The new issue of ISIS’ Rumiyah magazine concentrates once again on Finnish recruits as a convert to Islam directs Muslims to fight against Muslims in their community who embrace democracy, run for public office or fight in the military.
A woman writing under the name Umm Khalid al-Finlandiyyah said in an issue of ISIS’ Dabiq magazine last year that she was drawn to Islam by living in “a ‘Christian’ nation where people do not strongly adhere to their corrupted religion.”
The Rumiyah issue, released today in English and several other languages, features another writer purportedly from Finland going by the name Umm Musa al-Finlandiyyah. “Umm” means “mother of,” indicating the writer is female.
She said that after converting in her home country she was aghast at “the lack of religious adherence by so-called ‘Muslims’ – those whom I had thought to be Muslims – who didn’t pray, possibly fasted during Ramadan, and whose extent of following the Shari’ah was restricted to the avoidance of eating pork.”
She added that “what is most dangerous” in Finland’s Muslim community “is that most of them don’t even know that there are actions that take people out of Islam, so many people think they are still Muslims, while in reality they have fallen into kufr [disbelief] and riddah [apostasy].”
“Many people think Islam is like a citizenship – once you get it, it remains with you until the end of your life. But Islam doesn’t work with the same principle. It has conditions by which one enters it and nullifiers by which can leave it – even without knowing it.”
The writer said “participating in government elections and voting in them, as well as military service, working as a lawyer, and criticizing the Shari’ah of Allah, are only a few of the many things which can nullify one’s Islam, and all of them are easy to perpetrate” living in non-Muslim countries.
The convert accused other Muslims of being “foolish” by criticizing ISIS when media began “spreading the news about the mass executions conducted by the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham.”
“The ignorant ‘Muslims’ are blaming the Islamic State for spreading fitnah [unrest] and ‘spoiling the jihad,’ though the only true jihad for Allah’s cause is what the Islamic State is actually conducting – for all of its enemies do nothing to support the establishment of Allah’s rule on earth,” she wrote.
She vowed that ISIS’ “fight against kufr and its supporters will continue on the true frontline,” without explicitly mentioning the terror group’s increasing loss of territory in Iraq and Syria.
“Anyone who denies that a so-called ‘Muslim’ Member of Parliament is a murtadd [apostate] kafir – as he has committed shirk with Allah in legislation – is himself a murtadd. And anyone who denies that a so-called ‘Muslim’ in the military service of the kuffar is a murtadd kafir – as he has supported the cause of taghut – is himself a murtadd,” she wrote. “And anyone who refuses to make takfir [excommunication] of those who consider the Shari’ah of Allah to be unsuitable for this era, or refuses to make takfir of those who are fighting to establish democracy, is himself a murtadd.”
In its 2015 year-end report, the Finnish Security Intelligence Service said “at least 70 adults and dozens of children” had traveled to the Islamic State. “This jihadist travel concerns even a much larger group of people in Finland, if the sphere of influence of those having remained in the conflict zone for a long time is taken into account,” the report added.
“The conflict will continue to affect Finland’s security for a long time. A new generation of Jihadists, among them also Finnish nationals, is growing up on the areas controlled by terrorist organisations in Syria and Iraq. Due to terrorist fighters originating from Finland, also foreign radical Islamists know Finland better than before.”
A November study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that “Finland has the largest number of ISIS foreign fighters relative to the size of its Muslim population, followed by Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, and Austria,” and “inequality and poverty are unlikely to be root causes of recruits joining ISIS” as Finland is one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
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