Past and present, Muslim militants continue relying on the
same inhumane tactics to terrorize "infidels." The devastating
effects of one of these occurred last August in Turkey: a child
"recruited" by the Islamic State blew
himself up in a suicide attack that left at least 51 people – mostly
fellow children – dead.
This child was one of countless nameless, faceless children
seized, beaten, and indoctrinated in Islam, until they become
willing "martyrs" and executioners. Known as
the "cubs of the caliphate," they are graduates from "schools
[established by ISIS] to prepare hundreds of children and teenagers to conduct
suicide attacks." The Islamic State is fond of showcasing these
abducted children turned criminals.
A few days ago, ISIS posted a video of its
"cubs," most of whom appear to be about ten years of age, walking
around an abandoned amusement park, where they savagely execute hostages tied
to rides. One child, reportedly only four years old, shoots five rounds
into a tied up victim while screaming, "Allahu Akbar!" Another
little boy slits the throat of his victim next to a kiddie train before
planting the knife in his back. Last November, ISIS posted another video
of four children – one Russian, one Uzbek, and two Iraqis, aged between 10 and
14 – executing civilians.
One Christian clergyman explained the
Islamic State's strategy: "They dislocate the families, they take the
newborn babies, and they put them in Islamist families," where they are
indoctrinated in jihad, or what is called in the West "terrorist
activities."
Children who managed to
escape ISIS say they were repeatedly beaten and fed "endless
propaganda," including that they must kill their non-Muslim parents:
"We weren't allowed to cry but I would think about my mother, think about
her worrying about me and I'd try and cry quietly," one little boy said.
Seizing and indoctrinating children for the jihad is hardly
limited to ISIS. Over the last three years, Boko Haram, the Islamic
jihadi group terrorizing Nigeria, has kidnapped, enslaved, beaten, and
indoctrinated more than 10,000 boys – some as young as five years of age, and
many from Christian backgrounds – into becoming terrorists.
"They told us, 'It's all right for you to kill and
slaughter even your parents,'" said a former captive who witnessed a
beheading on the day he was enslaved. Other boys held down the victim and
explained: "This is what you have to do to get to heaven."
Girls were kept in a separate camp and raped, often by
captive boys, as a way to show the latter the boons of becoming warriors for
Allah (the deity that permits his slaves to enslave and rape
"infidel" women). An escaped girl, Rachel, now 13 and pregnant
by rape, told of how dozens of boys from her village tied up a kidnapped man
and beheaded him. They told the younger children watching not to
"have feelings about it." "If you go there [Boko Haram
training camps], you can see 12-year-olds talking about burning down a
village," said another escaped girl, adding, "They have
converted."
A boy, now ten, served as babysitter for infants and
toddlers kidnapped or conceived by rape: "The children, none older than 4,
watched jihadist propaganda videos and rehearsed a game called 'suicide bomber'
where they ripped open sacks of sand strapped to their torsos."
These Nigerian children, some as young as six, have been
used to terrorize neighboring Cameroon, a Christian-majority nation.
During a jihadi raid, more than 100 screaming boys suddenly appeared –
barefoot, unarmed, or swinging only machetes – and ran toward a military unit,
which gunned them down. As Col. Didier Badjeck explained, "It's
better to kill a boy than have 1,000 victims. It's causing us problems
with international organizations, but they're not on the front lines. We
are."
Another report, published just days ago, tells of
more experiences from abducted boys and girls, and how Boko Haram showed the
former how to "have fun" with the latter, including by "learning
to subdue a struggling victim during sexual assault." One escaped
16-year-old girl said, "I was raped almost on a daily basis by different
men. When they became fed up with me, they asked the little boy, who has
often watched them do it, to take over."
But it's not just ISIS and Boko Haram who seize, enslave,
beat, and indoctrinate boys for jihad (and girls to "make it up" to
the boys). This practice is also taking place in Yemen, Somalia, and even
"moderate" Mali. Indeed, a cursory internet search reveals the
extent of this phenomenon. In 2012, 300 Christian children were abducted
and forcibly converted to Islam in Bangladesh. After convincing
impoverished Christian families in Bangladesh to spend what little money they
had to send their children to study at supposed "mission hostels,"
Muslim con men would "pocket the money" and "sell the children
to Islamic schools elsewhere in the country 'where imams force them to abjure
Christianity.'" The children are then instructed in Islam and
beaten. After being fully indoctrinated, the once Christian children are
asked if they are "ready to give their lives for Islam," presumably
by becoming jihadi suicide bombers.
Why are Islamic jihad groups resorting to this tactic of
enslaving and indoctrinating children into becoming jihadis? Most Western
analysts believe that this is a reflection of weakened, desperate groups:
"[t]he growing trend for ISIS to use child soldiers as suicide bombers,
particularly in Iraq, has been suggested as a sign of how stretched their
resources are in the region," noted one report.
Or it could suggest that ISIS, Boko Haram, etc. are simply
following another page of the jihadi playbook. For over a millennium,
Muslim caliphates specialized in seizing and enslaving tens if not hundreds of
thousands of young non-Muslim boys, converting them to Islam, and then beating,
indoctrinating, and training them into becoming jihadis extraordinaire.
The most famous of these were the Ottoman Empire's
janissaries – Christian boys who were seized from their homes, converted to and
indoctrinated in Islam and jihad, and then unleashed on their former
families. As the author of Balkan Wars explains,
"[d]espite their Christian upbringing, they became fanatical Muslims and
earnestly maintained their faith as warriors of Islam. This cruel
practice of what today can be defined as the 'brain cleansing' of the Christian
populations of the Ottoman Empire is perhaps the most inhuman Turkish
legacy."
That Turkey is now suffering from the effects of this
system – such as when a child suicide bomber killed 51 people in the name of
jihad – may be called "ironic."
Western analysts would not be oblivious to this
"new" jihadi tactic – optimistically portraying the reliance on
children as proof that jihadi groups have "stretched their resources"
– if they had Islamic studies departments that actually disseminated
facts instead of pro-Islamic
myths and propaganda. As with all unsavory aspects of Islamic
history, the institution of child slave soldiers has been thoroughly
whitewashed. Although young, terrified boys were seized from the clutches
of their devastated parents, the academic narrative is that poor Christian
families were somewhat happy to see their boys taken to the caliphate where
they would have a "bright future" as "soldiers and
statesmen."
The price of the modern West's inability to comprehend
Islam's medieval tactics is not just ignorance concerning the nature of the
enemy, but ignorance concerning his victims as well – in this case, countless
nameless children. As Mausi Segun, a human rights activist discussing the
plight of Boko Haram's child jihadis put it, "[t]here's almost an entire
generation of boys missing. My guess is that a large majority of them
will die in the conflict [as forced jihadis]." And they will die
completely unknown in the West – just another victim group to be sacrificed on
the altar of political correctness, lest Islam's reputation be
besmirched.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/01/enslaved_tortured_and_sacrificed_islams_child_soldiers.html#ixzz4VqbebzYZ
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