What's a Poor Jihadi to Do?

This story starts out sounding as if it could be a joke: a couple of guys walked into a bar, and mayhem ensues. There was, however, nothing funny about how it all unfolded, and plenty of warnings about what is happening in Europe now, and what could be happening in the United States before too long as well.

This particular story took place in France, and in its report on Monday, the French-language publication Sud Ouest tells us that the perpetrators were “known to police.” That is a warning sign in itself, for we see it increasingly in stories involving violence and terrorism coming out of France and elsewhere in Western Europe. The police seem to be familiar with a good many more perpetrators than they actually apprehend, much less prevent from committing crimes. The Islamic State (ISIS) wrote years ago about its intention to overwhelm Western law enforcement agencies with more criminals than they could handle, and it looks as if we may be getting there.

Sud Ouest reported that in this case, the two men who were known to police were brothers from Algeria in their forties, who last Friday entered a bar in Mauléon-Licharre in southwest France, seemingly in an advanced state of intoxication. Some might take the apparent fact that these guys were drunk as an indication in itself that they were not Islamic jihad terrorists, but that is a misconception.

Islam forbids the consumption of alcohol (cf. Qur’an 5:90), but even a devout and observant Muslim may opt to engage in a bit of sin if he knows that he is going to commit an act of jihad that will far outweigh it in Allah’s grand scales on the day of judgment. According to a hadith, Muhammad said that no deed was greater than jihad (Bukhari 4.52.44), so committing a peccadillo before embarking on jihad is of little, if any, importance.

The drunken would-be jihadis came upon people who were enjoying a pleasant evening out: “On Friday, April 10, around 10:30 p.m., while about ten people were peacefully seated on the terrace of this lively bar in downtown Mauléon-Licharre, in the Basque Country, two heavily intoxicated individuals arrived.”

As soon as the Algerian brothers got into the bar, they started threatening people, which, understandably, “deeply affected the bar’s patrons and manager.” The “situation quickly escalated” and finally “spiral[ed] out of control.” That was the point at which “one of them grabbed a knife from a charcuterie board, making threats. Customers immediately took it from him. The two men, of Algerian origin, left and then returned with broken bottles, ready to fight. According to several witnesses, they then made death threats in the name of their God: ‘Allahu Akbar,’ ‘Allah is strong,’ and ‘Allah will kill,’ they reportedly said repeatedly.”

“Allah is strong” is clear enough. “Allahu akbar” means “Allah is greater,” that is, greater than your god, and demonstrating his superiority in the present act of jihad, in which violence is done to those who dare not to submit to him. “Allah will kill,” however, is the most interesting thing they said. Allah doesn’t seem to have been in the bar with them, but they were speaking out of the assumption that they were the executors of his wrath.

This is based on the Qur’an, which exhorts Muslims to allow Allah to fight the unbelievers through them: “Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands, and he will lay them low and give you victory over them, and he will heal the hearts of people who are believers, and he will remove the anger of their hearts.” (Qur’an 9:14-15)

That may be why, in the words of one eyewitness, “it wasn’t just a simple fight.” That’s right. It wasn’t. It was, in a jihad — a small one, to be sure, but a jihad nevertheless. “Everyone was scared,” the witness recounted. “This kind of thing never happens in Mauléon.”

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Well, it does now, and it’s going to happen more often. The Pau public prosecutor’s office “confirmed that threats in the name of Allah had been made,” and there are plenty more recent arrivals in France ready to issue threats and do worse in the name of Allah. However, the prosector determined that “this was not sufficient to constitute terrorist threats.”

What’s a poor jihadi to do? If screaming “Allahu akbar” and threatening to kill non-Muslims won’t get him classified as a terrorist, what will? They needn't worry, however. As Europe continues down its suicidal path, these jihadis will soon enough be seen for what they are, and accorded all the respect they demand.