Harper’s interviewed an ISIS fighter, Kabir Ahmed aka Abu Sumayyah, who killed eight people and himself in a suicide bombing in Iraq over the weekend.
Sumayyah tells Harkin he looks forward to the coming era of passport-free travel as the Islamic State widens its frontiers through Syria, Iraq, and beyond. He reveals that he had been imprisoned in Britain, “for the propagation of my religion.” (His criminal convictions were for stirring up hatred against homosexuals and shouting homophobic abuse at a gay-pride parade.) Sumayyah calls Britain “Dar al-Kufr,” or “the land of infidels.” He tells Harkin that among his new friends, are jihadi veterans from all over the world, including the United States. “It’s like a dream: one day we eat Eritrean, the next we eat Pakistani. We are breaking borders; we are breaking racism,” he says.
And entrenching and enforcing sexism and homophobia, along with bigotry against other religions, no religion, and secularism. Here’s a newsflash: you can break racism and sexism and homophobia and hatred of other religions and loathing of secularism. You can, and the result is much much better.
Sumayyah speaks excitedly of the new government and its personnel. “There is free medical, dental, and eye care, and the doctors are all absolutely free,” he says. “All these services are building blocks of the state.” There are orphanages and special madrassas where orphan children were taught to memorize the Koran and Islamic State military bases were also open to children, especially orphans, so they can “learn about jihad and military matters.”
Sounds like hell on earth, especially for children.
Sumayyah tells Harkin he believes that reports of mass executions of hundreds of Shia prisoners have been exaggerated, or deserved. A full 2,000 Iraqi soldiers had been given the opportunity to repent, he says, “This is the way of Islam. Everyone gets a chance to repent. But if they don’t, it’s death. It’s the same in every country in the world: it’s treason against the state.”
Nope.