ARUTZ SHEVA:
For these converts to Islam, there is only Jihad, the war for heaven and for hell.
The latest video of Jihadist propaganda from Syria shows the black flag proclaiming allegiance to Allah and a man who calls himself Abu Abd Al-Rahman.
"I am French," he says. His parents were baptised as Catholics - as was he - and they know him as Nicolas. He is a 30-year-old convert from a middle-class background in Toulouse, where four Jews were gunned down last year. His mother works for the French army. In the the video, Nicolas appears in military fatigues, a Kalashnikov rifle across his legs.
French intelligence believes there are 220 Frenchmen who have gone to fight in Syria so far. 40 of them are Christian converts. The estimates of Westerners fighting in Syria range from 600 to 1,000 fighters. The vast majority are "white converts to Islam" or "naturalized immigrants with a Muslim background".
His name was Ibrahim Giuliano Delnevo. He was a regular guy from Genoa, Italy's biggest sea industrial location. Raised as a Catholic, Giuliano converted to Islam and was killed as a "martyr" in Syria. He was fighting with the jihadists against Bashar el Assad's secular regime.
» | Giulio Meotti* | Wednesday, August 28, 2013
* The writer, an Italian journalist with
Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for
Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the
Wall Street Journal,
Frontpage and
Commentary. He is at work on a book about the Vatican and Israel.
