True believers never hide
[ a guest post by Melissa Roddy ]
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Tim Furnish recently taught a course on Jihad, Apocalypse and Terrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and suggested to Melissa Roddy, one of his students, that she should submit this piece for our consideration. I’m happy to welcome Melissa as a guest poster here at Zenpundit. She has an intriguing suggestion to make regarding the frequent use of face coverings by IS members when they’re basically showing off their capacity for butchering those with whom they disagree. Your comments are welcome. — Charles Cameron
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While viewing photos of Islamic State (IS) jihadists recently, an irony suddenly came into sharp focus. If these exterminators are in fact true believers, why do they always hide their faces?
Of course the practical reason is to avoid identification by governments and military forces intent on vanquishing IS. But what does it say about their commitment to a mission that has included the slaughter and enslavement of anybody and everybody they please? In every gruesome image projected in Western media of “Jihadi John” and/or his cohorts slicing through the neck of some poor soul or mass murdering innocent men, women and children, the perpetrator portrays fierce pride beneath the safety of a ski mask.
Their masks may hide their faces, but they expose the doubt in their hearts. A true believer would have no fear. A true believer would show his face to the world to prove devout confidence that his mission is in service of and blessed by Allah. A true believer would have no fear of exposure. A true believer would be confident that Allah would clear any obstacle from his path. A true believer would want to strip anonymity from such acts, because to show his face would be a declaration of faith.
It is bloody clear, IS butchers hide behind their ski masks, because, despite their boasts of religious fervor, in their heart of hearts they know they are nothing more than power hungry, murderers, rapists and thieves, with no respect for Allah’s creation. They are exactly the opposite of righteous. Their masks demonstrate the fear that in death these monsters will face an eternity in Hell for being instruments of Shaitan wearing false masks of piety simply to satisfy their bloodlust.
September 19th, 2015 at 6:05 pm
Welcome Melissa!
September 19th, 2015 at 9:38 pm
Or perhaps a true believer would do as he was told?
I mean, as you perhaps suggest, the shaving off of the beard might be considered giving a false identity, which, if I understand correctly, is a no-no in Islam, with really both the Shia and Sunni.
So a mask may be considered likewise, but my guess is that you would have to ask one of the true-believers, as to what gives.
As Islam seems to be mostly about truth and identity, I am sure they will answer you, given the platform you have chosen.
September 20th, 2015 at 6:28 am
If you believe you kill others to satisfy God it means you worship devil not God..!
September 20th, 2015 at 7:56 pm
That depends on your theology. Exodus 15.3 reads:
Whether you interpret that verse as metaphorical or literal, historically appropriate but no longer applicable, etc, is strictly a matter of interpretation.
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The story of Fr George Zabelka, the Catholic priest who blessed the aircrew flying the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions, is worth reading in this context.
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September 21st, 2015 at 9:31 pm
I think in addition to a lack of true belief, in their heart of hearts the IS killers have a little doubt that they are actually going to get away this caper they are engaged in. I think they secretly can hardly believe they have gotten as far as they have.
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This doubt is important and it hasn’t been taken advantage of. We buy their blarney about not fearing death. To a certain extent they don’t; in the same way that good light infantry (which I believe they are) doesn’t fear death. They know the chance exists that they will buy it but as young men figure it will be the guy next them who pays the price while they reap the fruits of victory. But still as the masks indicate, they have some doubt.
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If we were to start grinding them down in an inexorable way, as we are capable of, I think their is a good possibility that their morale would crack, especially the foreign fighters; because they have someplace to go. Even the local fighters have someplace to go, back to the family. Imagine if there were a few fighting columns composed of Kurds, Yazidis or some of the various Sunni tribes they have upset moving down various roads toward Raqqa, each one supported by AC-130s and Apaches every night and A-10s during the day. And attached to each column are JTACS to direct the aircraft. These columns couldn’t be stopped and they wouldn’t have to move fast. Just a town, a village and a roadblock at a time. The effect of that death glacier coming at them would be pronounced upon those masked young men. They could stay and die for sure, or take their chances with the cops back home. I don’t think they would stay.
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This kind of thing could work and it would have an effect far beyond Syria and Iraq and far beyond this year or month. It would be hard to recruit in the future if this fate was inflicted upon the current crop of masked young men.
September 22nd, 2015 at 3:39 am
Carl has a very valid point. The masked killers of the future would think long and hard about following their past masked denizens if they knew they would be ground up and crushed and killed like their past brethren. However, the current crop of killers can pose and posture because we lack the will to go after them and kill them like rabid dogs. Instead we wrongly view them as basically a social problem to be treated with sociological solutions–reduce poverty anyone?–instead of viewing them as an evil that needs to be eradicated.They won’t stop their murderous ways until it dawns on them the odds of success are next to zero
September 26th, 2015 at 6:38 am
There are sensible operational reasons to keep the identities a secret. The first is that these recruits become warriors through a network of contacts and propaganda that bridges ISIS with the countries they recruit from. Exposing the identity of these warriors allows the countries in question to investigate how they were radicalized, contacted, and then transported into the war zone.
The second reason seems implausible to most Westerners, but pretty logical from the ISIS point of view. What would the average ISIS operator do if he found out that someone from one of the villages he terrorized had joined the opposite side? Kill, torture or threaten his family, either to retaliate or to put pressure on them. Keeping the identity of the warriors secret stops this from happening in reverse.
September 26th, 2015 at 12:50 pm
T. Greer:
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I am not so sure about that. I’ve read that one of the components of recruitment are tales of the pious high adventure and good living that current fighters send back to their home areas wherever that area may be. If they go back home they can get a lot of cachet from having gone to fight the good fight for Allah. None of that would apply if they kept their identities a secret from their circle of friends, families and acquaintances.
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Also, again from what I’ve read, everybody in those areas already pretty much knows who goes where and does what and ISIS already kills lots of people from extended families of individuals who oppose them.
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Then too there are numerous videos of ISIS guys doing very bad things and their faces are uncovered. Those in these videos don’t seem to care.
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The face covering thing does show up in a lot of the cinematic extravaganza type propaganda videos. Perhaps it is just an art director’s dramatic effect meant to convey an image of anonymous power, or just to look cool to one of the main target audiences, restless young men.
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September 27th, 2015 at 3:09 am
Remember that all belief systems make exceptions strategically or resolve contradictions strategically. ISIS is no different. But I don’t think we need to go even there in commenting on this
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Roddy is starting from an invalid premise: a true believer would assume that divine forces would clear any obstacle. If that were true, however, why would an ISIS operator need to fight to begin with? After all, if a divine force D can defeat any obstacle if believer B manifests X level of belief in D’s power and benevolence, then B has no rational reason to do anything except hope and pray in D.
September 27th, 2015 at 4:20 am
Adam writes:
Interesting as ever.
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I think, Adam, that “trust in God, but first tie your camel” is operative here — God promises to send his angels to support the outnumbered Muslims at Badr, but they first have to make their own faith visible by fighting under what look to be unfavorable circumstances — Qur’an 3.125, see Angels considered as an Air Force.
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Good to see you here.
September 27th, 2015 at 4:25 am
I also wonder whether or not the face coverings may sometimes be related to the weather, sandstorms, etc. Not that I know much at all of the actual locations, locations, locations.