The Islamic State's promise of a new Middle Eastern caliphate has become enticing for some disaffected Muslims in the United States, and even non-believers who feel estranged from Western culture, Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer told
Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
Hence the reports of Americans attempting to join or assist the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in its bloody push for a Muslim utopia, Spencer told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner.
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An upstate New York man, restaurant owner and businessman
Mufid Elfgeeh, 30, is charged with plotting to kill members of the U.S. military and aiding ISIS by trying to help three people travel to Syria to join the movement's brutal army.
A Colorado woman,
Shannon Conley, pleaded guilty last week to similar charges. Conley, 19, became radicalized by following jihadist websites, and planned to join the U.S. Army to acquire military training that she would then use with ISIS.
Two Minnesota residents, Abdirahmaan Muhumed, 29, and Douglas McCain, 33, died in Syria this year fighting for ISIS.
What many aspiring or active Western jihadists share, according to Spencer, is a fascination with the caliphate, which ISIS has gone to unheard-of lengths to establish in the modern world — seizing territory in Syria and Iraq and proclaiming an independent state.
"The caliphate is a very important concept that people don't really understand," said Spencer. "The 'caliph' is considered in Islamic theology to be the leader of the Muslims worldwide and the symbol of their unity.
"The top grievance of all jihad terror groups in the modern world today is that the caliphate was abolished in 1924 by the secular Turkish government," he said. "Their primary goal — including al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, all of them — is to reconstitute the caliphate whenever possible.
"Here comes a group that is doing this, and apparently able to sustain it," he said. "That is extraordinarily attractive, and it is attractive to non-Muslims in a way that Osama bin Laden pointed out in the '90s: people like the strong horse.
"Right now, the Islamic State, with all its ruthlessness — it appeals to a certain kind of person who is tired of all the cultural weakness and relativism of Western culture," said Spencer.
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