ISIS, BRITISH Jihadists and the Man Who Killed James Foley
Whoever killed James Foley likely thinks heâs serving a noble cause. But itâs not his God, itâs his ego that tells him so.
Sick as this may sound, the super-slick HD depiction of a pseudo-ninja murdering American journalist James Foley is, not least, a recruiting video. In the warped world of new-generation jihadistsâespecially those coming out of Western citiesâhacking off heads has become a status symbol.
Thatâs why an Australian lunatic among the ISIS forces posted a
picture a couple of weeks ago of his 7-year-old posing the way other
little boys do with a largemouth bass, but this kid held up a severed head. The boyâs expression says, âLook, Daddy, arenât you proud?â
Now we learn
that a British rapper from West London may be the tough-talking,
Obama-menacing, America-threatening man with the little knife who put it
to Foleyâs throat in the infamous video just before the image cut to
blackâŠ.Fade in to show Foleyâs decapitated body, the head resting on top
of the prone corpse.
The image in the video is horrible, but not nearly so horribleâand
unwatchableâas other jihadist snuff films circulating on the web for
many years that show the entire gruesome process of decapitation. This
one, by terrorist standards, was rated R.
Personally, I doubt that the suspect rapperâAbdel Majed Abdel Bary, aka
Lyricist Jinn, aka L Jinnyâis the masked headsman, precisely because he
is masked. Why, having advertised his savagery only days ago with a
social media post showing him holding a human head, would he now conceal
his identity? (One possible answer: the jealousy of his comrades, who
donât want him to get too big a rep.)
There are at least two other British suspects who might have been
âJihadi John,â as the British press has christened Foleyâs killer. But
the press has focused on Abdel Bary, as the press is wont to do, because
thereâs a lot of material about him on the web already.
Abdel Bary has been tweeting his version of the war in Syria for months.
And in that sense, heâs an interesting and instructive example of the
would-be knights of Islam, the medieval millennials, whoâve flocked to
the black banners of the so-called Caliphate, aka Islamic State, aka
ISIS, aka ISIL, aka asses.
The one relatively unique attribute of Abdel Bary is that his father, Adel Abdel Bary, aka Adel Mohammed Abdel Magid Abdel Bari, was a longtime associate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, currently the leader of al Qaeda. I knew the old man in the late 1990s, when I was trying to set up an interview with Zawahiri in Afghanistan and Abdel Bary was the go-to guy in London, or âLondonistan,â as we called it, who could make that happen.
But in 1998, in the wake of al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania, the elder Abdel Bary was arrested (with my business
card in his pocket, he told me), released, then re-arrested in 1999.
His case became a cause célÚbre for some in the British press, and The Guardian gave
prominent play to the story of his wife, Ragaa, telling of âthe prison
visits, the battles with bureaucracy and the struggles to raise a family
under extraordinary pressures.â Finally, in 2012, Abdel Bary was
extradited and is now serving time in an American prison.
So, the younger Abdel Baryâs upbringing may have given him a special
grudge, and also a taste for the spotlight. Clearly this young man, now
23, thought he might have a shot at stardom in music videos.
Some of his recordings reportedly were picked up on BBC Radio 1. But
hip-hop recognition apparently wasnât enough, so last year he joined the jihad in Syria.
A lot of the literature about Islamic extremists and terrorism focuses on what is or is not taught in the Qurâan. But the densely layered messages in the holy texts of Islam have very little to do with the mindset of wannabe holy warriors, many of whom are more or less self-taught. Two who recently traveled from Birmingham, U.K., to Syria only to be arrested on their return reportedly learned about their faith by ordering Islam for Dummies on Amazon.
The aspiring jihadis from Europe, Australia, and the United States have in common with almost all terrorists of any nationalist, religious, or ideological stripe three basic attributes: testosterone (they are almost always young men); narrative (they may not have been oppressed themselves, but they identify strongly with people who are downtrodden and see their role as one of protectorâthe knight in shining armor); and theater (they want to create a spectacle the world will remember). This works out to a neat formulaâTNTâwhich, even if itâs a little cute, holds up well under examination.
Anthropologist Scott Atran, who is frequently consulted by the U.S. government, has long argued that a jihadistâs motivations cannot be fit within a purely rational framework of costs and benefits, nor can they be understood as utterly irrational. Instead they work within the context of what they come to see as âsacred values,â which may be religious or may have to do more with honor and respect and, perhaps, what the 18th century political theorist Edmund Burke called âthe sublimeâ: that âquest for greatness, glory, eternal meaning in an inherently chaotic world,â as Atran says.
âIt seems like volunteers for ISIS are surfing for the sublime,â Atran wrote to me on Sunday. They are escaping âthe jaded, tired world of democratic liberalism, especially on the margins where Europeâs immigrants mostly live.â As Atran notes, âmany are just âvacationersâ for Jihad, going to Syria over school breaks or holidays for the thrill of adventure and a semblance of glory, and returning to tolerably easy but somewhat soulless lives in the West, driving taxis, cooking in fast food joints, going to computer classes, or whatever. But the successes of ISIS are drawing in greater commitments now. The beheadings are doing what the images of the collapsing towers did for al Qaeda, turning terror into a display of triumphâŠIn Burkeâs sense, a display of the sublime.â
Of course, compared to todayâs commonly accepted sense of the word âsublime,â these guys are almost as ridiculous as they are horrifying.
Thus Abdel Majed Abdel Bary broadcast his complaint on Twitter
when he had a nasty run-in with Free Syrian Army rebels in March this
year. Under the name Terrorist with the handle @ItsLJinny, he told his
followers: âMe & Abu Hussein al britani [also reportedly a suspect
in the Foley case] got kidnapped/tortured by FSA/IF scum they stole our 4
akâs [assault rifles] and a 7mm [pistol], my vechile [vehicle] &
our phones and cash.â The tweet was picked up almost instantly on the The Daily Mailâs website.
Then, this month, @ItsLJinny reportedly tweeted a picture of himself holding a manâs severed head. The caption read: âChillinâ with my homie or whatâs left of him.â
One wonders why Abdel Baryâs fellow jihadis would trust such a fool. The answer can only be that they are very much like him.
Maybe this hip-hop headsman really is the man in black with the little knife in the film. But whoever that guy was, he will never be able to match the dignity of his victim. James Foley maintained extraordinary composure and showed singular bravery even as he mouthed the cheap, scripted dialogue the terrorists had written for him. Wannabe jihadists probably wonât see that, but the rest of us certainly do.In : #HOODKNEWGLOBAL
Tags: isis british jihadists and the man who killed james foley
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