The Caliphate Triumphant - New English Review

a review by Jerry Gordon (April 2015)

ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, And The Hellish Reality of Radical Islam
by Erick Stakelbeck
Regnery Publishers, March 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62157-377-7

The Brotherhood: America’s Next Great Enemy have kept Americans and an international following abreast of the growing menace of Islamic terrorism now roiling the West and destabilizing the Middle East. A Middle East quickly devolving in a titanic clash among opposing apocalyptic Islamic end-times visions. One is Iran’s Mahdist Shia cult on the verge of becoming a nuclear threshold hegemon. Another is the alleged ‘reformist” Saudi Wahhabist Sunni doctrine. Confronting both is the highly visible ascent of the Sunni Salafist Islamic State (IS), formerly ISIS. Written in the genre of a page-turning thriller, Stakelbeck’s latest in his burgeoning trilogy on Islamic terrorism, ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and The hellish reality of Radical Islam is a compact, yet telling guide to the brutal ideology behind the sudden eruption and expansion of the Islamic State (IS), a self-declared Caliphate. Among questions addressed in Stakelbeck’s ISIS Exposed are:

Why the large unassimilated Somali émigré community in Minneapolis has become the US hub for Al Qaeda and now ISIS recruitment.
How ISIS’ adroit use of social media, on-line publications and well produced videos of their barbaric actions have reinforced an appeal for purification of Islam sanctioned by Qur’anic doctrine.
Why ISIS has surpassed al Qaeda, from which the group originated, because it possesses conquered lands in Syria and Iraq.
How ISIS and Sunni terrorist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas among others, have common objectives while pursuing different tactics to achieve them.
How ISIS has exploited the wreckage of failed states in Yemen, Libya, Syria to spread its doctrine and influence.
How tolerance of ISIS advocates in the UK and rest of EU has established de facto Sharia governed zones, escalated recruitment, acts of rape, murder and terrorism from returning veterans and home grown wannabes.
How ISIS-inspired Muslim protests and deadly attacks on Jews in the EU have stoked antisemitism driving Jewish Communities there to seek sanctuary in Israel and other havens.

As Stakelbeck portrays in ISIS Exposed, Western media and political leaders are inexplicably frozen in intimidation and bewilderment about how to explain what has occurred. The public square is filled with nattering nabobs of political correctness portraying ISIS as Muslim extremists in contradistinction to the misinformed view that Islam is a ‘religion of peace and tolerance.’ The Kuffars, that is the unbelievers encountered by ISIS whether Christians, Jews, ancient religious minorities like the Yazidis, and Muslims who are deemed apostates for not adhering to the strict Sunni Tawhid doctrine of IS, are given the choice of conversion, death or subjugation under Sharia Law. Opting for subjugation to remain alive, many have become dhimmis and are forced to pay the jizya (an annual payment of a tax on each person) to avoid being beheaded. Stakelbeck cites reports from escapees who have witnessed rape and sex slavery auctions of captive women and even young girls by the Islamic State. He explains that the Islamic State, unlike al Qaeda and its affiliates across the Muslim Ummah, holds land where the purest form of Islam can be practiced by Muslims. Stakelbeck points out how IS has built up a huge treasury from seized booty, enforced protection payments (jizya) and the illegal sale of oil from overrun fields to pay for a veritable Jihadist army equipped with US and Russian supplied vehicles, tanks, weapons and munitions captured or left behind by fleeing Iraqi national and Syrian forces. This field force, as Stakelbeck discusses, ironically is directed by cadres drawn from the former Ba’athist military of the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with experience in the use of unconventional chemical weapons. ISIS has used chemical weapons in attacks in Iraq after raiding Syria stockpiles near Aleppo.

Stakelbeck, unlike many in the mainstream media, bases his assessment of threats posed by IS from firsthand interviews with Salafist proponents in the West such as Anjem Choudary former head of the banned Salafist group al-Muhajiroun in the UK. In several interviews with Choudary, Stakelbeck reveals why Muslims are attracted to join and serve the Caliphate building an Islamic holy nation. In Chapter Six, “London Falling, The Battle for Britain,” Choudary is quoted by Stakelbeck saying:

I believe there were many positive outcomes from 9/11 … the legacy of that is what you see today in the Islamic State that has been established in Syria and in Iraq. There is a giant that has woken up. The Sharia is being implemented. [Muslims] are getting rid of the dictators, which many of the Western regimes put in place – in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, in Tunisia, in Egypt. And that is afflicting the interest of the West…Communism is dead. Capitalism is dying. Islam is the future, I believe, for mankind.

When asked by Stakelbeck whether the US Administration view of ISIS as simply committing “criminal acts,” Choudary replied:

There is a war taking place… there are up to one thousand people who are joining the Islamic State’s army every single day. And these people look down the barrel of a gun and they see paradise. They love to die, the way that you and others love to live. You cannot defeat people like that.

As evidence of ISIS’ influence on the spike in European antisemitism, Stakelbeck draws attention to massed protests in July 2014 during IDF Operation Defensive Edge of more 45,000 in Central London with crowds outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington crying, “Israel is a terror state” and “Allahu Akbar.” He noted the doubling in 2014 of hate crimes against Jews in Great Britain as compared to 2013. More than half of UK Jews polled said they do not see a future in Great Britain for their children. The growth of extreme Muslim and leftist attacks on Jews may be one reason for considering emigration to Israel and other havens.

At about the same time in Paris, what Stakelbeck describes as a virtual pogrom broke out with cries of “Gas the Jews,” “Kill the Jews” and destruction Jewish businesses reminiscent of Nazi-era Kristallnacht in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles. The Charlie Hebdo massacre by Cherif and Said Kouachi trained by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula that killed 12 was followed by the ISIS-inspired attack by Amedy Coulibaly on the Hyper Cacher(Kosher) supermarket murdering four Jews, three French and one Tunisian. Despite a European-wide manhunt, Coulibaly’s common law wife, Hayat Boumeddiene, guided by an ISIS pathfinder, was safely flown from Spain to Istanbul where she cleared customs ending up posing in black garb for an ISIS propaganda video inside Syria. French Jews are leaving France for Israel and other bolt holes. 7,000 French Jews made aliyah to Israel in 2014, a doubling over 2013. An estimated 10,000 are expected to arrive in 2015.

Israel itself is threatened by ISIS. Stakelbeck noted the presence of Ansar Beit al Magdis in the Egyptian Sinai on Israel’s southern border. Recently the ISIS affiliate has threatened cross border attacks on the Israeli resort area of Eilat. ISIS sympathizers are active on Israel’s entire frontier in Lebanon, Syria and in Gaza. Israel has arrested ISIS cell members in Hebron, a major center of Hamas on the West Bank.

Stakelbeck ends ISIS Exposed with suggested steps to defeat the global jihad of the self-declared Caliphate:

Completely destroy ISIS militarily in Syria and Iraq.
Educate Americans and name the threat posed by ISIS- Islamic terrorism.
Revoke passports and citizenship of American ISIS fighters.
Secure the US borders.
Revise the US Visa Waiver program
Bolster cooperation with Allies, Muslim and non Muslim, to root out Islamic extremism.
Isolate and pressure allies in the Sunni Muslim world to denounce support for ISIS and other Islamic terror groups.
Consider the Islamic Republic of Iran as not an ally in the war against ISIS, actively support regime change and stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons “by any means necessary.”
Stand proudly with Israel and world Jewry.
Stand with beleaguered Christians and religious minorities in the Middle East threatened by ISIS.
Review US immigration and student visa policies for predominately Muslim nations.

Watch this C-Span video of a presentation by Erick Stakelbeck on ISIS Exposed at a Washington, DC event sponsored by the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET):

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Also see Jerry Gordon’s collection of interviews, The West Speaks.

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