“The Hazaras [Afghanistan’s largest ethnic minorities, who are primarily Shia Muslims] insult us, they don’t accept Caliph Umar and Bibi Aisha [figures important in Sunni Islam] and tell awful things about them. This is the main reason why the Islamic State [ISKP] is killing the Hazaras.”
Remember this the next time someone tells you that in Islam, fighting is only defensive, and that Islam has nothing to do with violence. Probably the most remarkable aspect of Mohammed Sharif’s words here is that they echo virtually every other statement that any Islamic State jihadi has ever made, in being about Islam from beginning to end. Yet Islam is the one aspect of the Islamic State that Western counterterror analysts routinely dismiss and deny. How, then, can their analyses possibly be correct?
“Weakened ISIL’s sectarian agenda exacts heavy toll in Afghanistan,” by Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska and Mohsin Khan Mohmand, Al Jazeera, April 2, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Kabul, Afghanistan – Mohammed Sharif sits in a tiny visitor’s room inside a prison run by Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security [NDS], in the capital Kabul.
A member of the Islamic State of the Khorasan Province (ISKP), an ISIL (ISIS) affiliate, Sharif, 21, spent the last eight months in prison after he was captured during a raid in Kabul.
Last December, Afghan and US forces claimed to have meted out a humiliating defeat to ISKP in Nangarhar, its main stronghold in the war-torn country.
But in the past weeks, the group resurfaced again claiming responsibility for the killing of more than 50 people in two attacks targeting the minority Shia and Sikh communities in the Afghan capital….
Sharif says he joined the ISKP to take revenge against the Americans who since the 2001 invasion of the South Asian country have committed numerous atrocities against civilians.
But he also emphasised the hatred towards the “infidels” – the local communities who are not Sunni Muslims.
“The Hazaras [Afghanistan’s largest ethnic minorities, who are primarily Shia Muslims] insult us, they don’t accept Caliph Umar and Bibi Aisha [figures important in Sunni Islam] and tell awful things about them. This is the main reason why the Islamic State [ISKP] is killing the Hazaras,” Sharif said.
“As a Muslim, I was outraged when Americans were shooting the Quran in Bagram. In France, the Quran was burned many times. This is our right to fight against these people. From the very first day, I wanted to kill the Americans and the infidels,” he told Al Jazeera.
Sharif grew up in Kabul, as one of seven siblings to poor parents. He describes his childhood as “disappointing”, as he began to work on the streets of Kabul, selling plastic from the age of four….