In 2009, when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi walked away from a United States detention camp in Iraq, he warned his former captors: “I’ll see you guys in New York.”
Just five years later, in 2014, this same man became the leader of ISIS.
After Tuesday’s terror attack in New York City, the deadliest since 9/11, al-Baghdadi’s words seem more ominous – and relevant.
This week, CNN noted the resilience of New Yorkers. Yet, we deceive ourselves if we go on with our lives and dismiss Tuesday’s attack as another senseless atrocity carried out by a “lone wolf.” (After all, the alleged attacker wanted to display the ISIS flag in the hospital while he recovered, and the militant group claimed him as a “soldier of the caliphate.”)
What motivates ISIS to commit such carnage? Radical jihadists such as al-Baghdadi are more than psychopaths perverting Islam. ISIS wants to usher in the apocalypse.
Here are four things you need to know about ISIS from the research of Jim Denison, author of Radical Islam: What You Need to Know:
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1. ISIS’ beliefs about the West
ISIS believes the West has been attacking the Muslim world since the Crusades. In their minds, Western troops on Saudi soil during the first Gulf War and later in Iraq and Afghanistan constituted aggression against Islam.
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