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Fact-Check: ISIS Hates Us Because We Don’t Embrace Islam, Not Because of Donald Trump

Jihadists hate us with a passion anyway; people who are on the cusp of becoming jihadis do not need Trump to convince them.

BY Immanuel Al-Manteeqi · @Al_Manteeqi | September 27, 2016

One frequently hears that people like Donald Trump are playing into the narrative of ISIS and other jihadist or Islamist groups by virtue of their rhetoric. Indeed, Hillary Clinton, Trump’s contender for the highest office in the world, is fond of making such accusations.

Clinton and others state that Trump’s rhetoric regarding Islam and Muslims will only result in his playing into the hands of jihadis, who want to  propagate the view that the West is in a vicious war with Islam. On September 19th, for example, Clinton told reporters that “we know that a lot of the rhetoric we’ve heard from Donald Trump has been seized on by terrorists, in particular ISIS.” She further elaborated that “we know that Donald Trump’s comments have been used online for recruitment of terrorists.”

In these statements Hillary Clinton echoed what others, like CIA director Michael Hayden, had  affirmed. In a POLITCO interview with journalist Glenn Thrush, Hayden commented that Trump’s call to temporarily put in place a tout court moratorium on Muslim immigration has “made the United States less safe than it would otherwise be.”

Now, Michael Hayden is probably technically correct in his judgment vis-a-vis U.S. security and Trump’s rhetoric on banning all Muslims from the country—i.e., his fiery rhetoric here has increased the probability that Jihadis will hate the West, and thus increase the probability that they will attack the territories of the United States, or U.S personnel abroad.

But this criticism of Trump is not worth mentioning because this increase in probability is insignificant, and has greatly been exaggerated by people like Hillary Clinton for political gain.

We can discern the insignificance of the evidence here by stopping to think about what Trump’s critics are implicitly presupposing when they state that Trump’s rhetoric makes the United States less secure than it would have otherwise been. The critics believe that Trump is making the United States less secure because his rhetoric is somehow increasing the probability  that there will be jihadi attacks against the United States. And they believe this because they implicitly presuppose that Trump’s rhetoric increases the probability that jihadis hate the United States.

Jihadists hate the United States with a passion anyway; people who are on the cusp of becoming jihadis do not need Trump to convince them that they should hate the United States.

Whether U.S. politicians say that ISIS or other Jihadi groups are Islamic or not is simply irrelevant to ISIS and like-minded extremist Islamic groups—they don’t really care. As Muslim reformer Shireen Qudosi recently testified before Chairman Scott Perry for the Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency of the House Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. Congress, in a hearing entitled “Identifying the Enemy: Radical Islamist Terror,”

We keep [asking] what ISIS will say. [But] ISIS isn’t sitting there wondering what Americans will say. ISIS is going to use whatever narrative [Americans] throw at them and twist it.

That Jihadis hate the United States regardless of what its officials or prospective officials say or do– short of reciting the shahada[1] and becoming Muslims– can be readily discerned by reading what ISIS, the leader of the jihadi front, has written in an article entitled, “Why We Hate You and Why We Fight You” in the 15th issue of their magazine, Dabiq.

In this article, they make explicit that their “primary reason” for hating the West will not cease to exist until the West embraces Islam. In this regard, it is lamentable that politicians who want to preserve their appeal by uttering the falsehood that ISIS members are not motivated by religion. The Dabiq article lists six reasons why ISIS militants hate the West and why they fight Westerners. The six reasons are listed here:

1 – “We hate you first and foremost, because you are disbelievers, you reject the oneness of Allah.”

2 – “We hate you because your secular, liberal societies permit the very things that Allah has prohibited while banning many of the things He has permitted.”

3 – “In the case of the atheist fringe, we hate you and wage war against you because you disbelieve in the existence of your Lord and Creator.”

4 – “We hate you for your crimes against Islam and wage war against you to punish you for your transgressions against our religion.”

5 – “We hate you for your crimes against Muslims; your drones and fighter jets bombs, kill, and maim our people around the world.”

6 – Sixth “We hate you for invading our lands and fight you to repel you and drive you out.”

The article goes on to importantly state that

What’s important to understand here is that although some might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary, hence the reason we addressed it at the end of the above list. The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. [Emphasis added]

So the jihadists hate the United States and Americans, and indeed all Westerners, with a passion regardless of what they say or do, so long as they do not embrace the Islamic religion. The implicit assumption of the critics that Trump’s rhetoric is going to significantly increase the probability that Jihadists hate America, and therefore significantly decrease the security of the United States, is simply false.

It should be noted that one can believe that his critics are wrong to say that Trump is indirectly aiding Islamists here without endorsing Trump’s plan of temporarily banning all Muslim immigration into the country.

So the idea that people like Trump, who take a strong stance against Islamic terrorism, are somehow enabling terrorism through their rhetoric is nothing but a talking point that is being used by Clinton and her cohorts for political expediency.

Indeed, if anyone is making it harder to fight against Islamic terrorism, it is the Obama administration. And Hillary Clinton, if she were to become President, would continue the same failed national security policy of the Obama administration with respect to the Middle East and Islamic terrorism.

While Donald Trump wants to curb immigration from places like Syria, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to continue the influx—despite the fact that the State Department has already admitted that jihadis have posed as refugees, in order to gain asylum in the United States. And Clinton and the Obama administration seem to be opposed to Ted Cruz’s commonsensical idea that we should give persecuted minorities in the Middle East priority in immigration.

Furthermore, if anyone is indeed enabling terrorism, it is none other than the Obama administration with its politically correct stance vis-a-vis Islamic terrorism. As can be discerned from the “Willful Blindness” senate committee hearing on Islamic terrorism, the Obama administration’s policies, which Hillary Clinton would no doubt continue, have resulted in the dangerous interagency wiping of terminology that associates jihadi attacks with anything having to do with Islam.

This type of self-censorship and the refusal to call a spade a spade, not Trump’s rhetoric, is what is going to make it significantly harder to fight Islamic terrorism. There is simply no significant sense in which Trump is indirectly supporting jihadis.


[1] The shahāda is the Muslim testimony of faith, which is as follows: “I testify that there is no God but God, and that Muhammad is the prophet of God.”

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