Tag Archive for: Ryan Mauro

The Islamic State Issues Dabiq Magazine #13: Gitmo, Trump Not Mentioned

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has released the 13th issue of its English-language magazine, Dabiq. Here are six points that stand out:

There is not a single mention of Guantanamo Bay, which President Obama says is a recruiting poster for ISIS, or of Donald Trump, who Hillary Clinton says is the biggest recruiter for ISIS.

The terrorist group seems to disagree because  the 56-page magazine is almost entirely about complex theological arguments.

The contents of Dabiq exposes the error of assuming that the extremism of Islamists is a byproduct of anger over perceived mistreatment of Muslims by the U.S. The Islamic State does see anti-Muslim sentiment as suiting its purposes and it does cite actions by the U.S. to justify its views, but the foundation of their ideology is an Islamic interpretation. The worldview, including its political grievances, are shaped by those detailed interpretations presented inDabiq.

Jihad against the Shiites got the most focus.

 ISIS spent more time justifying the killing Shiites than any other enemy, by far. The biggest point of emphasis was that Shiites qualify as apostates and not as fellow Muslims, and therefore any and all of them can be killed. The emphasis suggests that ISIS does not agree with the many Sunnis who consider average Shiites to be Muslims or, at least, not deserving of being murdered.

Taking aim at Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir.

 This issue of Dabiq goes the extra mile to make the case that ISIS is setting up a functional state in Afghanistan and western Pakistan. A significant amount of space is dedicated to presenting the area as ISIS’ biggest opportunity for growth. A minor mention was made of “pleasant news” coming from Kashmir soon. It appears that ISIS is hoping to present itself as the Sunni shield against the Indian Hindus, much like it presents itself as the Sunni shield against the Shiites in Iraq and Syria.

ISIS repeatedly refers to the Taliban as the “nationalist Taliban” (ISIS holds that nationalism is incompatible with Islam). It also accuses the Taliban of not implementing sharia, betraying the faith by getting too cozy with Iran and being puppets of Pakistani intelligence.

This issue of Dabiq is also dismissive of Al-Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan, saying it has only a few members there.

Assassination plots against Saudi imams. 

One of the first declarations in this issue of Dabiq is a call to assassinate Saudi clerics. the Islamic State is hoping to win over followers of the Saudi brand of Islam (often referred to as Wahhabism) by claiming that the Saudi Royal Family and its supporting religious establishment are disregarding the guidance of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.

ISIS feels threatened by the argument that jihad is not permissible because it is counterproductive. This issue spends a noticeable amount of time deriding scholars who argue that Muslims should only wage jihad against its enemies when the time is right. The Islamic State argues for perpetual jihad against its enemies, saying that Allah will bring victory over any militarily superior enemy if the jihad is justified.

“Jewish” Shiites and the mahdi-messiah.

As it almost always does, ISIS ties its jihad to the fulfillment of End Times prophecy. A major portion of this issue claims that Shiite Islam was created by Jews pretending to be Muslims as part of a plot to corrupt the faith and divide the Muslim world. It says that Christianity was corrupted the same way.

It then goes further. Not only is Shiite Islam a plot of the Jews, ISIS claims, but the Jewish messiah and Shiite Islam’s version of themahdi (the “Hidden Imam“) are the same person. This mahdi-messiah is actually the “Antichrist,” or the Dajjal.

In other words, in the minds of ISIS, never mind Israel’s worry about Iran’s pledges to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Iran and Israel—Shiites and Jews—are one. And so the Taliban and other Muslims who play nice with Shiites are complicit with the Antichrist’s agenda.

ISIS doesn’t just make this up out of thin air. They argue their points theologically and devote a significant space doing so. The magazine even ends with a map of Iran and a hadith quoting the Prophet Mohammed as saying that the Antichrist (Dajjal) will be followed by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan, a city in Iran.

In sum, the key takeaway is that jihadists like ISIS will always believe the U.S. and others are at war with Islam no matter what we do because that “fact” is considered an inarguable part of doctrine and prophecy.

Clarion Project documents the Islamic State propaganda magazine in order to expose their hateful ideology. Read every issue of Dabiq here.

ABOUT RYAN MAURO

Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org’s national security analyst, a fellow with Clarion Project and an adjunct professor of homeland security. Mauro is frequently interviewed on top-tier television and radio. Read more, contact or arrange a speaking engagement.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is taken from a graphic from the Islamic State’s Dabiq magazine issue #13.

PODCAST: Pakistani Terrorist Camps in the United States

Listen to this podcast of the January 3, 2016 Lisa Benson Show on KKNT 960 AM Radio – The Patriot. Lisa Benson and New English Review Senior Editor Jerry Gordon co-hosted this show with the assistance of Board of Advisers member, Richard Cutting.

Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Foundation of Islam and Democracy and the U.S. Commission for international religious discussed the recently launched Freedom Muslim Reform Movement, the deteriorating situation inside Syria and U.S. failure to contend with NATO ally Turkey under Islamist President Erdogan in the war against ISIS.

Shoshana Bryen, senior director of the Washington, D.C.-based Jewish Policy Center, addressed allegations in a recent Wall Street Journal expose of NSA spying on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, U.S. Congressional Members and American Jewish leaders, Israeli preparedness against ISIS threats in Syria and the Sinai and the tacit cooperation with Egypt and the fascinating understanding struck with Putin’s Russia to contain Hezbollah. We will be posting Bryen’s written responses to these and other questions, separately.

Jamaat ul-Fuqra fbi

FBI agents embracing members of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a Pakistani based terrorist group in the United States.

Ryan Mauro, National Security Analyst at The Clarion Project addressed the terrorist training camps established in both Canada and America by radical Pakistani Sufi Sheik Mubarak ali Gilani, who has not been investigated by the FBI despite his founding a network of Jamaat ul-Fuqra/Muslim of America (MOA) paramilitary camps in both Canada and the U.S. that conveyed extremist Islamist ideology and provided weapons training for prison converts to Islam. These MOA camps fostered a three decade record of attempted assassinations, criminal activities supporting terrorism akin to that of the perpetrators of the San Bernardino massacres. Yet, as Mauro pointed out, Sheik Gilani does not support ISIS.

Our usually astute European listener had these comments on the January 3, 2016 Lisa Benson Show:

To hear Dr. Jasser state the plan to reform the religion of Islam was very interesting. The Sharia Islamic law actually promoted by Sunni Islam is both political and religious. For these extremists their ideology requires them to conquer the world and forcefully ask all the non-Muslims to convert to Islam or become third class citizens of their caliphate.

What Dr. Jasser is proposing is to separate religion state from religion in Islam. A modernized religious law will take a lot of time.  However, this is the only way to advance eliminating extremist Islam from all around the world. Dr. Jasser should not call this reform a new Sharia law, but the New Moslem Religious law. The word Sharia has another meaning for all Moslems. It will be interesting to watch how many mosques and Imams would adopt Dr. Jasser’s propositions because many are still funded by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Moslem Brotherhood. Let us not forget that Muslim Brotherhood/CAIR members have been engaged by the Administration in such policy considerations.

Dr. Jasser has to be congratulated for the dangerous and wonderful work he is doing.

Wonderful to hear Shoshana Bryen giving her opinion and analysis. The Israelis know that they are being tapped and they know quite well what encryption services they can use for their communications which are Top Secret. Shoshana knows all about what is going on and she writes about it explicitly.

The details that Ryan Mauro provided are diagnostic of the chronic illness of these Islamist Muslim of America camps.  It is unbelievable that the FBI, even with limited resources, has not taken the necessary steps to indict all those who are embedded in these groups. I sincerely hope that there will not be a major terror attack in the US perpetrated by members of these Islamist camps.

I think the radio show is really getting better and better. The American public needs to hear these comments to wake up and contact their law makers in order to have a safe America.

EDITORS NOTE: This podcast originally appeared in the New English Review.

Vetting Needed to Separate Friend from Foe Among Refugees

The Obama Administration is adamant the 10,000 Syrian refugees it plans to resettle in the U.S. are subject to a tough vetting process. The process is tough and long, but a poll in 2014 found that 13 percent have positive feelings towards ISIS. An ideological vetting process that can separate Islamist from non-Islamist is needed to separate valuable friends from deadly foes.

The vetting process should not just rely on criminal records and databases used to detect terrorists and their associates. Because the threat is ideological in nature, it is very possible we could allow in someone with a radical outlook but has yet to establish the kind of operational connections that would show up in a database.

A new bipartisan congressional terrorism report found there isn’t a global comprehensive database of foreign jihadists who have gone to Syria to fight. It says the U.S. doesn’t even have a national strategy against terrorist travel and “information about foreign fighters is crossing borders less quickly than the extremists themselves.” There’s also the serious problem that there is a more general lack of intelligence about Syria.

Watch Clarion Project National Security Analyst Ryan Mauro and retired INS agent Michael Cutler, who gave testimony to the 9/11 Commission, discuss the vetting process for Syrian refugees:

The U.S. has a vetting process of 18 to 24 months. About 1,800 have come to the U.S. in the past two years and a little bit more than half passed the vetting. Names are checked against databases and there’s an interviewing process to make sure there isn’t information linking them to terrorist or criminal activity and that the biography they provided is truthful.

No news reports or explanations by the administration indicate the process includes evaluating the outlook of the applicant to find signs of Islamist sympathies, anti-American views or other forms of extremism like anti-Semitism.

An ideology-based screening process separating Islamists from non-Islamists (as opposed to simply terrorist from non-terrorist) minimizes the chances of a radical getting through and maximizes the chances of identifying an ally to work with. It is not in our interest or in the Syrians’ interest for an Islamist to take a moderate’s place in line.

By failing to identify anti-Islamist friends among the Syrian refugees, we are hurting our cause and losing a chance to undermine the Islamist extremist cause. For example, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American-Islamic Forum for Democracy, is a powerful voice against Islamism. He is in the U.S. doing his work because his parents sought refuge in America from the Assad regime.

The U.S. needs Muslim activists like Jasser. We need fluent Arabic speakers and those who understand that part of the world. We need voices who can speak first-hand about the horrors of ISIS, other Syrian Islamists and the Iran-backed Assad dictatorship. We need Muslims who are on the lookout for extremism and will not hesitate to report it and even keep tabs on it. These are roles that Syrian refugees who oppose Islamism can help fill.

The debate over the administration’s desire to bring 10,000 refugees into America is fierce and contentious, but a middle ground exists between an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees and trusting the current plan.

ABOUT RYAN MAURO

Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org’s national security analyst, a fellow with Clarion Project and an adjunct professor of homeland security. Mauro is frequently interviewed on top-tier television and radio. Read more, contact or arrange a speaking engagement.

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Ryan Mauro – An Inside Look – National Security

Clarion-Project-400x400Today we kick back a bit and introduce you to the Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for the Clarion Project, who you may not know though you see him often on Fox News.

Ryan is one of America’s most effective national security subject-matter experts and well respected in this vitally important community. Enjoy the show as we present Ryan with a few “surprises” and even makes an appeal to the ladies in the audience to drop Ryan a note!

Even through the laughs very serious national security issues are analyzed and discussed.

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