* * *
As their three elder siblings had in Bærum, the youngest brothers now attended Koran school in Hargeisa. They learned verses from the holy book and to love and fear God. All summer long, Sara had tried everything to get Ismael to return to the path of religion. His apostasy pained her. She had taken him to see a well-known sheikh in Hargeisa for guidance. The two of them had met once a week in a mosque and sat on the cool floor of the holy building discussing matters. Ismael thought the sheikh a good man. He listened, presented his arguments, then allowed Ismael to expound his views before commenting on them. Ismael liked him. The sheikh often contradicted him but never pressured him to believe.
After Ismael had traveled home, they had continued to correspond. One argument Ismael had advanced to him, he now copied and pasted to his sister. “We see something, we don’t understand what it is; therefore: God,” he had written to the sheikh, calling it “the argument of ignorance.” Vagueness provoked him. He wanted evidence. “Can there be other explanations than the ones you offer me?” he had asked the sheikh. “Is there anything besides scripture that can confirm what you say? There is no shame in not knowing something. But claiming to have knowledge of something you have no proof of is shameful. How was the universe created? We don’t know. How did life come about? We’re not certain. You say: picture a puddle on the road. It has a form, it has mass, it has edges, and the puddle fits the hole in the road PERFECTLY! The shape of the puddle, in all its uniqueness, fits exactly. GOD IS GREAT! This hole was PERFECTLY MADE to fit this puddle!!! What you call God I call evolution. We adapted to our surroundings, they were not created for us.”
“So thus far you’ve found out that religion is stupid?” Ayan replied.
“Yep. It’s only personal opinions. I know you won’t convince me nor I you, so all I have to say is I love you as a person. I’m happy to have shared 19 years of my life with you. But you have no idea how much I hate religion.”
“Then you’re an atheist.”
“Exactly. I know religion took my sisters from me so I’m turning my back on it.”
“Don’t you believe in anything? Are you still afraid of jinn?”
“Nope. I’m not even afraid of hell.”
“What is an atheist’s solution to existence?”
“I take things as they come. I like to base my life on facts.”
“I need to go but write to me and I’ll reply whenever I can! Btw where is our dad?”
“He went to an anti-IS demonstration.”
“Is he planning on coming down here again?”
“No, he says he doesn’t want anything more to do with you. He has erased you from his life or some crap like that.”
“Oh dear.”
“What makes you think Dad would ever return to Syria? After all, he did say he was almost killed.”
“He’s said he’s going to come here to kill me and my husband and a load of other rubbish. Gotta go.”
“Dad is not himself.”
“I noticed. Sorry about that.” Ayan put in a sad emoji.
“You’ve destroyed my life actually. Bye. All my brothers and sisters have left me. Dad is crazy. Mom hates me. That’s my life in a nutshell. I’m moving out ASAP to live my own life. Changing my name, cutting off contact with my family, moving to Jamaica and smoking weed.”
* * *
At the start of September 2014, two weeks after the video of the killing of James Foley was released, IS publicized its Second Message to America, a video showing the beheading of the American journalist Steven Sotloff. The murderer was the same, dressed in a black balaclava covering everything but his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He had been given the nickname “Jihadi John.”
“I am back, Obama, and I am back because of your arrogant foreign policy toward the Islamic State, because of your insistence on continuing your bombings … just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.”
Women didn’t attend the public beheadings that took place in the square in Raqqa. Women and crowds were haram. But the wives of the fighters sometimes sat together watching videos of the beheadings that occurred at secret locations in the desert. They behaved just as bloodthirsty as their husbands and were happy to write about the killings on Twitter. “So many beheadings at the same time, Allahu Akbar, this video is beautiful #DawlaMediaTeamDoingItRight.” One woman wrote that she would have liked to have been the one who cut off Steven Sotloff’s head.
Umm Irhab—Mother of Terror—described the pleasure the gruesome details gave her. “I was happy to see the beheading of that kafir, I just rewound to the cutting part. Allahu akbar! I wonder what he was thinking b4 the cut.” Another woman took delight in the eviction of a Syrian family from across the street. “I’m pretty sure the men got beheaded, women chucked out,” she gloated. Umm Irhab requested more beheadings and was quick to dismiss those criticizing the use of violence. Another woman summed up the attitude: “Beheading is halal. Go kill yourself if you say it’s haram.”
Some of the women admitted not feeling fulfilled by having to sit and wait for the war to be won, and spoke of their desire to be on the actual battlefield. Umm Ubaydah wrote, “My best friend is my grenade, it’s an American one too, lol, May Allah allow me to kill their pig soldiers with their own weapons.” However, those wanting to fight were put in their place by their fellow sisters. “You may gain more ajr—reward—by spending years of sleepless nights by being a mother and raising your children with the right intentions and for the sake of Allah than by doing a martyrdom operation,” wrote Umm Layth—Mother of the Lion.
