Screen grab from a YouTube video featuring a purported Islamic State fighter. Image from Under The Black Flag
Are militants planning to bring Islam to Indian Country? Judge and professor Steve Russell looks into the issue:
On January 30, Under the Black Flag reported on an interview with an Islamic State fighter who has more than one name, something often seen in that part of the world. Nurat Nazarov, or Abu Kholidi Kulobi, told the radio station that he is fighting to spread Islamic law around the world. The entire world population, he asserted, will be subjugated to the caliphate the Islamic Republic claims to have reestablished. He then plunged into a digression about American Indians for no particular reason that was apparent from the blog post. Without being asked anything about Indians, he delivered himself of this: Even the [Native Americans] will have to live under Shari'a. We will take them tubeteikas [Central Asian caps, worn in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan], we will build mosques for them, and we will live with them according to the laws of Allah. Indians have gotten an increasing amount of attention from Islam of late. Just this last November, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey was ridiculed in these pages and elsewhere for claiming the Taino people in the Caribbean discovered a Muslim before they discovered Columbus.Get the Story:
Steve Russell: Islamic State Fighter Says Jihad Is Coming to Indian Country (Indian Country Today 2/6)
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