman” [The Vice President’s Astonishing Letter to the Twelfth Imam], Entekhab, 16 October 2005, http://www.entekhab.ir/display/?ID=6760&PHPSESSID=b24d119ca808c4c1bfdb21b173a35df4. Ahmadinejad instructed “his cabinet to sign a symbolic pledge of allegiance to the Twelfth Imam.” 54. Nasr, The Shia Revival, 130. 55. Pew Research Center, The World’s Muslims: Unity and Diversity, 9 August 2012, chap. 3, accessed 20 January 2016, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/08/09/the-worlds-muslims-unity-and-diversity-executive-summary/. In Iraq, 1,416 Muslims were surveyed throughout all eighteen provinces. 56. Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (New York: Regan Arts, 2015), 135. Alawites are a “mostly cultural offshoot of the Shia, who constitute between 8 percent and 15 percent of the population … ruling over the Sunnis, who constitute close to 75 percent.” See also Patrick Seale, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East (London: University of California Press, Ltd., 1988), 8, who states that Alawis “share with other Shi’a the belief that Ali, the prophet Mohammad’s cousin and son-in-law, was his rightful heir” and “push reverence for the wronged Ali to extreme lengths by seeing him infused with divine essence.” 57. Robert Baer, Sleeping With the Devil (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004), 94. 58. Ibid., 103. 59. Bashar al-Assad, interview with Jonathan Tepperman, “Syria’s President Speaks: A Conversation with Bashar al-Assad,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2015, 65. 60. Baer, Sleeping With the Devil, 93. Ilene Prusher, “What the ISIS Flag Says About the Militant Group,” Time online, 9 September 2014, accessed 20 January 2016, http://time.com/3311665/isisflag-iraq-syria/. Daesh, ironically, appears to have adopted a sort of trinity, as the three words inside the white circle on their flag read, from top to bottom, “Allah, Rasool, Mohammad,” meaning, “God, messenger, Mohammad.” The words along the top part of the flag are the shahada, or declaration of faith. The word order inside the circle is skewed, as it does not follow the order of the rest of the shahada, which says, “Mohammad is God’s messenger.” 61. Hafez al-Assad, in Eli Ben-Hanan, Our Man in Damascus: Elie Cohn (Bnei Brak: Steimatzky, 1969), 46. Ben-Hanan reports that Hafez Assad made these comments at the Syrian Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Elie Cohn, an Israeli spy whom he later executed. Hafez Assad would later try to remove a provision in the Syrian constitution that required the president be Muslim, a fact that seems consistent with his statement that he was not a Muslim. MILITARY REVIEW  March-April 2016 62. Sam Dagher, “Syria’s Alawites: The People Behind Assad,” Wall Street Journal online, 25 June 2015, accessed 20 January 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/ syrias-alawites-the-people-behind-assad-1435166941. 63. Juhayman ibn Muhammad ibn Sayf al-Otaybi, during a militant takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979, quoted and translated in Yaroslav Trofimov, The Siege of Mecca: The 1979 Uprising at Islam’s Holiest Shrine (New York: Anchor Books, 2007), 69. Here again, lineage to the Quraysh tribe was claimed by the alleged Mahdi. 64. Ibid., 224. 65. Ibid., 85–86; Quran 2:191. 66. Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, 257-58. Sunni Muslims believe that “at the end of time a man from the family (of the prophet) will without fail make his appearance …. He will be called the Mahdi. Following him, the Antichrist will appear …. After the Mahdi, Jesus will descend and kill the Antichrist. Or, Jesus will descend together with the Mahdi, and help him kill the Antichrist.” In “The Return of the Khilafah,” Dabiq 1, 4, Daesh refers to Jesus, who “will descend and lead them. When the enemy of Allah sees him, he will melt as salt melts in water.” 67. The World’s Muslims: Unity and Diversity, chap. 3. 68. “The Return of the Khilafah,” Dabiq 1, 25. 69. The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih Al-Bukhari 9, Book 97, hadith 740 8, speaks of the Dajjal: “Allah did not send any Prophet but that he warned his nation of the one-eyed liar (AdDajjal). He is one-eyed while your Lord (Allah) is not one-eyed. The word ‘Kafir’ (disbeliever) is written between his two eyes.” While the Daesh leader appeared without glasses in his only video appearance, he wears glasses in a prison photo from Camp Bucca. According to Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, Growing up bin Laden (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2009), 159-160, it was reported that Osama bin Laden had an eye injury he tried to hide. Similarly, the Daesh leader likely does not want to show followers any sign of imperfection or weakness. 70. El-Badawy, Comerford, and Welby, Inside the Jihadi Mind, 5. 71. Quran 9. While some scholars believe this sura was originally part of a different sura, this theory contradicts the fundamental Islamic belief that each word in the Quran is of divine origin and the Quran is unchanged. 72. Quran 4:29. 73. El-Badawy, Comerford, and Welby, Inside the Jihadi Mind, 20. 74. Muir, The Life of Mohammad, 36. Khadija’s cousins Othman and Waraka were Christian and did not convert. 75. Muir, The Life of Mohammad, 106. Another uncle that refused to convert to Islam is mentioned in the Quran, at sura 111. 76. John Young, “Medical Missions in Yemen,” The Moslem World XII (1) ( January 1922), 62–63, accessed 20 January 2016, http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044021005020;view= 1up;seq=9. 77. Mekhennet, German Officials Alarmed by Ex-Rapper’s New Message: Jihad. The Frankfurt shooter was inspired by a nasheed, recorded by a German ex-rapper named Cuspert who joined Daesh. 27