ISIS is reportedly calling Trump's travel ban 'the blessed ban'
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(Iraqi Shiite militia fighters hold the Islamic State flag as they celebrate after breaking the siege of Amerli by Islamic State militants.REUTERS/Youssef Boudlal)
The terrorist group ISIS has reportedly branded President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration "the Blessed Ban" as it seemingly proves that the West is at war with Islam.
New York Times terrorism correspondent Rukmini Callimachi reported from Iraq that ISIS has been talking about Trump's travel ban, which bars refugees and citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries — identified as hot spots for terrorism — from entering the US.
"I reported here in Nov/Dec of last year," Callimachi tweeted on Wednesday. "Guess what's different on this trip? Everywhere I go, Iraqis want to ask about the visa ban."
Callimachi is in Mosul, ISIS' stronghold in Iraq that is slowly being liberated from the terrorist group.
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She said a resident of western Mosul, which is still under ISIS control, told her translator in a phone call that ISIS is also discussing the ban.
"The resident said ISIS has been openly celebrating the ban," Callimachi tweeted. "They've even coined a phrase for it: الØظر المبارك — or 'The Blessed Ban.'"
Callimachi explained why: "ISIS sees this as *their* doing. They succeeded in scaring the daylight out of America."
"ISIS, according to this resident of Western Mosul, thinks their terror tactic worked. They frightened the most powerful man in the world," Callimachi said, referring to Trump.
ISIS has been silent on the ban on its official propaganda channels, but the group's supporters have been cheering it online. And the Pentagon noted on Tuesday that many Iraqi ISIS fighters are now trapped in western Mosul, the area of the city that Callimachi's source is from.
Terrorism experts opposed to the ban have said it will end up helping ISIS recruit more people as it pushes its message that the West is at war with Islam. US legal actions that seem to target Muslims could play into that narrative.
"The [ISIS] chatrooms have been abuzz about how this shows that there is a clash of civilizations, that Muslims are not welcome in America etc.," Mia Bloom, a terrorism expert and professor at Georgia State University, told Business Insider via email last week.
Callimachi notes that ISIS' language is similar to that used by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of ISIS' predecessor group Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Zarqawi "called the 2003 invasion of Iraq 'the Blessed Invasion,'" Callimachi said.
Trump defended the travel ban in a rambling speech to the National Sheriffs' Association on Wednesday morning. He accused judges of trying to overturn the executive order because of politics and pointed to immigration law that seems to support his travel ban.
"I think our security is at risk today, and it will be at risk until such time we are entitled and get what we are entitled to as citizens of this country," he said. "We want security. One of the reasons I was elected is because of law and order and security."
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View photosThe self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11 attacks wrote to former president Barack Obama to tell him 9/11 was a direct result of American foreign policy and the deaths of innocent people it has caused.Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's 18-page letter was addressed to "the head of the snake, Barack Obama," leader of "the country of oppression and tyranny."Defense attorney David Nevin provided a copy of the letter, which has not yet been posted on the US military's website for Guantanamo proceedings. He told AFP that Mohammed began writing it in 2014.The letter is dated January 8, 2015, but reached the White House only two years later in the last days of Obama's presidency, according to news reports, after a military judge ordered the Guantanamo prison camp where Mohammed is held to deliver it."It was not we who started the war against you in 9/11; it was you and your dictators in our land," he wrote.He says God was on the side of the hijackers on that fateful day when airplanes were guided into the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania."Allah aided us in conducting 9/11, destroying the capitalist economy, catching you with your pants down, and exposing all the hypocrisy of your long-held claim to democracy and freedom," Mohammed wrote.Listing many grievances over America's "brutal and savage massacres" from Vietnam to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mohammed focused his rage on the plight of Palestinians and US support for Israel and the "occupier Jews.""Your hands are still wet with the blood of our brothers and sisters and children who were killed in Gaza," he wrote in the opening paragraph.- 'The truth about death' -Along with the letter, Mohammed sent a 51-page manuscript entitled "Shall I Die when the Crusaders Carry out the Death Sentence? The Truth about Death." It is illustrated with an image of a noose.Mohammed, who faces a potential death sentence for allegedly masterminding the plane hijackings that killed almost 3,000 people, says he is not afraid of dying."I speak about death happily!" he wrote.Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and held at a secret CIA prison site overseas.In the letter, he explained that "if your court sentences me to life in prison, I will be very happy to be alone in my cell to worship Allah the rest of my life and repent to Him all my sins and misdeeds.""And if your court sentences me to death, I will be even happier to meet Allah and the prophets and see my best friends whom you killed unjustly all around the world and to see Sheikh Osama Bin Laden," he added, referring to the late Al-Qaeda leader killed in a US raid in 2011 in PakistanTrump revamps National Security Council, drops adviser Bannon: Official
- Posted 06 Apr 2017 00:00
- Updated 06 Apr 2017 00:22
WASHINGTON: U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday withdrew his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, from the National Security Council on Wednesday after it was decided he was no longer needed on the key foreign policy group, a senior White House official said.Bannon's removal from the NSC, which includes senior members of Trump's foreign policy team, was seen as a boost to national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who officials said has struggled to work together with Bannon.A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bannon's presence on the NSC was no longer needed after the departure of Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.Flynn was forced to resign in February over his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kisylak, prior to Trump's taking office on Jan. 20.The official said Bannon had been placed on the NSC originally as a check on Flynn and had only ever attended one of the NSC's regular meetings.(Reporting by Steve Holland and John Walcott; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Tom Brown)- Reuters
