What is the logic behind terror attacks such as the one which occurred in the early hours of New Year’s Day when a Muslim man plowed his truck into people in New Orleans, killing 14 and wounding dozens?
The same thing, incidentally, happened just before Christmas in Germany.
On December 20, Taleb Abdulmohsen, a Muslim man from Saudi Arabia (with a long history of pretending to be an anti-Islamic convert to Christianity) plowed his vehicle through a crowded Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing five people and injuring more than 200 others.
The media and officials were, and are, at a loss to establish motive for either of these attacks — other than telling us the usual, that the men were suffering from mental disorders, were experiencing personal problems, had “grievances,” and so on and so forth.
Yet the motive — which, as we shall see, does seem erratic and counterintuitive —was spelled out just over one year ago, and is worth revisiting.
A Year-Old Call to Act
On January 3, 2024, the Islamic State issued a statement making seemingly strange and unexpected assertions.
For starters, the terror group took responsibility for bombing Israel’s archenemy, Iran, and killing over 100 people in Kerman. It also told Muslims that, although Israel and Jews are indeed chief enemies of Islam, and although Muslims were at the time irate over the killing of Palestinians, it was not the time to fight Israel. Rather, ISIS urged Muslims to randomly kill people in the West.
From here, of course, it is easy to see why some accuse the terror group of being created by the CIA, Mossad, etc.
And yet — and here’s the interesting part — everything ISIS said was connected to Islamic teaching and law.
Muslim vs. Muslim
To the average Sunni Muslim, it seems Islamic enough; it seemingly champions the causes of Islam, such as pitting the Palestinians against Israel, etc. But in reality, argues ISIS, Iran’s “expansionist plans, their projects, and their plots against Muslims are no less dangerous and spiteful than those of the Jews or Crusaders.”
First, ISIS attacked Iran because, as a Shia nation, not only is it not Muslim — and therefore an infidel enemy like the rest — but it’s something of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. To the average Sunni Muslim, it seems Islamic enough; it seemingly champions the causes of Islam, such as pitting the Palestinians against Israel, etc. But in reality, argues ISIS, Iran’s “expansionist plans, their projects, and their plots against Muslims are no less dangerous and spiteful than those of the Jews or Crusaders.”
Second, ISIS counseled Muslims not to fight Israel because the primary beneficiary of such a fight would be the Palestinian Authority, which is no less an infidel than Israel because it does not enforce sharia. What’s the point of toppling one infidel power only to replace it with another? According to the statement:
The battle with the Jews is a religious one and not a national or populist one! It is not a battle for land, soil, or borders! …A Muslim fights the Jews because they have committed kufr [disbelief] against Allah Almighty…. [T]he purpose of battle is to impose tawhid for Allah and upholding His word. This purpose has been absent from the latest battle in Gaza.ISIS even went on to mock the concept of “Palestinian liberation”:
[T]his interpretation of liberation itself requires liberation. Liberating a land does not mean to free it from one secular government in favor of a democratic one, and it does not mean releasing it from a Jewish constitution only to be governed by a Palestinian constitution, for the laws that govern Palestine and the Jewish statelet are one, they are manmade and all such governments are alike to Almighty Allah. A land not ruled by Islamic Shari’ah is not liberated even if all Jews and invaders leave it. In fact, it is still a captive of kufr laws, and international jahiliya codes.
Random Acts of Terror
Finally, killing people in the West by plowing vehicles into crowds also was ISIS’s idea and counsel to its followers, as reflected by the title of the terror group’s statement “Kill Them Wherever You Find Them.” This is a paraphrase of Koran 9:5, known in Islamic jurisprudence as the “Verse of the Sword.”
In that scripture, Allah calls on Muslims to “Kill the mushrikin [pagans, idolaters, in short, non-Muslims] wherever you find them — capture them, besiege them, and lie in wait for them on every way.”
In keeping with that mandate, ISIS urged Muslims to
Chase your preys whether Jewish, Christian or their allies, on the streets and roads of America, Europe, and the world. Break into their homes, kill them and steal their peace of mind by any means you can lay hands on…. : detonate explosives, burn them with grenades and fiery agents, shoot them with bullets, cut their throats with sharp knives, and run them over with vehicles…. Come at them from every door, kill them by the worst of means, turn their gatherings and celebrations into bloody massacres, do not distinguish between a civilian kaffir [infidel], and a military one, for they are all kuffar [infidels] and the ruling against them is one.These weren’t the first such attacks, either. One of the most notorious vehicular attacks took place in 2016, , when a Muslim man drove a truck over people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, killing 87 and wounding 437 others.
