ISIS Renames Its Online Magazine, Pointing to Its New Target

In an effort to drive up recruitment into the troop masses of the Islamic State, ISIS employed a former American computer scientist to be the editor-in-chief of its online magazine, Dabiq.  Ahmad Abousamra was seemingly the perfect candidate for the job, considering his attention to detail, his research methods, his translation abilities from Arabic to English, and his terribly brutal language toward the infidel.

“He would write many articles for the magazine, review what his fellow editors wrote, and scrutinize any materials that were translated for publishing, spending a great deal of time and effort doing so,” the ISIS eulogy stated.

According to the ISIS account, Abu Sulayman’s “proficiency in Sharia knowledge” resulted in him being entrusted by al-Furqan “to draft his ideas into articles, which he did under the pen name “Abu Maysarah ash-Shami […] and while many attempts were made to uncover his identity, all of them ended in failure.” Abu Sulayman distinguished himself particularly in his fierce condemnation of al Qaeda, which he blamed for a split between jihadis in Syria and dismissed as “Jews of Jihad” in a 2016 article.

At some point Abu Sulayman participated in a failed plot to kill the American Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf on a recent visit the scholar made to Turkey, according to the ISIS account. Yusuf has long been an outspoken critic of ISIS and Islamist terrorist groups. It provided no further details about the plot.

Abu Sulayman’s mentor al-Furqan (whose real name is Wael Salman) was killed in a coalition airstrike in Raqqa on September 7, 2016. A U.S. official said al-Furqan had direct access to ISIS leader al Baghdadi.

According to the ISIS account, Abu Sulayman, upset at the death of his mentor, requested a deployment to the frontlines against U.S. backed Syrian militia forces, who were advancing towards Raqqa. The group claimed a missile struck the house where he was staying just north of Tabqa.

Abousamra was announced in the latest edition of the magazine, Rumiyah, as having been killed in a coalition airstrike in a small village southwest of Raqqa in January of this year.  FBI has still not verified his death and officials are quick to point out that many such hoaxes are perpetrated on authorities to attempt to throw them off the scent until things cool down.  Still others believe that he yet lives, waiting to make a strike at some time in the future through propagandistic measures and techniques.

The intriguing pat of all this is the fact that the magazine was renamed from Dabiq to Rumiyah.  The translation of that name is telling as to what ISIS plans to focus on in the upcoming months and years.

Rumiyah is the Arabic word for “Rome,” and relates the name in all variances to the Catholic Church and Christians.  Up until now, the ISIS cowards who have been rounding up people for public execution have been focusing their efforts on apostates to Islam within the region.  Those who were espousing Westernized beliefs or versions of a softened word of Muhammad were targeted.  Christians were an aside to all of that destruction and terror.  However, the focus has been re-directed.  In light of the ISIS masked killers making multiple statements against what they call the “Crusaders” and “followers of the Cross” and how they will be fed to the “lions of Islam,” Rumiyah is a direct reference to Christianity.  One might argue that Rome is the new target, but the fact is that to jihadists, Rome and Christianity are one and the same.  In other words, the new enemy of the caliphate is Christianity.

Related to the attack just yesterday on an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester Arena in England, a video surfaced shortly after where a masked Muslim jihadist held up a sign where the word “Manchester” and the date “2017-05-22.”  In the audio, the following threat is issued: ‘The lions of the Islamic State are beginning to attack all the crusaders. Allahu Akbar.’

Crusaders refers directly to Christians and it appears that the war has suddenly shifted from anyone in their path to, specifically, all in the faith of Christ.  The threat level in England has been notched up to its highest level, critical, since the 1990s.  It is about to get very serious in the war against terror.  Trump and his administration will have their hands full in the coming years.

Source:  CNN