https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-jihadists-are-saying-about-the-coronavirus-11586112043
Jihadist groups are closely following the spread of the new coronavirus. In their publications and on social media their members post analyses, threats and even sanitary guidelines. Counterterrorism officials should monitor these communications for a window into their thinking.
Jihadists and their supporters have been gloating over the health restrictions enacted across the world, especially in the U.S. “They used to mock women wearing the Islamic niqab—now they are doing the same. We ridicule you like you ridiculed us,” reads a typical post, dated March 17, on the jihadist al Tawhid Awalan channel on Telegram, the encrypted messaging app. The statement accompanied a photo of Westerners in layers of protective clothing.
Many jihadists are cheering the virus on. Balagh, a monthly magazine published out of Idlib, Syria, by clerics with al Qaeda sympathies, calls the virus “one of Allah’s soldiers”: the “corona-soldier.” This is a popular theme. Jihadist writer Khalid al Sibai warned on the Thabat news agency’s Telegram channel that this “tiny soldier,” which has so devastated the U.S. and its allies, could soon be joined by jihadist soldiers in the flesh—a threat. On Hamas’s al Aqsa TV, Imam Jamil al Mutawa boasted that Allah “sent just one soldier,” the virus, “and it has hit all 50 states” in America, driven Israel into lockdown, but left Palestinians mostly unaffected.
One of the most significant early statements was a Jan. 23 fatwa by the Syrian cleric Abdul Razzaq al Mahdi. He said Muslims are permitted to pray for the virus to annihilate the Chinese “enemies of Allah” for having “killed, slaughtered, imprisoned and oppressed the Uighurs,” a Muslim ethnic minority in China’s Xinjiang province. Islamic State concurred in its al Naba weekly magazine and also held up Iranian coronavirus deaths as a sign from Allah of the “blindness” and “insolence” of Shiite Muslims, who should “abandon polytheism."
Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, the prominent Jordan-based sheikh and spiritual mentor of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man who founded the al Qaeda offshoot that would later become ISIS, posted a series of messages on Telegram about the pandemic’s “hidden benefits” for Muslim societies. These include the closing of bars and nightclubs, and that more women are covering their faces with niqabs to protect from the virus. Most recently he added, “There is nothing wrong with a Muslim praying for the deaths of infidels and wishing that they contract coronavirus.”
Jihadist groups are closely following the spread of the new coronavirus. In their publications and on social media their members post analyses, threats and even sanitary guidelines. Counterterrorism officials should monitor these communications for a window into their thinking.
Jihadists and their supporters have been gloating over the health restrictions enacted across the world, especially in the U.S. “They used to mock women wearing the Islamic niqab—now they are doing the same. We ridicule you like you ridiculed us,” reads a typical post, dated March 17, on the jihadist al Tawhid Awalan channel on Telegram, the encrypted messaging app. The statement accompanied a photo of Westerners in layers of protective clothing.
Many jihadists are cheering the virus on. Balagh, a monthly magazine published out of Idlib, Syria, by clerics with al Qaeda sympathies, calls the virus “one of Allah’s soldiers”: the “corona-soldier.” This is a popular theme. Jihadist writer Khalid al Sibai warned on the Thabat news agency’s Telegram channel that this “tiny soldier,” which has so devastated the U.S. and its allies, could soon be joined by jihadist soldiers in the flesh—a threat. On Hamas’s al Aqsa TV, Imam Jamil al Mutawa boasted that Allah “sent just one soldier,” the virus, “and it has hit all 50 states” in America, driven Israel into lockdown, but left Palestinians mostly unaffected.
One of the most significant early statements was a Jan. 23 fatwa by the Syrian cleric Abdul Razzaq al Mahdi. He said Muslims are permitted to pray for the virus to annihilate the Chinese “enemies of Allah” for having “killed, slaughtered, imprisoned and oppressed the Uighurs,” a Muslim ethnic minority in China’s Xinjiang province. Islamic State concurred in its al Naba weekly magazine and also held up Iranian coronavirus deaths as a sign from Allah of the “blindness” and “insolence” of Shiite Muslims, who should “abandon polytheism."
Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, the prominent Jordan-based sheikh and spiritual mentor of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man who founded the al Qaeda offshoot that would later become ISIS, posted a series of messages on Telegram about the pandemic’s “hidden benefits” for Muslim societies. These include the closing of bars and nightclubs, and that more women are covering their faces with niqabs to protect from the virus. Most recently he added, “There is nothing wrong with a Muslim praying for the deaths of infidels and wishing that they contract coronavirus.”
