ISIS’s Al-Nabā’ weekly published in its recent issue, on January 3, 2019 (No. 163) its first official response to President Trump’s statement on the pull-out of US military personnel from Syria. The main message of the article, which is entitled “Then they will be overcome”[1] is that ISIS has not been eliminated and that the campaign against it has not ended but is only beginning. According to the article, the enemies that wanted to eliminate the Islamic State received its expansion to other regions around the world and the attacks carried out by ISIS supporters in the countries of the West (among the “Crusaders”).
The opening paragraph of the article (ISIS’s Al-Nabā’ weekly, issue No. 163, January 3, 2019)
Main points of the article
- In the beginning, the article states that 15 years have passed since the American forces entered Iraq, and since then jihad spread in this country. Former President George Bush (referred to in the article as “America’s fool”) announced that the American forces’ mission in Iraq was over, while it had only begun. Similarly, President Trump (referred to in the article as the new dictator of the USA) once again declares that the war has ended and that ISIS’s Islamic State in Syria was destroyed.
- The Americans do not learn from their mistakes. Therefore, there is great resemblance between the results of their actions, which achieve nothing, in various countries in the world. Their failure to learn from their mistakes was reflected, according to the article, also in President Obama’s decision to leave Iraq in late 2011. Now, in a similar manner, the Americans delude themselves that they will defeat the Islamic State, as they deluded themselves in the past that they would defeat the jihad fighters (in Iraq).
- The policy of self-delusion does not characterize the US alone, but all the tyrants of the countries where jihad fighters strike the infidels. The article notes that the “infidels” adhere to life in this world, while jihad fighters aspire to apply Sharia (Islamic religious law) throughout the world. According to the writer, this concept has major consequences on the campaign between the ISIS caliphate soldiers and their rivals. The jihad fighters, due to their strong belief, are able to remain steadfast in the face of the hostility of the “infidels.”
- Whoever wants to know where the “confrontation with the infidels” will lead should recall the promise of Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi (ISIS’s founding father) while the American forces were present in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi promised to establish an Islamic emirate and then an Islamic caliphate. The United States and its proxies tried then with all their means to destroy the jihad fighters and spent billions to that end, but failed.
- Towards the end of the article, the writer asks: “Can the believer, after all that, doubt the victory of Allah? Is it permitted to forget the lessons of the past?” According to the writer, the enemies who sought to terminate the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria received as a result the expansion of the Islamic State in other provinces, such as Khorasan, Somalia, Central Africa and elsewhere. The fighting of the jihad fighters in Central Africa, which is now ongoing, is evidence of that, i.e., of the victory of Islam and its expansion. The article ends with the words, “What we are witnessing today is the harvest of the Caliphate supporters, which is being carried out among the Crusaders, in the heart of their homes (an allusion to ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks in the West). Those who sought to secure their future, as they claimed, by ruining the lives of the Muslims, (eventually) their present and future will perish, through the might of Allah.”
[1] The title of the article, “Then they will be overcome” (thumma yughlabuna) is a quote from the Quran, Surah 8, Al-Anfal, 36: “Indeed, those who disbelieve spend their wealth to avert [people] from the way of Allah. So they will spend it; then it will be for them a [source of] regret; then they will be overcome. And those who have disbelieved – unto Hell they will be gathered” (Sahih International translation of the Quran). ↑
