Monday, October 09, 2017

Rich, Porsche-driving Muslim barrister gives it all up to join the Islamic State in Syria

The idea that poverty and ignorance cause terrorism has led the U.S. to shower billions on Muslim countries, hoping to win hearts and minds and alleviate what mainstream analysts doggedly believe are the root causes of terrorism. But it has been known for years that poverty doesn’t really cause terrorism at all. The Economist reported in 2010:
Social scientists have collected a large amount of data on the socioeconomic background of terrorists. According to a 2008 survey of such studies by Alan Krueger of Princeton University, they have found little evidence that the typical terrorist is unusually poor or badly schooled.
In the same vein, CNS News noted in September 2013:
According to a Rand Corporation report on counterterrorism, prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2009, “Terrorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated, or afflicted by mental disease. Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds.” One of the authors of the RAND report, Darcy Noricks, also found that according to a number of academic studies, “Terrorists turn out to be more rather than less educated than the general population.”
The Times Online reported the following as far back as April 2005:
Three-quarters of the Al-Qaeda members were from upper middle-class homes and many were married with children; 60% were college educated, often in Europe or the United States.
Islamic State recruits have been found to be above average in education.
Notice how the Mail, the worst paper in the Western world, truncates his quote. He actually said: “I was not a loser before I came to Syria. I made more money in a day than most of you make in a month, praise be to God. I had a Porsche, I was doing very well in my life. I was looking forward to saving up to buy a villa and a Lamborghini. But God made me leave all this rubbish behind and come to Syria for the afterlife.”
But the Mail quotes this as “I was not a loser… I had a Porsche, I was doing very well in my life… I was looking forward to saving up to buy a villa and a Lamborghini.”
Then this head-bangingly witless paper says: “It is unclear just what prompted him to give up his successful life.” Yes it is. It’s perfectly clear. He went to Syria for Allah and the afterlife. He went to Syria for Islam. You just left it out of your quotation, and then claim that his motive was unclear. Would telling the truth about this be “Islamophobic,” Mail editors?
“Porsche driving British barrister killing for ISIS complains about air strikes as he hides out with his wife and toddler son in the ruined Syrian city of Raqqa,” by Omar Wahid and Ross Slater, The Mail On Sunday, October 8, 2017 (thanks to Blazing Cat Fur):
A British Islamic State fanatic who has spent two years fighting in the Syrian city of Raqqa is a former Porsche-driving barrister, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Abu Adam Al-Britani described last week how the ISIS stronghold – the scene of some of the terror group’s most appalling atrocities – had been ‘obliterated’ in coalition air strikes and said US-backed forces were now closing in on him and his fellow militants.
In a pitiful 72-minute rant, he said life was so bleak that stray cats and dogs had become fat by feasting on ‘dead human flesh’.
The terrorist gave few clues to his real identity on the tape, posted on encrypted messaging app Telegram, which ISIS uses to spread propaganda.
But The Mail on Sunday has learned he is 39-year-old Yaser Iqbal, a married lawyer from Birmingham who, before moving to Syria, boasted he earned more in a day than most do in a month.
In the recording Iqbal emphasised his story does not conform to the jihadi stereotype, saying of his old life: ‘I was not a loser… I had a Porsche, I was doing very well in my life… I was looking forward to saving up to buy a villa and a Lamborghini.’
After practising as a barrister in London he became a solicitor specialising in immigration, and ran a succession of firms, including one in Harrow, North West London.
It is unclear just what prompted him to give up his successful life, though he said he came to regard his UK existence as ‘rubbish’. He criticises Western culture, describing Britain as ‘a country of dogs’.
In 2010, Iqbal was one of 24 prominent Muslims who contributed to a book called ‘7/7 Muslim Perspectives’ in which they reflected on the carnage caused by the London suicide bombers five years earlier.
Described as a barrister in Birmingham, he wrote: ‘I am not pointing towards some conspiracy theory but what I am presenting is my view that the explanation as to the real perpetrators of 7/7 is not as simple as most people are led to believe.’
Neighbours in Birmingham said last night that Iqbal, who has a conviction for drink driving, encouraged his former friends to ‘join him in jihad’.
However before he quit Britain four years ago, initially for Saudi Arabia, he was held in high regard in his neighbourhood. Locals described him in glowing terms.
For some he had been the man to help resolve their immigration issues and for many he was a shining example of what was possible in British society.
One neighbour said: ‘He’s a lovely man and very humble. He would always be willing to help you with advice. He is not lying when he says he earned more in a day than many do in a month and he drove a silver Porsche. It was a Boxster.’…

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