Donald Trump Featured in ISIS Propaganda Video That Celebrates Brussels Attack
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is featured in a new video purportedly released by the Islamic State or its supporters that takes responsibility for this week's terror attacks in Brussels and calls on militants to carry out jihad against the West.
The nine-minute video titled "The Exile of Islam and Brussels Attacks," tries to gloat in the fact that IS (also known as ISIS or ISIL) has been successful in carrying out deadly attacks in the heart of prominent European cities. After militants launched an assault in France last November, Tuesday's attack in Belgium only continues to drive up fears in the West that more terror attacks are probable in the future.
The video begins by showing a map of Europe burning and then plays audio of a newscaster saying, "Just four months after the last one, another series of attacks on a European capital."
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"That is the problem inherent with attacks like this," an analyst in the video says. "You can talk about increasing security but there is a limit to how far you want to go."
The video then jumps to a sound bite of a Trump interview with CBS News following the Brussels attack in which the Manhattan businessman said Brussels was nothing more than "a horror show."
"Brussels was one of the great cities, one of the most beautiful cities of the world 20 years ago," the 69-year-old real estate mogul said. "It was amazing, actually, and safe. And now, it's a horror show, an absolute horror show."
Trump's horror show jab drew the ire of Fox News host Shepard Smith, who stated during a segment that aired from in Brussels Thursday that locals have taken offense to Trump's statement.
"I must tell you the locals are taking great exception toward that, word of it has spread around here quite quickly," Smith said. "Brussels has Arab neighborhoods where there are problems, where there's great division and great problems with the communities, where law enforcement don't speak with the feds, there's no question that they have some problems in local areas."
Smith then contended that Brussels is actually quite "beautiful."
"But Brussels is not a horror show from our experience, and not from those who we've met here. The streets are beautiful, the people are as lovely as they can be," Smith continued. "Brussels is a beautiful old European city, and a wonderful place to visit. People here at least are upset that that's how it's being characterized by the leading Republican for the office in the United States — a horror show it is not."
Following Trump's audio, the IS video shows various scenes featuring explosions and militants in combat while a jihadi anthem plays over the footage.
The anthem's captions on the bottom of the footage read repeated calls of "Brothers Rise Up. Claim Your Victory and "Let's go! Let's go! Let's go for jihad!"
"Brothers, it's time to rise, set forth for battle. If you are truthful, either you get victory or Shahadah [declaration of Islamic belief.] Do you fear death?" The anthem asks. "There is no escape. Get dignity. Shahadah Fi sabilillah [for the sake of Allah] is the entrance to paradise."
The video cuts to an Arabic-speaking narrator who call on IS sympathizers to rise up for jihad because their Muslim "brothers and sisters" are dying from United States-led coalition airstrikes.
"The regulations of jihad in the cause of Allah are clear and there are no reasonable doubts about it," an English caption reads at the bottom of the video. "Yet, Crusade jets, including the Belgian, are still bombing the Muslims in Iraq and the Levant in the day and night ..."
Although the narrator complained about the deaths and damage the coalition airstrikes have caused IS, the he goes onto say that participating in the killing of innocent non-Muslims is required by the religion of Islam.
"But any Muslim who reads Islam's history and before it, the verses of the holy Quran and the Hadiths of the Messenger of Allah … will definitely know that waging jihad against nonbelievers is one of the definite obligations of the Islamic religion," the narrator said. "And who have read the history of Islam knows that Muslims attacks on the lands of disbelievers didn't stop until the late times and the soldiers of Islam were in continual attacks on the lands of disbelievers, like the lands of Romans, Bulgars and others."
