“The caliphate has a beach. It is located on the Mediterranean Sea around 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Crete in Darna. The eastern Libya city has a population of around 80,000, a beautiful old town and an 18th century mosque, from which the black flag of the Islamic State flies. The port city is equipped with Sharia courts and an “Islamic Police” force which patrols the streets in all-terrain vehicles. A wall has been built in the university to separate female students from their male counterparts and the disciplines of law, natural sciences and languages have all been abolished. Those who would question the city’s new societal order risk death. Darna has become a colony of terror, and it is the first Islamic State enclave in North Africa. The conditions in Libya are perfect for the radical Islamists………………”
Most Jihadis, and some otherwise sane Wahhabi Arabs, often talk of Al Andalus. Andalucia is a term used not just for the famous province in Spain, but for the bulk of Iberia that was conquered by Muslims. An expansion that was stopped at Poitier (Palace of Martyrs in Arabic) and was eventually reversed by the conjugal union of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.
Andalucia is now something beyond a geographic place to most Muslims, especially to Arabs. It reflects a state of mind that looks back to a bygone bright light in a current dark tunnel. A symbol of lost glory in our current era of weakness and irrelevance.
The Jihadi Salafis claim that their goal is to ‘recover’ Al Andalus. Actually the Andalucia of early Muslims is not what the Jihadis dream of. Theirs would be an intolerant stagnant homogeneous Wahhabi theocracy that has little to do with the vibrant melting-pot Spain of the Islamic era. Others promise to have their ‘horses tied’ in the center of Rome, and not just because these Wahhabi dudes like the Chianti or the Prosecco.
And what better place to retrace history, to conquer Europa, than from the spot where that earlier successful conquest started. North Africa.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum