MUSLIM SHISHANI ON ISLAMIC FRONT, ISIS, & RUMORS OF KIDNAPPED WOMEN

JULY 8, 2014

I have translated more of Muslim Shishani’s long audio address on the fitna between ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. For the first part, and a link to the audio address itself, see here.

In this segment, Muslim Shishani talks about ISIS’s reaction to the formation of the Islamic Front, and the rumors that women associated with foreign fighter jamaats had been kidnapped.

Meanwhile, the groups began to realize that this had gotten rather far and almost all the Ansars of the Islamic groups came and created a single union called the Islamic Front and they let the world know that they do not want democracy, they’re fighting for the establishment of Sharia law, they want to establish an Islamic state. And they warned that they will no longer tolerate this injustice, and would use Sharia to solve the conflict or they would use force.

But that did not stop ISIS. Immediately, the media began to work against them, saying that they were being supplied and managed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and it’s just a cover to achieve their democracy. And finally, in ISIS’s next attempt to discourage Ahrar Sham they started shooting at roadblocks and after that it turned into a war between them.

But in this war, we saw a lot of lies and dirt…. At night, when me and Sayfullah returned to the base, as we passed by one ISIS base, he stopped. The gates were closed, and while we were waiting til they came out, he explained to me that this was a Turkish Jamaat and he knows them well. And when they came out they were very happy to see Sayfullah. When Sayfullah was with ISIS he called them to come back. They spoke in Turkish and when we went he explained that they refused to come out to fight against the Ansar and that the Emir of ISIS threatened them with violence. And they asked him for advice. He advised them not to raise arms against Muslims, and if they were forced, to quit them.

And then they started coming up with a lot of stories. One of them said, they had our hostages and they should be freed, and when it did not pass, they said they had kidnapped the sisters and that we were going to save them. That one had already beentaken and raped by five men… I was in Aleppo, near Kafar Hamra, in the midst of these events, and it certainly greatly alarmed us and me and Sayfullah immediately went to the Ansars, against whom ISIS were fighting, although it was a big risk.

In this fitna, my car got fired on four times, the bullets got into the car, but by the grace of Allah no one was hit. And Sayfullah was fired at more than once, one bullet even passed through his outer clothing. We took with us a local Ansar whom we knew well. When we got to the checkpoints there was a big kerfuffle because ISIS had sent cars with suicide bombers to such checkpoints and when they saw foreign fighters they immediately got out their weapons and sent them against us. But praise Allah, we still got to Anadan, the Ansar bases were mostly there. There we found the JAN base and asked them about it, because we knew that they are associated with all groups and would certainly have this information.

When they heard that such fitna had bred, they immediately suggested we get in a car and drove us to another base. Having got there we found three wounded, they were Dagestanis, the brothers immediately recognized them, they were from Abu Banat’s group, the same one we alked about above. Now they’d joined ISIS and were fighting with the Ansars. The Emir of JAN said the group Nuraddin Zinki had told them and they checked themselves and that there was no one else. I walked over and asked them if somebody else was with them or not, they said that the women had fled to Kafr Hamra and that there was no one but them. And while we were standing there JAN loaded them into the car and also ferried them to Kafr Hamra to ISIS

While we were standing there and emirs of other groups drove up and we asked them, are there any female detainees with other groups? They said, if we find out for sure that women had been captured by someone, we ourselves would fight them, and that it was not true. They said that although their husbands were captured, we consider them our sisters and said that all the women who lived in Anadan who wanted to move to Kafr Hamra would be transported to their husbands. At that time there really were a lot of foreign fighter families living there and if they’d have started to detain them it would not have gone unnoticed.

Afterward, we immediately went back to the brothers from ISIS and explained the situation and said, if indeed there are such cases, they should give us specific info and that we would not leave it unattended…After that we came to Salahuddin [Shishani, the emir of JMA], he told us the same thing, that he went everywhere and learned about it everywhere, he asked ISIS to show one [woman] that they had taken from captivity as they talked, and he said that he had promised them if this was true then he would fight with them with the group that did it, but nothing came of it. But the brothers slowly began to fixate on these rumors. We tried to explain it to them, but these rumors were spread so much that our words were questioned. And many foreign fighters went out saying that they were going to release the sisters.