By Zahra Qadir
Young people are increasingly the main victims of the so-called Islamic State – whether being recruited to commit barbaric acts or executed by ISIS thugs for trivial reasons.
Just recently, two separate incidents have evidenced this terrible trend. In a shocking video, a young boy from Kazakhstan was filmed shooting two captured Russians dead. It’s disputed whether he actually fired the lethal bullets but the fact that ISIS would stage such a scene is horrific in itself.
In the last few months, hundreds of misguided teenagers have deserted their families in the UK and Europe after being groomed online by radical recruiters. They’ve flown to Turkey and crossed the border into Syria believing they’re fighting for Islam. The truth has been very different. Teenage girls from the UK have been married off to foreign fighters and boys thrown into the front line. Little wonder that a growing number have been frantically looking for the exit.
Twenty-five year old Tareena Shakil from Burton-on-Trent – a TOWIE fan and mother of a young toddler – has learned the truth about ISIS the hard way. After being forcibly married to a one-legged jihadi, she decided it was time to escape from Syria. But now she finds herself under threat of being returned to that country by the Turkish authorities. Nobody in the region feels much compassion for a young Briton who was conned by ISIS propaganda.
In the worst-case scenario, Tareena could find herself back in the clutches of ISIS. That would be a death sentence. ISIS has already put an estimated 120 youngsters on so-called ‘trial’ for their life because they’ve tried to leave. But there’s no going back. ISIS doesn’t issue return tickets. Once in their territory, you do their bidding or face the consequences.
The other incident that evidences ISIS brutality towards young people saw thirteen teenagers at the receiving end of their “justice” last month. They were led into a town square in the Iraqi city of Mosul and machine gunned to death. Their crime? Watching Iraq and Jordan playing a football match on TV. The game was part of the Asian Cup, played in Australia on 12 January. No doubt these young guys were shouting their support for the hugely talented team – role models for young Iraqis.
They must have cheered ever louder as Iraq achieved a 1-0 win over Jordan. In a country so long wracked by war, football has offered a welcome distraction. But little could these boys have realised that their exuberance would lead them shortly afterwards to be lying face down and riddled with bullets. As they were lined up, a voice on a loudspeaker detailed the heinous crime of watching their favourite team. Moments later, a black-clad ISIS thug calmly walked along the line of bodies finishing off those that showed the slightest flicker of life.
Just pause and think about that for a moment – many of you will have sat at home watching the footie with your mates. Can you imagine being dragged from your living room, paraded through the streets to the town centre and then put to death? It’s like something out of a dystopian horror movie – but this is the nightmare world of ISIS. So scared were the parents of the slaughtered teens that their bodies were left in the open. ISIS warned local people to keep away. These terrorists wanted this gruesome spectacle to serve as a lesson: Watch football and you die.
Of course, you won’t actually find a word in the Qur’an or the sayings of the Prophet stating that you can’t watch sport. But then these monsters think they know better than the Prophet. They’ve created a distorted and murderous version of Islam where people are taken from their homes, given a cursory trial then crucified, stoned or whipped in public. It’s psychopathic behaviour disguised as faith. These are basically bullies with guns. They get a kick out of the power they can exert over other young people – even having the power to take their lives.
So how would ISIS prefer young people to spend their time if not watching sport on the telly? The evidence suggests they think gawping at a woman being stoned to death for adultery is a more wholesome way to pass an hour or two. Yet another woman accused of adultery has recently been slain in a hail of rocks. At one stoning in Raqqa, Syria – ISIS operatives couldn’t get local people to join in. So the ISIS murderers – most of whom weren’t from Syria, let alone Raqqa – chucked the stones themselves. In another incident they got the father of a young girl to denounce his own daughter and then begin the fatal onslaught.
This so clearly illustrates the perverted morals of the extremists. Watching Yaser Kasim land the ball in the net for Iraq is haram while forcing a father to stone his own daughter is halal. But then these are creatures who trade captured Yazidi women between themselves as sex slaves while lecturing on morality. The highest prices, incidentally, are for Yazidi girls below the age of nine. So you can be a paedophile and a good person according to ISIS but cheer for your football team and it’s the firing squad for you!
Also last month, two men were given ninety lashes for playing an “un-Islamic” electronic keyboard and a lute. The instruments were then smashed to pieces. The absurdity of ISIS rule and its cruelty to young people has even extended to fifteen young men aged between 16 and 22 hauled off for breeding pigeons. It seems that pigeon fancying makes you less of a Muslim!
This is the ISIS vision for youth – turning us into psychotic executioners or depriving us of any small pleasures because they’ve decided it makes us less Islamic. And their answer to any dissent from the young is bullets and knives. This surely isn’t the future we want for Islam.