Islamic State Gloats Over the Misfortunes of Iran and HAMAS, Denigrates Al-Qaeda’s Attack on the Russians in Mali
Islamic State Gloats Over the Misfortunes of Iran and HAMAS, Denigrates Al-Qaeda’s Attack on the Russians in Mali
The main editorial in the 454th edition of Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter of the Islamic State (IS), published on 1 August, was entitled, “[Would That] Whosoever is Destroyed [for Rejecting the Faith] Might Be Destroyed After [Being Given] Clear Evidence [of the Truth]”, drawn from Qur’an 8:42.1
The editorial’s purpose was explained in its first paragraph:
The last few days have been hectic, with a number of political and military events and developments taking place and accelerating in Palestine, Lebanon, Tehran, America, and even Mali. It was necessary to comment on these based on a shari’a perspective devoid of flattery and ambiguity, so that whosoever is destroyed might be destroyed on the basis of clear evidence, and those who live might live on the basis of clear evidence.
Al-Naba begins with “the attack, rare in its scale and kind, against the Russian ‘Wagner’ [Group], which was publicly claimed by Ukrainian intelligence, the Azawad separatist militias, and Al-Qaeda with its mongrel tribal branch.”
The reference is to the ambush of Russian forces around Kidal, near the Mali-Algeria border, on 27 July, resulting in a battle that lasted until 29 July, and killed dozens of Russians and Malian government soldiers. The ambush was carried out by Tuareg forces and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimeen (JNIM), Al-Qaeda’s local manifestation. JNIM claimed to have killed fifty Russian and ten Malian troops. Russian sources put the number of Russians killed much lower, but there is no doubt this was a disaster for Moscow and some very prominent people were killed, including Anton Yelizarov (call sign “Lotus”), a senior “Wagnerite” who has been involved in the war on Ukraine, and Nikita Fedyanin, the author of the “Grey Zone” Telegram channel, part of the “military blogger” ecosystem that surrounds the Kremlin’s imperial adventures. A statement from Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) on 29 July claimed “the rebels received necessary information [from HUR], and not just information, which enabled a successful military operation against Russian war criminals”.
IS in Al-Naba demands to know:
Was it a jointly coordinated attack where Crusader, nationalist, separatist, and Al-Qaeda interests intersected? Or was it a mere ‘coincidence’ that worked better than a thousand plans [might have]? Was it an alliance on the military field? Or [is Al-Qaeda] an ignorant pawn? Or was it just an innocent synchronisation where time, place, and a common enemy came together?!
Needless to say, IS has views on this, drawing attention to recent “official writings” from Al-Qaeda Central (AQC), specifically an essay by Sayf al-Adel (real name: Muhammad Saladin Zaydan), the presumed leader of the organisation since Ayman al-Zawahiri’s demise in July 2022. Sayf “incited the children of Muslims ‘not to evade military service, but to invest in it’, and said that it is ‘an opportunity for serious people’,” according to Al-Naba. “Al-Qaeda goes on to say: ‘Oh youth of the umma [Islamic community], compulsory conscription is an amazing opportunity that must be exploited’, openly promoting working in the infidel armies that Al-Qaeda literally describes as ‘our armed forces’!”
Evidently appalled, Al-Naba has some questions about how this works: “Does Al-Qaeda make takfir [declare as infidels] the armies of the taghut [idolatrous ruler]? Or does it suffice [to excommunicate] Pharaoh and Haman, and recognise their soldiers as Muslims? And this jurisprudence, is it new or only now being made clear?” But Al-Naba has no intention of waiting for an answer.
Moving swiftly on, Al-Naba denounces “the collaboration of Al-Qaeda’s branches with the apostate militias” as “a drop in the ocean” of Al-Qaeda’s deviations, with its new retreats from Islam becoming evident as it starts making statements again after years of silence in its caves. Al-Naba asks whether AQC will disown Sayf’s latest proposal, noting that even if it does it will be a rhetorical position “contrary to the facts on the ground”, or whether AQC will legitimise Sayf’s idea, as it previously legitimised Al-Qaeda’s jihadists in Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan when they “fought under the [aerial] umbrella of the [U.S.-led] coalition, shoulder to shoulder with the Sahwat [Awakenings, i.e. Syrian rebels and other local anti-IS Sunni forces] against the Islamic State.”
Interestingly, Al-Naba makes no mention of the fact that Sayf is likely based in Iran—an open goal in attacking Al-Qaeda’s jihadi-Salafist credentials, which is so obviously the purpose of the editorial. Perhaps there were space constraints.
Next is the “Rafidi front”, a derogatory term for Shi’is, in this context meaning Iran’s clerical regime. Referring to the 27 July missile attack by Hizballah (“The Party of God”), the Lebanon-based unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), on Majdal Shams, which massacred twelve children at a football match, Al-Naba notes that this caused some political trouble because the victims were from “the Druze sect inside the Jewish statelet. It soon turned into a marathon of denial and hedging, and evasion in the official statements of Hizb al-Shaytan [The Party of Satan].”
IS has fun with the lexicographical contortions Hizballah went through and showers contempt on its various attempts to defend itself by reference to “‘rules of engagement’ and the infidel international charters. … Were they serious about fighting the Jews during the ten months when Gaza was incinerated, along with its people, as a sacrifice for the sake of Iran?! If they were serious, why did they deny it despite having repeatedly attacked the same town? If they were lying, who believed them?!”
Al-Naba continues:
On the same front, the Jews assassinated the former Prime Minister, an icon of al-dimuqratiyya al-shirkiya [polytheistic or idolatrous democracy], and leader of the dovish faction [i.e., HAMAS], the taghut [Ismail] Haniyeh, in the heart of Tehran [on 31 July]. Thus, the head of Iranian sovereignty was struck again, but this time accompanied by one of al-adhnab [lit. “the tails”, the lackeys].2 Did Iran fail to protect its head or its lackey? Or did Iran sell its lackey to save its head? Especially since the same thing happened on the day [2 January] of the assassination of [HAMAS deputy and founder of its Al-Qassam Brigade, Saleh] al-Aruri, in the heart of the Resistance Axis in Lebanon?!
Whatever the answer is, it is bad and embarrassing for the Axis and its followers. … We have said it before: Whoever is unable to protect himself and his leaders is even more incapable of protecting his lackeys, that is if protecting his lackeys is on his agenda to start with, because everyone knows that al-adhrue [lit. “the arms] and the lackeys of Iran fought the war on behalf of the head. May God preserve neither head nor tail for them.
Never favourable to ambiguity, IS asks that readers contemplate the fact that Haniyeh remained “loyal to the Rafidi Axis until the last breath of his life. Indeed, he breathed his last in the Iranian Rafidi embrace, and he got what he deserved, as God dealt with him justly.”
IS is furious, though, that the Iranian regime tried to declare Haniyeh a “martyr”, like “the enemy of God, His Messenger, and the believers” Qassem Sulaymani, the head of the IRGC Quds Force killed by the U.S. in January 2020. The use of the term “martyr” about such men is a gross provocation against Sunnis, according to Al-Naba, and not even the “false testimonies that have come in [from Sunni groups] and those that have not arrived yet, from the Taliban and its sisters, Al-Qaeda and its branches, who have slaughtered monotheism”, can change that.
IS taunts those fighting under the banner of the Axis of Resistance and “the directives of its joint rooms in Lebanon and Tehran”—a reference to the “Joint Operations Chamber”—who have brought upon themselves “destruction and devastation”, with nothing to show for it in the temporal world and have surrendered their deen. By Al-Naba’s reckoning, all the justifications for holding off on implementing (IS’s version of) the shari’a have been “buried under the rubble of the houses that were flattened on behalf of the Iranian Axis”, and mockingly asks if those serving the Islamic Republic will realise they took the bait and will wake up from their “delusion” before Judgment Day (or the Day of Resurrection, Yawm al-Qiyama).
“From one illusion to another”, writes Al-Naba in a seamless segue, “the followers of the Axis [of Resistance]” got themselves very excited about “the infidel international courts and peaceful pressures, raising their expectations to the ceiling [ahead of] the taghut [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s speech to Congress” on 24 July. But they were disappointed in their hopes and expectations:
[T]he mirage of pressure [from protesters] in the streets and at universities, all these weak peaceful pressures, did not hold up at all in the face of the pressure of the Jews (the lobby) that runs the world from the streets of America and Europe with their power over the economy, money, and the media. The taghut Netanyahu appeared in Congress as a leader in a Jewish forum that leads America, but is not led by America, and that was when the enthusiasts for the factions [i.e., HAMAS and the other IRGC units] were waiting to expel him, hoping to arrest him and bring him before the [International] Criminal Court?!
Allowances made for antisemitic derangement, one has a degree of sympathy for IS’s immense confusion at what was “in the minds of these people”.
“And not far from that mirage,” Al-Naba goes on:
the Ataturk of this era screamed at the Jewish statelet with hollow, exhibitionist statements, forgetting that he was and still is an integral part of the Jewish-Crusader system. He is an open economic and security ally of the Jews and the Crusaders, and he is the cheap pawn of NATO with which they fight Islam. Did his voice cover up this truth, which is only hidden from those who see the speck in the eyes of [United Arab Emirates president Muhammad] Bin Zayed and [Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad] Bin Salman, and do not see the palm tree trunks in the eyes of [Qatar’s Emir] Tamim [bin Hamad al-Thani] and [Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip] Erdogan?!
An abiding theme of the Islamic State is that it alone represents ‘true’ Islam—by definition in their perception, Sunni Islam—in a ‘pure’ form, uncorrupted by entanglements with “idolatrous” governments that rule with man-made laws, rather than the shari’a.3 This editorial is very much in that genre, and it is the reason why, though IS gloats about the setbacks of the Iranian regime, the ideological assault falls on Al-Qaeda (accused of deviating from jihadism by collaborating with nationalists and the non-Islamist Arab governments) and HAMAS (whose claims to Islamism are rejected root-and-branch, not least because it is an instrument of the Shi’a theocracy in Iran).
In wrapping up, the Naba 454 editorial hammers this theme, saying that all “this confusion and the blatant contradictions in the positions and alignments of these [Islamist] parties and movements” is because they have strayed from the foundations of the faith. Those watching the succession of events adumbrated here, Al-Naba argues, “realise the extent of the ferocity of the battle and the polarisation between the camp of slavery to God Almighty and those enslaved to other gods and idols”.4 Amid the ignorance and strife (fitna) of the present age, many are falling into jahiliyya (pre-Islamic ignorance), Al-Naba concludes, and those who give into this temptation will “undoubtedly perish, and whoever fights with it, separates from it, and disavows it, will reach safety. … He [God] has revealed to us [humans] the truth just as He … has revealed to us falsehood …, so that whosoever is destroyed might be destroyed on the basis of clear evidence, and those who live might live on the basis of clear evidence. Your Lord does not wrong any one.”
NOTES
Can also be translated: “That Those Who Perished [for Rejecting the Faith] Would Perish Upon [Knowledge of the] Evidence and Those Who Lived [in Faith] Would Live Upon Evidence”.
While “al-adhnab” implies someone being an instrument in someone else’s hands, it is distinct from an agent or spy (al-umala); there is an edge of contempt to the word, the connotation being someone subordinate—“underlings”, “flunkeys”, or “henchmen” would work as well. I chose “lackeys” because it is the word IS tends to use in its own English-language translations, and it is the one I have used before.
For the sake of simplicity, I have just translated this as “and idols”, but the actual text reads, “wal-andad wal-awthan”, differentiating between two types of idolatry. Andad literally translates as “equals” or “peers”, meaning those who worship separate entities as equivalent to Allah, the one God who created the world. The Qur’an does not deny that the “gods” worshipped by the opponents of its monotheistic audience exist; it merely denies they are gods, designating them (rather hazily) as inferior entities. Awthan, literally “apart from”, is a slightly different category of idolater, often called “associators”, those who worship entities apart from God that they have associated with Him and (falsely, of course) raised up to His level. Doing either of these things is shirk (usually translated as “polytheism” or “idolatry”) and the antagonists in the Qur’an guilty of it are named as mushrikun, which by the Tradition has been taken to mean pagans, and that is the Muslim view at the present time. Ironically, the Islamic State using “mushrikun” as a polemical weapon to accuse opponents who are self-evidently monotheists of being pagans and idolaters is more in-keeping with the spirit of how the term originated. See: Gerald Hawting (1999), The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History, pp. 50-51, 61.