The Somalia-based Islamist militant group al-Shabaab has released a recruitment film focused on “racial injustice” in the United States featuring Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The video shows footage from early December last year in which Trump proposed a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."
It is clear that al-Shabaab has capitalized on Hillary Clinton’s comment that Trump has become the Islamic State's "best recruiter."
Creating a cause-effect relationship between Trump comments and the Islamic State (IS) is rather unscientific and inaccurate, as IS has been created and has been recruiting well before Trump’s statement.
Additionally, there is no clear evidence that recruitment to IS has increased after Trump’s statement.
For me, as a former Islamic radical, this video indicates that groups such as al-Shabaab, scared that someone like Trump could become president.
They simply tried to capitalize on Hillary Clinton’s comment by releasing a video to prove her point of view, to hurt him politically as an attempt to avoid the possibility that he become the next president.
For al-Shabaab and other radical Islamic groups Trump represents a real nightmare for the several reasons.
ISIS, for example, and other radical groups have flourished and expanded during Obama’s presidency. So for such radical groups it is more preferable to have someone like Hillary Clinton, who would likely continue similar policies to President Obama's, than to have someone like Trump, who will likely use more aggressive policies against them.
Trump does not allow political correctness to prevent him from taking decisions to protect the U.S. Such decisions may include banning Muslims from entering the U.S. until they get security clearance by U.S. authorities.
Such an action can impede the dreams of many radicals of increasing the numbers of Muslims in the country to a level that can significantly affect its policies — and possibly its constitution — to fit with Islamic Shariah.
Trump seems to understand the mentality and psychology of Islamic radicals and their weak areas when he mentioned that Islamic radicals care more about their families than they care about themselves.
Trump gets it. He knows to fight radical Islamists the United States need to fight them more effectively on the Internet.
His approaches, including giving a priority to attacking the oil fields of the Islamic State, which they use to gain more money — indicates that he will be better able to take on Islamic radicals if he came to power.
Islamic radicals would prefer someone like Hillary Clinton as president.
She led the State Department when it failed to honor repeated requests for additional security and actually reduced security in Libya just before the Benghazi attack on U.S. Embassy.
Dr. Tawfik Hamid is the author of "Inside Jihad: Understanding and Confronting Radical Islam." Read more reports from Tawfik Haimd — Click Here Now.
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