The Daily - The Daily Presents “Caliphate,” Chapter 2

Episode Date: April 28, 2018

The New York Times has introduced a documentary audio series that follows Rukmini Callimachi, who covers terrorism for The Times, on her quest to understand ISIS. Today, as a special episode of “The Daily,” we offer Chapter 2 of “Caliphate,” in which Rukmini speaks with a former ISIS member about how and why he joined the fold. For more information about the series, visit nytimes.com/caliphate.This episode includes disturbing language and scenes of graphic violence.

From The New York Times and the team that brought you The Daily, this is Caliphate. ISIS continues to attract and recruit members. Just today, the U.S. Secretary of Defense said upwards of 100 Americans are believed to be fighting for ISIS in the Middle East. The Canadian government has identified 30 Canadians now fighting in Syria and Iraq. Up to 1,000 Europeans who are part of this group. Three young girls believed to be on their way to join ISIS. Their families tonight pleading for them to come home, telling the girls mom is really worried.

Chapter two, recruitment. All right, take me back to the hotel. Yeah. So we've been waiting there for almost two hours. And then the guy that we're going to call Abu Huseifa finally showed up. And we sat down on the couch. Well, yeah. As we sit down with him.

Yeah. Can you just let me know what's going on in your head? Like, what is it sitting there in the hotel you're wanting to know? So if this guy is who he says he is, then there's an enormous amount that I think I can learn from him because I've spent the better part of a year researching the very arm of ISIS that he claims to have belonged to. But before we can even get there, I need to figure out, is he for real?

Can I ask your date of birth? Yeah, 1994. And is it okay with you if we say that you're from Canada? Whenever you're talking to members of the Islamic State, and specifically Western recruits who have returned to their home countries, members of the Islamic State and specifically Western recruits who have returned to their home countries, it's almost impossible to fact check every statement that they say. And that's because these things happen in a part of the world and in a part of the internet that are almost entirely sealed off. Can I ask what your parents do for a living?

Yeah, my dad, he runs a restaurant and my mom does not work. She used to be an esthetician. So what I'm trying to do is see if what he tells me matches up with the reporting I have done and with the pattern of behavior that we know is typical of recruits of this terrorist entity. How many brothers and sisters do you have? I'm the oldest. I have a younger brother and a sister that's in the middle. Can you just describe what your life was like growing up?

It'd be pretty boring. You know, just a normal family. My dad would be at work most of the time, so I'd be with my mom. So in many ways, his background is typical to so many others that I have spoken to. He was neither rich nor poor. He was from basically a middle-class background. He loved video games, Star Wars. Star Wars, still I'm a big fan of it. He's from a Pakistani immigrant household. Yeah, I was a natural born Muslim. I was born into a Muslim family. And, you know, I've learned from my family the basics, the prayers, the reading the Quran

and everything. His family was not particularly religious, at least outwardly. His mother was not veiled. He had a younger sister. She too was not veiled. Did you feel treated badly as a Muslim? Did you feel in your own experience here in Canada that you had been humiliated or treated in some way that slighted you? Oh, no, that wasn't it at all. I don't think that was a factor at all, that I was persecuted back here in Canada because of my religion. My sister, my mom, they've always been able to walk the streets safe. Everyone's really nice. My dad gets along with everyone that comes by to his restaurant.

And it's just, you know, they're living a pretty good life here. But me, on the other hand, I always wanted something bigger. I've always wanted, like, something, not something simple and boring. I've always wanted, like, something, not something simple and boring. I think people imagine that these jihadists, because of the sabotage of what this group, ISIS, has done, we assume that the people that they succeed in recruiting into this group must be very different from us. But in fact, it's actually something that in a way is more spooky,

because it's something that you recognize. For example, a young woman that I spent months profiling in Washington state. A white Christian girl. Her hobbies included mall walking and going to Taco Bell with her best friend and gossiping. And within a couple of months, she was ensnared by recruiters for the Islamic State. Started corresponding with ISIS on Twitter. She wanted to know why the group beheads people. Take Aksa Mahmood. She's a young woman from Scotland. Aksa grew up in an affluent neighborhood, attended a prestigious private school. This is a young woman who listened to Coldplay, who loved Harry Potter,

who was looking forward to being a pharmacist. And yet she found common cause with this group. They carried out Friday's attacks in multiple locations across Paris. Bilal Hadfi, a Belgian, the youngest of the Paris attackers, said to be 19 or 20 years old. His teacher said that he was a smart kid, you know, nothing unusual. Look, you can also find the monsters. Breaking news at this hour from Orlando, where there are reports of a shooting at a night club in that city. The gunman Omar Mateen was an American born in New York. He was known to the FBI and yet had bought his weapons in just the past few days. Long before the attack, Omar Mateen was known to people close to him as unhinged, homophobic, and violent. Omar Mateen, the guy behind one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history,

he seems to fit that profile. But the thing that people don't get is the Omar Mateens are fringe, the Abu Huzaifahs, in my experience, are the norm. You were back and forth to Pakistan, right? Did that give you a sense that you weren't, like, fully Canadian? Yeah. Yeah, I did feel different. I'd be more of the little troublemaker class clown type of kid.

Like, throwing snowballs or, you know, other things in class. I wasn't, like, messed up or anything, but, like, there's always that one kid that's always roasted on. I was that kid. When I'm talking to him, I recognize myself as well. Like, I was an immigrant kid. I didn't speak English until I was 11, 12. I was picked on because I couldn didn't speak English until I was 11, 12. I was picked on

because I couldn't say the word hopscotch when I first got to my school in California. And I never, I was never the popular kid. I recognize that. I think that's kind of just like a common, you know, a common universal experience for kids and specifically for immigrant kids. Right. But the difference between when he grew up and when I grew up is... Ha ha, Jolly. Jolly bit me. He's growing up alongside the internet. So this is my first video blog.

It's a place where, you know, he's hiding behind the mask of some sort of made up, what do you call that thing? An avatar. Yeah, a made up avatar. Do you remember the very first profile you created that was called Abu Huzaifa? Actually, my space. Was your personality different on there than it was at school? Yeah.

In what way? More confidence, I guess, in myself. more confidence, I guess, in myself. And at the same time that he is doing what every young person is doing, which is trying to find their place in the world, trying to find his identity. Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there.

The war on terror is revving up. We know they have weapons of mass destruction. The statue of Saddam Hussein down. So... This is an incredibly symbolic moment. He's trying to find out who he is. And among the things that he is, is an immigrant kid from Pakistan who comes from a Muslim family. A new report from the United Nations says civilian casualties of the war in Afghanistan have risen to record levels.

And all over the news, women and children again bearing the brunt of the violence. You are seeing headlines of attacks on countries that he identifies as Muslim. I started seeing this stuff on the news and started studying more what the Taliban is, what Al-Qaeda is. They called themselves the Taliban,

literally meaning religious students. Eventually, he just wants to find out who are these guys that are being described as the bad guys? And I'm like, are these guys even Muslim? Because how can you be Muslim but criminal at the same time? I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. The pictures show Americans in military uniforms posing with naked Iraqi prisoners. And in most of the pictures,

the Americans are laughing. Percy's doing, you know, just normal research like you and I. National Geographic and Discovery Channel, even YouTube documentaries. The situation inside Guantanamo is dire. I'd see like images of Guantanamo all the time. Detainees were waterboarded, kept in dungeon conditions. And as the war on terror drags on... I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Almost nine out of every 10 people killed in drone strikes by the U.S. are not the intended target, a death toll that includes scores of civilians.

Then I started thinking, why is the American army after Muslims anyways? He ends up in forums, in chat rooms, where Al-Qaeda and later ISIS recruiters are lurking. We must also reaffirm that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. And I saw it as a direct war on Islam. So you saw it as a war on Islam, not as a geopolitical dispute of some kind? No, no. We weren't really messing with the Americans in any way. And then I came across literature by the old scholars, like Ibn Tamiyah,

Sayyid Qutub was his name. He's a big one. Sayyid Qutub was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He's considered, in a way, the spiritual father of this movement. And Muhammad al-Maqdasi. Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, who was the mentor of the founder of the group that went on to become ISIS. At first, like, you know, you just read, go on with your life, just read and you kind of brush it off. It's like information, but then

once you start getting into it, then you're like, yeah, this does make sense. These are the figures in the jihadist pantheon who have taken concepts out of Islam and essentially weaponized them to justify a violent jihad. These guys, they explained how jihad fits into the role of everyday life and how a Muslim can implement jihad. Were you listening to the lectures of Anwar Aulaki at this point? Yes. Muslims of the West, take heed. I listened to a lot of Anwar al-Awlaki at this point. Yes. Muslims of the West, take heed.

I listened to a lot of his lectures. There are ominous clouds gathering in your horizon. Yesterday, America was a land of slavery, segregation, lynching, and Ku Klux Klan. And tomorrow, it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps. Who is Anwar al-Aqi? So Anwar al-Aqi was the first U.S. citizen to be deliberately targeted and killed in an American drone strike. My colleague Scott Chain has actually written a book about al-Aqi, and he says it's even more than that. He says that this is essentially the first U.S. citizen to be hunted down by his own government and essentially murdered in a targeted assassination since the Civil War.

We are not against Americans for just being American. We are against evil. He was born in New Mexico. I, for one, was born in the U.S. Went to Colorado State. And lived in the U.S. for 21 years. Supported Bush in the election before 9-11. I was a preacher of Islam, involved in non-violent Islamic activism.

After 9-11, he was invited to interfaith dialogues where he was the Muslim representative alongside Christians and Jews who were trying to present a united front in the wake of that attack. However, after the start of the Iraq War, I mean, this guy made a 180-degree turn. With the American invasion of Iraq

and continued U.S. aggression against Muslims, I could not reconcile between living in the U.S. and being a Muslim. And I eventually came to the conclusion that my brothers in Al-Qaeda have already reached a few years earlier, that jihad against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding on every other able Muslim. In the early 2000s, Aulaki goes to Yemen, which is where his parents are from, and very quickly he transforms himself into the leading propagandist for al-Qaeda. The tables have turned, and there's no rolling back of the worldwide jihad movement.

He's important enough in 2011 to be targeted in the strike and to be killed. But after his death, he actually becomes so much more. He becomes not just a leader of the group, he becomes the icon of the jihadist movement who is, in their minds, unlawfully and wrongly killed through American aggression. From what I saw on Rola Olaji, he was just a guy that gave out speeches and lectures and he was killed for no reason. His words, his thoughts, his videos start to haunt the internet. And at a certain point, he becomes the inspiration to pretty much everyone that speaks English. He was the person that somehow reached through the internet and held their hand as they started down the funnel of

radicalization. His lectures made a lot of sense. It was like everything perfectly fitted. And he did play a big role in convincing me. So I started going online to those guys, started getting in contact with them. So online, there are quite literally, I think, tens of thousands of people like Huzefa who are circling these internet watering holes. I followed a bunch of their pages on Tumblr. I tried to contact them on Facebook. Instagram was a big one. And he tells us that he begins interacting with the people in these rooms. I actually just started talking to them, you know, like, hello, how are you? I actually just started talking to them, you know, like, hello, how are you?

And if you're searching for an identity and you don't necessarily have a community that you really fit into? Oh, it felt like, you know, like, wow, these guys, it's easier to talk to them. Like, they're more accepting of you. This becomes your community. And then I started asking questions about jihad and everything, what their viewpoint was and how is jihad right. I'd even put out things that I thought were wrong with jihad, like how is killing accepted, how is suicide bombings accepted, and they'd always give religious justifications. Of course it's permissible.

Listen to Anwar Aoudiki's lecture on this subject. And on the other side of the screen are the recruiters. What were the techniques that you yourself used to draw people in? So you do that through the ideology. That's the framework. At the same time, this individual is wide-eyed and asking you questions like, are suicide, martyrdom operations permissible in Islam? One of the people who allowed me to peek behind the curtain and understand how this happens was a guy called Jesse Morton.

He was an American recruit to Al-Qaeda who ended up becoming one of the most prolific recruiters for the group online. Can you give me examples of people that you recruited and explain to me how you did it? Well, essentially, once you have an audience, once a person expresses an interest by email, or once you see that they are logging consistently into your conversation room. He ended up being arrested. He spent years in jail. And I met him a couple of months after he was released. What you have to do is you have to frame their personal grievance in a way that is making them think that they can contribute to a broader cause. And we utilize three primary principles that are part of the jihadi or the salafi jihadi, as they really call it,

worldview. And Jesse explained to me that there are actual steps that the recruiters are taught, essentially three steps, three concepts, he called it. They are based upon interpretations of the Quran and they're based upon references in Hadith. Some of them are concepts that every Muslim, you know, believes in. But what they do is they sharpen them and then eliminate any other understanding of these concepts to the point where the person now believes that the only choice they have is to join an armed jihad. The first principle to teach...

The first idea, they called it... Is what you call Tawheed al-Hakimiya. Tawheed al-Hakimiya, which is also sometimes called Al-Tawheed wal-Hakimiya. Soawheed al-Hakimiya, which is also sometimes called Al-Tawheed wal-Hakimiya. So Tawheed is, there's one God, but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God. The concept of Tawheed means monotheism, a single God. But what the jihadists have done is they take Tawheed,

they take monotheism to this completely other level. Which is basically the belief in Allah requires belief that Allah is the lawgiver, the legislator, the one who developed the Sharia. The only form of governance that the jihadists believe is acceptable is governance according to Sharia law, which they believe is divine law. This is the corpus of Islamic jurisprudence that was written down and shaped after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. And what you do with that is you teach people that unless you have this belief,

which most of the Muslims in the world don't, you're not a Muslim really. You don't understand your religion. So you living in Canada and paying your taxes or voting in an election or abiding by the laws of that society negates your belief in God as the legislator because that is not Sharia law, right? And your participation in that makes you an infidel. It basically expels you from the fold of Islam. It's that radical. Was your appearance changing in this period of time as well? Yeah, like that time I couldn't grow a beard but I declared I wanted to grow a beard

You know, I changed my dressing I wanted to dress in a western way I'd wear like a taub which is, it's like a long garment for men and I'd wear like, you know, a hat all the time Then Concept number two. What you do is you take it to the next principle, which we call kufr bitakut.

Once you're declaring that there is one God, only one God, you have kufr bitakut. Which is a rejection of the false gods. Really, it means idols. You're supposed to rebel against false idols. It's one thing to say, okay, I live in Canada. I believe in Sharia law. So therefore, I'm not going to vote. I'm not going to pay my taxes.

I'm not going to, you know, take part in municipal elections. I'm not going to take part in any of that. That's not enough. They say that during the life of the Prophet Muhammad, there was an incident where he comes back to Mecca and he goes to the Kaaba, which is that black cube structure. It's considered the first mosque in Islam. And he apparently entered it and he found it full of idols

and immediately he goes and smashes them. He destroys them. So what did a jihadist do with this? If you have accepted that God is the lawgiver, right, then the idol is anything that takes away from that idea. So the democratically elected president of your country, that is an idol. The ballot box, that is an idol. The act of voting, that is an idol. that is an idol. The act of voting, that is an idol. And if you are a good Muslim,

you don't just let an idol sit around, right? You destroy it. The third principle is al-wala wal-bara. The final one, al-wala wal-bara. Which means that your allegiance is to the Muslims only. In Arabic means loyalty and disavowal or loyalty and rejection. I've heard ISIS members translate it as loyalty and hatred. Al-Wala al-Bara because if you're believing there is one God

you will have to hate and love everything that God loves and hates. So it's Al-Wala al-Bara. It's basically the concept of us versus them which just kind of seals it. To reject contact

and support for everyone else outside of the jihadi movement, including other Muslims. And you must sacrifice in the way of Islam for the sake of the global Muslim population. So that means you don't just reject the society that you're in. You don't just reject its leaders. You also reject your Christian friends. You also reject your Muslim parents if your mother is not a practicing Muslim and is properly covered up. Or if your father is forbidding you from joining the Islamic State, which is the only lawful form of government that there is. It says in the Quran, you have to enter the religion in totality. You can't just cherry pick.

And Jesse talks about how when you get them to that third stage. Once they're indoctrinated to a certain degree. That's it. You could essentially do anything you wanted with them. And if you listen to Aulaki, he makes the sound exciting. So let me, let me look at,

I actually had a, I sent you the Aulaki email, right? Mm-hmm. The video of him with the song? Yeah. Do they often have this kind of music in the background? Yeah. This is the creed that a Muslim should have loyalty towards Allah, his messenger, and the believers,

and should disavow the disbelievers. So he says, in Islam, you are brothers and you are one nation. The believers, irrespective of their ethnicities, are one nation, and they are separate from the non-believers. There's something energizing about this. You're part of this group, you know? You are brothers. This person that is thousands of miles away, he's your brother. So an Indian Muslim is your brother, while a Hindu Pakistani is not. Where you were alone before, you now suddenly have a family.

We do not need the East or the West. We are not in need of the US or the UN. If we put our trust in Allah, He will be sufficient for us. These are the words of Allah. Were your parents freaking out at this point? My dad, at first he thought it was a bit of innocence. I was just trying to get to know Islam a bit more,

but then he realized what I was looking at and what I was studying and what I kept talking about. I'd always stand up for jihad. I'd always stand up for fighting for the sake of God. So they monitored my internet and everything. Why was I looking up Wikipedia pages of this? Or why was I looking up news articles? They even yelled at me once, like lectured me hard. They're like, yeah, what if a terrorist killed us? What if we went back to our home country and we get

killed in a suicide bombing or something? How would that make you feel? And his parents, they try to reason with him and it doesn't go anywhere. I always thought of them too engulfed in this society. Like they're so engulfed in it that they're probably forgetting some aspects of the religion that it's been so long that it's just now that that's looked down upon as terrorism. And then his family, seeing his interest in the faith, they even try to introduce him to moderate preachers, moderate imams that they know of, in an effort to essentially orient him towards a different expression of the faith. And that didn't appeal to me. Completely fails.

I specifically invite the youth to either fight in the West or join their brothers in the fronts of jihad. What appealed to me was the sense of adventure that comes with it, and then that sense that you're going through survival and hardships for the sake of God. You have two choices. You either leave or you fight. You know, we're living a really comfortable life here, a very comfortable life, and I didn't really get along with that.

You leave and live among Muslims, or you stay behind and fight. It's now the final year in high school, and Josefa, he's now at an impasse because, according to him, his parents had high expectations for him. But instead of going to a four-year university like the rest of his classmates, he's now working at a restaurant. I wanted to ask if there was one moment that you remember which to you became the moment when you decided that you wanted to join the Islamic State? The Syrian civil war, actually. They promised Friday was going to be big. It turned out to be huge. First started as revolution. Thousands took to the streets to demand those responsible for the killings be brought to justice. The Assad regime has been pounding Aleppo for the past nine days.

But over the time, it became a civil war. At this point, the major front line of ISIS's war was against Assad's troops. They're part of a mosaic of rebel groups. They're one of several, and they're portraying themselves to the recruits that they're luring from Europe and beyond as the saviors and the protectors of the Muslim people of Syria.

First responders doused the victims with water, stripped off their clothes to wash off what they said was a chemical weapon. So day after day, a dozen more people being shot dead by security forces. He's going to the restaurant. It's the same old day in, day out. He's taking orders. While we're sitting here, the rest of the world is being treated like a zoo.

And then going back to his computer where he's seeing these horrific images. I should just warn all our viewers that you know these are pretty difficult pictures to to follow. A little boy maybe eight years old in a room full of what appear to be dead and dying Syrians. It would show the aftermath of the bombings. Innocent families being killed. Where you'd see dads picking up their little children. They're crying. You'd see moms crying.

You'd see brothers trying to find their brother or sister in the rubble. That'd be a huge emotional pull on me. And even though you're Canadian, you felt those are my people. Yes. As a Muslim, I felt that they were my brothers and sisters too. That they were a part of me. I kept thinking how the Muslim community is an entire body. One part of it's sick.

The rest of the body is sick. And you can't just sit back and, you know, watch the world burn. I'm very familiar with this phrase. Dear brothers and sisters, if one part of the body feels pain, you should feel the same pain as if it is happening to your own family. You need to do something. We can't just sit there and watch. This phrase is from the Hadiths, from the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, and it has woven its way into the jihadist canon. There are speeches by pretty much all of the major jihadist leaders.

And if you think back to the Boston Marathon bombings, you might recall that one of the two bombers managed to get away from the scene and was hiding inside a boat when he was caught by police. And when they took him out, they found that phrase scrawled on the wall of the boat. And then at what point do you reach out or do they reach out to you? No, no, no. I reached out. I definitely reached out to them. And then he tells us that at this point he goes into the chat rooms. And these are active recruiters. And he says, I want out. I definitely reached out to them. And then he tells us that at this point, he goes into the chat rooms. And these are active recruiters. And he says, I want in.

Then that's when they knew I was serious. And very quickly, the people who were walking him through the ideology turn and are now walking him through the logistics. They were, you know, giving you ways to come. They were giving you resources to come. And they had everything planned out. All you had to do was just take the step. They basically had, you know, a kind of a do-it-yourself guide. Started looking into tickets and I started going to travel agents and everything. For everything from how you should buy your plane ticket to which safe house you should go to, to which smuggler

you should get in touch with. And they're making it so easy. Like, you know how it's like when you're in high school and some got your friends convinced you to come out to a party? It's kind of like that. Then they help him come up with a plan. And started thinking of what kind of story to play out at home. He tells his parents that he's going to go live with his grandparents in Pakistan. Once he gets to Pakistan... I told them that in universities, there's an exchange program in Turkey.

He tells his grandparents that he's going to apply for a study abroad program in Turkey. And I thought I should go for a month and, you know, check it out and everything and study there, see how I like that. And they were hesitant, but they were okay with it. They were like, okay. Your parents had no clue what you were trying to do?

No, they didn't. No. At that point, I was pretty smart about it. I had to keep all my messages, private messages, and all my history and everything to myself. So, yeah. And the last conversation I had with them was like, I'm just trying to work towards my future and everything.

And that's about it, yeah. Did you not feel bad lying to your parents? Yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah. But there was a fact that I'd never really made my parents proud. I'd made them more disappointed in me than proud ever. So I didn't really have, like, I'm like, you know, there's nothing left for me in Canada type thing. I started imagining myself daydreaming day in and out how it would be to just, you know, fight on the front, protecting your people.

There was always that lingering fact that what if I die? What if I die? But then I gave myself comfort by saying I'll die as a murderer. I'll die going out being someone protecting something. I'd die for fighting for what I believe in. I'd die as a hero then. I'd die as doing something. Thank you.