The Incendiary Nature of Islam

I had to take Dymphna to the dentist today, and was gone all afternoon. A little while before we left email tips started coming in about the immolation by the Islamic State of the captured Jordanian pilot Mouath al-Kasaesbeh. I only had time to grab them and add them to tonight’s news feed dataset just before we left.

Coming on the heels of the story about Maria P. in Berlin, we may conclude that Islam has a thing about burning people alive.

I’m glad I posted the Israeli satire of an ISIS beheading video before the latest news broke. Otherwise I would have been reluctant to inject humor into such a horrific moment.

However, I can’t agree with those who maintain that it’s in poor taste to engage in mockery while the Great Jihad is still being waged against us, before the war is clearly won. I maintain that humor is an absolute necessity at times like these.

A case in point is Spike Jones’ classic send-up of the Nazis in “Der Fuehrer’s Face”. It was released in 1942, before it was at all obvious that the Allies (and especially the British) were going to be victorious over Hitler:

Maybe it isn’t a European tradition to make fun of your enemies during wartime, or at the moment when it seems that all hope may be lost. But it sure as heck is an American tradition, especially among Celtic Americans.

And it seems to be an Israeli one, too.

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Below are excerpts from news reports about the execution of Mouath al-Kasaesbeh (with several variant spellings of his name).

First, from Reuters:

Islamic State Shows Burning of Hostage, Jordan Vows ‘Earth-Shaking’ Response

(Reuters) – Islamic State militants released a video on Tuesday appearing to show a captured Jordanian pilot being burnt alive in a cage, a killing that shocked the world and prompted Jordan to promise an “earth-shaking” response.

A Jordanian official said the authorities would swiftly execute several militants in retaliation, including an Iraqi woman whom Amman had sought to swap for the pilot taken captive after his plane crashed in Syria in December.

Reuters could not immediately confirm the content of the video, which showed a man resembling airman Mouath al-Kasaesbeh standing in a small black cage before being set ablaze.

The furious reaction of the Jordanian authorities made clear they treated it as genuine.

From ANSAmed:

ISIS Killed Jordanian Pilot on Jan. 3, Says Gov’t

Reports BBC

(ANSAmed) – ROME, FEBRUARY – Jordan announced that the pilot shown being burnt alive by the Islamic State (ISIS) in a video released on Tuesday had actually been killed on January 3.

It added that this was why ISIS had refused to provide proof that he was alive, the BBC quoted Jordanian television as saying.

From RT:

ISIS Burns Alive Jordanian Pilot it Kept Hostage – Reports

The Islamic State has released a video, purportedly showing Moath al-Kasasbeh, the Jordanian pilot captured in December, being burned alive. The Jordanian government had pleaded to release the hostage in exchange for a captured terrorist.

From ANSAmed again:

ISIS: Jordanian Pilot Burnt Alive in a Cage

Jordan says that he was killed on January 3

(ANSAmed) – AMMAN – A video released on Tuesday by the Islamic State (ISIS) and posted on the website of Site Intelligence Group reportedly shows the Jordanian pilot held hostage by the jihadists as he is burnt alive. SITE director Rita Katz reported the news on Twitter. The footage starts out with a close-up of the hostage in an orange jumpsuit and bruised under his right eye as he makes a statement. There is a black backdrop with flags from countries taking part in the anti-ISIS coalition, including Canada, France, the US, the UK, the UAE and Jordan. In the second part, the Jordanian pilot is standing in front of a group of armed militants dressed in camouflage with their faces covered. In the final part the hostage is seen in a cage as fire approaches and surrounds him.

Jordan announced that the pilot shown being burnt alive by the Islamic State (ISIS) in a video released on Tuesday had actually been killed on January 3.

Minutes after the news broke out, the government reportedly sent a number of salafi convicts to Swaqa prison, were executions often take place. The king could be poised to make a statement and order execution of Sajeda al Rishawee, the failed al Qaida bomber in Amman whose release was demanded by Isis in exchange for the Japanese journalist Kinje Koto.

From Israel National News:

Report: Jordan to Execute Terrorists After Pilot Burned Alive

After ISIS releases video of Maaz al-Kassasbeh’s execution, official says female suicide bomber, 4 others, to be killed in response.

By Ari Soffer

Sajida al-Rishawi, whose release ISIS had previous demanded, faces execution

Just hours after a video surfaced showing the ISIS terrorist group executing a captive Jordanian pilot by burning him alive, Jordan is preparing to execute five terrorist prisoners in revenge, according to a report.

Speaking to Sky News Arabic under condition of anonymity, a Jordanian security official claimed Sajida al-Rishawi – a failed female suicide-bomber whose release ISIS had demanded in a previous video in exchange for Japanese hostage Kenji Goto – would have her execution sentence expedited along with four other Islamist terrorists, in response to the horrific execution of pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh.

The five convicted terrorists would be executed “within hours” the source claimed.

In an official statement to Jordanian state TV, a Jordanian army spokesman confirmed al-Kassasbeh’s death and vowed “revenge”, without elaborating further.

“The military forces announce that the hero pilot, Muath al-Kaseasbeh, has fallen as a martyr, and ask God to accept him with the martyrs,” Mamdouh al-Ameri said in a statement, translated by the Associated Press.

“While the military forces mourn the martyr, they emphasize his blood will not be shed in vain. Our punishment and revenge will be as huge as the loss of the Jordanians,” he added.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama issued a response to the gruesome execution video Tuesday, saying that if it was authenticated it just shows the organization’s “barbarity”, and would strengthen the resolve of the international coalition mobilized against it.

“Should in fact this video be authentic, it’s just one more indication of the viciousness (and) barbarity of this organization,” Obama said, adding it would “redouble the vigilance and determination on the part of the global coalition to make sure” ISIS is “ultimately defeated.”

Meanwhile, Jordanian state TV reported that al-Kassasbeh was in fact executed as early as January 3rd.

ISIS had previously offered to free Japanese hostage Kenji Goto in return for Sajida al-Rishawi, but the deal stalled after the jihadists inexplicably balked at Jordan’s demand for proof that al-Kassasbeh was alive.

If reports he was in fact executed as far back as a month ago are true, it would mean he was already dead when the offer of a prisoner swap was made.

Hat tips: LS, C. Cantoni, and Insubria.

25 thoughts on “The Incendiary Nature of Islam

  1. The Europeans had their own underground wartime humor magazines (samizdat-like) making fun of Der Fuhrer (as a “carpet chewer”, etc.) and his madmen, so the use of comic derision against megalomaniacal scum is a human phenomenon

    But Spike Lee wasn’t making fun of Hitler and the Nazis by using documentary footage of Rotterdam being bombed or children being herded into boxcars.

    Using video out-takes of terrified souls who were butchered by the ISIS psychopaths for humorous effect, in any way, diminishes their horrific sacrifice and makes it one more un-realizing of the harsh truth.

    Mock the maniacs, but don’t re-exploit those gruesomely murdered to do it.

    It would be like putting inappropriate “funny” music to an old-fashioned “highway safety” documentary of smashed bodies and mangled cars.

    Simple to do, but why bother?

    ISIS deserve ruthless death raining down on their heads not “comic” videos.

    Too easy, too impotent.

      • You claim to hail from Yorkshire? Though he’s not a Yorkie George Formby was a pretty good artist of the old mockery.

        “Bless Em All” in the explicit version is a goodun.

    • If you don’t mock your enemy you give him the respect he craves and can then use against you. You do not understand this basic rule of war? Why do you believe that Muslim fanatics would carry out such gruesome slaughter if not to instil fear and terror into your very soul. This is how Islam operates – the old good cop bad cop routine. While one part of Islam, the fundamentalist Jihadists carry out a terror campaign, the other part of Islam, the pretend moderate Muslims, carry on with their subversion of the countries they find themselves in ably assisted by the Traitor Class’ MC/PC doctrine.

      The videos you have responded to do not in any way mock the deaths of those at the hands of the fanatics, but the fanatics themselves. I do not understand why it is that you cannot, or wish to not see this?

      • If you go up on Vlad you can watch head chopping, etc. pretty much every day of the week. That doesn’t mean I want to…
        I think this whole situation is so upsetting to me that I can not find humor in it. I only see sadness.
        Maybe you are right that mocking makes us stronger. I’m not there yet.

        • You know what I found most upsetting? It wasn’t pre head chop or emulation but a pictorial essay of women sewing burquas in full costume, including gloves, overseen by males.
          I did a lot of sewing back in the day and I can’t imagine having to do it in full cover. The quality of the goods must be very poor.

        • Babs, at some point in this war against the West, in fact it is really against the non-Islamic world, what you see and hear is bound to have an effect on you in one way or another.

          You like many, are still numb to what you have so far found out about Islam’s real purpose and how Islam uses barbarous means of slaughter to intimidate those Islam wishes to subjugate while those whom we vote into office choose to ignore what has made you numb, and that in itself is enough for many to lose faith in our own due to their seeming inability to comprehend what you and I and many others have observed and now fear.

          If you are afraid then that is good, because that is the first step to anger. You should get angry that those we put in charge are no longer looking after our best interests or the countries we were born into. You should be angry that those who make the laws have made the law to favor the minority and immigrant over that of the native and you have every right to feel angry that they also refuse to acknowledge the evil that is Islam while lying to us about what a peaceful religion it is or that the recorded 29,000 Islamic terrorist attacks around the world since, 9/11, has nothing to do with Islam.

          And when you begin to feel anger then you will find it within yourself to hate, and hate is the most natural and powerful human emotion that gives us the ability to at first mock and then to kill our enemies.

  2. I used to do some pretty good Al Jaffe imitation artwork and certainly better than that junk that Charlie Hebdo put out. But I’m not going anywhere near Islam.

    For starters it can get you killed and you have no protection if someone leaks your identity.

    All Islam deserves is a boot in its collective rear to help expedite them leaving the West.

  3. Even Walt Disney participated in this type of war time humor – back in the day.

    Der Fuehrer’s Face is a 1943 animated cartoon by the Walt Disney Studios, starring Donald Duck. It was directed by Jack Kinney and released on January 1, 1943 as an anti-Nazi propaganda film for the American war effort. The film won the 1943 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and was the only Donald Duck cartoon to win an Oscar. In 1994, it was voted #22 of “the 50 Greatest Cartoons” of all time by members of the animation field. link

    • I had some online correspondence in 2011 with the late film critic, Leonard Maltin, re the Disney cartoon “The Three Little Wolves” from 1937 (yes, I know, I should get a life).

      I think the melody of the old German tune, “Schnitzelbonk” (popular in American vaudeville), used in the 1937 film is identical to the refrain “Is we not der supermen” in “Der Fuhrer’s Face”.

  4. Our enemy here has virtually NO real military strength. Its success is due ONLY to a truly PAT HETIC military response by the rest of the NON-isis part of the world.
    This is kinda like the muzzie takeover of the Middle East in the seventh- and eighth-centuries, when there was no organized opposition for hundreds of years.

    Too bad that our “leadership” does its level best to keep the world ignorant and out of the fray, in hopes it will all go ‘away’..
    This will FAIL, and the sooner the better.

    • If they can keep 5,000 gunmen active at any one time IS/Iraqi Sunnis, can keep an army of 100,000. Tied down. Especially if the Geneva Convention is respected by the allies.

    • I’ve heard people ridicule the idea that Islam is a threat by saying that “no Islamic country has a military as strong as ours.” As if they’ve forgotten how much damage was done by a few people on a small budget in 2001 — never mind how much damage can be done with nukes.

      Far too many people are oblivious to the ways that the jihad has already exerted power over us. Apparently they won’t be worried until there are massive Muslim armies poised to invade, with tanks and air support.

      On a comment board about a “hijab day” promoted at a high school as an exercise in cultural understanding, one man asserted that the hijab is simply a religious symbol like a kippah; nothing to be afraid of. I pointed out that Judaism does not have a long history of conquest as does Islam, and noted the connection between the growing visibility of female shrouding in modern times and the increasingly aggressive efforts by Muslims to bend the rest of the world to Islamic ways. I wondered if he knew much about the history or doctrines of Islam.

      He replied that he had studied both; had lived in Muslim countries; now lived in a city with “three-quarters of a million Muslims.” (London? I read that it may have a million now.) Thus, he doesn’t fear Muslims because he “understands” them.

      If his claims are true, it seems likely that his study of Islamic history was done through sanitized sources. It also seems likely that his perspective is narrowed down to his own interactions with Muslims, which may have been in relatively moderate countries and in circumstances where the people he dealt with were largely self-selecting for tolerance of infidels. The Muslims he has known were okay, so what’s the problem?

      I asked if his “understanding” of Muslims included an awareness of how many of them would be happy to kill him if he said anything they deemed blasphemous. (Didn’t check back to see if he answered.)

      He appeared to have me trumped in direct familiarity with Muslims, though I’m fairly confident that my perspective is more deeply informed historically and more clear-sighted as to the larger pattern of events. I’m telling this long story as an illustration of a certain blindness even in some people who believe they “understand” Muslims exceptionally well.

      • Baron — I realize that I rambled OT on this post. Feel free to lop off everything after the first two paragraphs!

  5. After Serbia lost the battle of Kossovo, it was occupied by the Turkish empire. A legend based on actual people grew up around a character named Marko Kraljevich–a vassal of the sultan, but also representative of the Serbian spirit even in captivity. One example concerns Turkish soldiers guarding a highway. As a lando0wner and farmer, Marko goes out to plow his field and plows up a lot of the highway. There were lost more and an entire fictitious biography, including his death in an unknown grave, so the Turks could not dig him up.

  6. Maybe it isn’t a European tradition to make fun of your enemies during wartime, or at the moment when it seems that all hope may be lost.

  7. “Maybe it isn’t a European tradition to make fun of your enemies during wartime, or at the moment when it seems that all hope may be lost. ” That is ignorant. Actually, it very much is.

  8. On Marko–I wandered from the point that he is not only a spirit of resistance, but a means of mocking the Turks. Lots of barbed humor also came out of East Germany and the cabaret scene.

    Mark H. Yes, I agree–that is is the first notes of Schnitzelbank, and would have been familiar to many residents of Pennsylvania, Ohio and further, west where there was a large ethnic German population.

  9. This execution by burning at the stake, or its modern equivalent, is beyond even the pale of radical Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood condemns it. I haven’t heard from the Taliban yet, but I expect they’re not on board either.

    The stunt violated some express provisions of Sharia law, and it also violates deep seated aspects of human nature. With the exception of the psychopaths who feel no pity for anyone or anything and graduate from lighting cats’ tails on fire and so on as children to this kind of conduct as adults, there’s universal revulsion.

    You can draw a line between a lot of bad stuff and some widely held interpretations of Islam, but burning POW’s alive is not permitted in any version of Islam that has a wide following.

    The English did not profit in the end from burning Joan of Arc at the stake, and the blessing their priests gave the exercise didn’t stick. Isis has made a mistake that could prove to be fatal. There may even be fatwas and declarations of jihad, issued from the central centers of Islamic authority, against them.

  10. “However, I can’t agree with those who maintain that it’s in poor taste to engage in mockery while the Great Jihad is still being waged against us, before the war is clearly won.”

    Mocking your enemy while your actually fighting him is certainly not in poor taste. Mocking your enemy instead of fighting him is pitiful.

    In 1942 UK, Russia and America were actually fighting the Third Reich. Old school fighting, where enemies were named and battle lines drawn. Spike Jones was lending moral support.

    Today the West hasn’t the courage to name its enemy let alone fight him.

    • I’m fighting the enemy as best I can. I’m an old man, so the information war is the only front open to me.

      And I sure as hell am willing to name Islam as the enemy. No “-ism”, no “radical” — plain old Islam. It decided fourteen hundred years ago that it was our enemy, and it hasn’t changed its mind since.

      • “I’m fighting the enemy as best I can. I’m an old man…”

        I wasn’t meaning to address you personally. I respect and admire both you and Dymphna. I’ve read your site for a number of years and thank you for all you do.

        I was commenting on the West’s posture in general. The West claims the moral high ground but when push comes to shove it won’t defend itself against a serious enemy.

        Kurt Westegaard and Lars Vilks, God bless those guys. They are doing their part. But if that, and the “Je suis Charlie” candles in the night, is the best, and only, defense the West is going to muster then we’re done.

        In the absence of real resistance I can’t take any comfort in satire.

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