Free Rise of ISIS by Jay Sekulow

FOREWORD
    T his past summer, I was privileged to participate in a number of informative discussions with members of the University of Oxford faculty regarding the current state of affairs in the Middle East. These conversations centered on the emerging threat to human values posed by ISIS and other groups. As a consequence my eyes have been opened wide to the bracing capacity of radical jihadists to engage in human savagery. Once exposed to evidence of brutality that includes the deliberate shooting of babies in the presence of their mothers, the rape of women who were then told that the only way to redeem their honor was to blow themselves up as suicide bombers, and the summary decapitation of men, women, and children when they failed to comply with conversion edicts issued by Caliph Ibrahim, the leader of the Islamic State, it becomes impossible to remain silent.
    Given that ISIS poses an existential threat to a number of countries, including Israel, and represents a growing menace tolives of Yazidis, moderate Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Kurds, Christians, and Jews, it is highly doubtful that anyone but the most naïve among us would believe that negotiations, led by the United Nations or anyone else, are the proper way forward. Instead, readers of this new book by Jay Sekulow and his team will discover that evil such as this must be met with force. Nothing else will do. Sekulow describes the origins of ISIS and its ideological links to other jihadists, and clarifies 1) the fractured relationship between ISIS, a radical jihadist group that was founded in Iraq and Syria and has directed its efforts toward the creation of an Islamic Caliphate, and al-Qaeda, which has oriented its terrorist attacks against Western and Arab governments, horrifically exemplified by the events of September 11, 2001; 2) the breathtakingly rapid advance of ISIS in Iraq, fueled by its striking commitment to terror, a development that has been fostered by the bewildering courage deficit of the Iraqi military forces; 3) the ideological and visionary links between ISIS and Hamas that combine to threaten Israel’s existence; and 4) substantial evidence revealing how radical jihadist groups like ISIS pose a mounting threat to the American people. Adding urgency to Sekulow’s analysis, a U.S. senator recently explained how radical jihadists have collected the components necessary to assemble a bomb to “blow up” a U.S. city. 1
    Given these developments, it bears noticing that the Enlightenment dream of inevitable human progress, grounded in the claim that we are all born free and equal in dignity and rights, and premised on hope that the arc of history bends toward justice, is now in tatters. This outcome fundamentallychallenges Americans’ endless pursuit of individualism and tolerance. Readers of this book will discover that in our postmodern era, certain things are indeed intolerable. The failure to face the facts richly addressed by the authors of Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can’t Ignore exposes democratic nations to the rising danger that they—perhaps misled by the persistent fecklessness of the United Nations and other institutions, which refuse to recognize the obvious threat to Western civilization posed by radical Islamist jihadists—will capitulate to the prospect of appeasement, disaster, and death. Capitulation will enable the murderous forces, which have already been unleashed in the Middle East, to expand their territory and reach by directly encroaching on the West. Hopefully readers of this vital book will be roused to prevent this from happening, in prelude to the pursuit of a durable peace in an epoch rife with persecution based on savage ethnic and religious intolerance, and short on reconciliation.
    Harry G. Hutchison
    Visiting Fellow, Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford
    Professor, George Mason University School of Law

CHAPTER ONE
THE HORROR OF JIHAD
    I t was the video no one wanted