ISIS Warns South Africa: Stop Spreading False Alarm Unnecessarily

Cape Town - South Africa

An article appeared on www.news24.com (7 July 2020) in which it is alleged that ISIS has warned South Africa that it will “open the fighting front” within South Africa’s border’s, should it get involved in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province. This writer set out to check and verify the information contained in the original article on news 24 and my findings are just a big surprise for our readers. First of all, the website al-Naba does not exist on its own. It is found on economictimes.indiatimes.com. Checking through the pages of this news site, one finds different articles on economics, politics, and other subjects including one on the killing of the leader of al-Qaeda in the Maghrib. I did not see anything on ISIS warning the South African government to stay away from the fighting in Cabo Delgado province of Mozambique.

An organization linked to ISIS, Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaah, has been waging a violent war in Cabo Delgado, the northern province of Mozambique. The war started in 2017 after the discovery of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) in that part of the country. However, there are a number of questions that one can pose and demand answers. First, why is it that every time there is a discovery of sought-after natural resources in many parts of Africa, it is suddenly followed by an ISIS or al-Qaeda insurgency? As if that is not enough, mercenaries from all over the world find their way to that region? Second, if the so-called ISIS or al-Qaeda is Muslim as it is alleged, why is it that they are killing more Muslims than any other group of believers? I am not saying that they should kill any other groups, they should not be killing people at all. This development can only lead us to conclude that, these people are not Muslim at all, they pretend to be Muslim so as to perpetuate the demonization of Islam and Muslims that is currently going on in the world today. Thus, ISIS and al-Qaeda are open enemies of Islam and Muslims.

ISIS exploits the oil and gas reserves on behalf of its western imperialist masters. The arms industries of the superpowers thrive supplying weapons to all sides of warring parties. The Arab puppet regimes are totally reliant on western countries and Israel’s security establishment secures these illegitimate Arab leaders. In the meantime, Sunni and Shia, the ordinary Muslims are butchered and massacred. No rational Muslim can get attracted to ISIS, let alone politically aware South Africans.

ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorist groups have been created with the aid of the United States, as a proxy army to fight their dirty wars in Syria, Iran and ultimately Russia. Unfortunately, people like the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan want us to believe that they don’t know where ISIS came from, and yet the whole world knows that he facilitated the progress of would-be terrorists who wanted to join ISIS in Iraq and gave them safe passage via Turkey. This kind of hypocrisy cannot be compared to any other in this world, and all of a sudden you see the same people masquerading as champions of fighting terrorism in Syria and Libya.

Reading the article referred to above, the author wants us to believe that ISIS is an Islamic terror organization, determined to establish a new caliphate supported by South Africans. Nothing can be further from the truth. The article further states that “Through extensive interviews with Islamic State supporters on South African soil, the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium (TRAC) has identified subtle but significant changes in how South African extremists see their role within the global jihad”. Both Jan Gerber and Jasmine Opperman are no experts on Islamic terrorism, they just pretend to be. Jasmine Opperman, the Africa associate of Islamic theology on counterterrorism, said there were between seven and ten cells operating in Cabo Delgado, but fails to provide “any evidence at this point in time of an overarching ideology or an overarching leadership”.

The truth is that South African Muslims have no reason whatsoever, to sympathize or let alone join in a war to set up a caliphate in Mozambique. Muslims in this country enjoy unparalleled freedom of religion which cannot be matched or compared to that of Saudi Arabia for example.

It is, therefore, wrong for guys like Willem Els the senior training coordinator at the Institute for Security Studies to make such pronouncements and to be so sure that ISIS can follow up on their threats and attack South Africa as lone wolfs. Maybe they know what all of us do not know judging by the way they sound so sure it will happen.

The so-called “terror experts” in South Africa should take note that it will not be possible to eliminate terrorism unless there is a concerted attempt to overcome hegemony at the global level. Citizens within the control and supremacist centers of power in particular will have to stand up and demand that their governments cease overt and covert military operations in other countries. These “experts” should know that they cannot denounce terrorism at the rhetorical level. Respecting the independence and sovereignty of other nations and peoples should be a principle that is put into practice rather than preached from a rostrum or a media platform.