The Qur’an forbids Muslims to kill other Muslims (4:92), but if Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have “abandoned Islam,” their members can lawfully be killed for apostasy. If Islamic State (ISIS) jihadis do kill Hamas and PIJ members, witless Western political and media analysts will hold up the killings, if they take notice of them at all, as evidence that ISIS is not Islamic. And from ignorant, wrongheaded analysis come wrong conclusions and policies that are foredoomed to fail.
“ISIS spokesman Abu Umar al-Muhajir calls on Muslims around the world to join the organization’s ranks and criticizes other Islamist organizations,” Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, September 18, 2022:
- On September 13, 2022, ISIS’s Al-Furqan Media Foundation released an audiotape by ISIS spokesman Abu Umar al-Muhajir entitled “Hold firmly to the rope of Allah and do not be divided.”[1] In the audiotape, the spokesman calls on ISIS operatives to liberate ISIS prisoners from prisons around the world. He also calls on Muslims around the world – especially in Syria, Iraq, Africa, Yemen, and East Asia – and non-Muslims to join the ranks of ISIS (Telegram, September 13, 2022).
- The spokesman harshly criticizes the Sunni rebel organizations in Syria, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. He also criticizes the Sinai tribes for collaborating with the Egyptian army, claiming that they serve Israel, and calling on them to change their ways before it is too late. Abu Umar al-Muhajir also criticizes Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), referring to them as converts to Shiite Islam, those who abandoned Islam (murtaddin), and liars who do not operate on behalf of Islam, but rather for a narrow interest.
- In the ITIC’s assessment, the spokesman’s call to join ISIS may indicate that the organization suffers from a shortage of operatives, probably stemming from intensive counterterrorism activities against it around the globe. In addition, the audiotape reflects an attempt to leverage the fragile political and economic situation in the world and the division in the West, as perceived by the spokesman, for ISIS’s needs….
