Shadee Elmasry – Tox Survived Two ISIS Assassination Attempts in Syria
AI: Summary ©
The conflict in Syria is a conflict that led to the loss of thousands of people and their homes, leading to the loss of their lives. A woman was approached by ISIS and threatened with violence, leading to her loss of life. A man named Alan Henning faced criticism and struggles to justify his actions, but eventually convinced himself to join the ISIS movement. The speaker also talks about a situation where Henning filmed a orange jumpsuit and negotiated with them for months, negotiating with them for months, and negotiated with them for months.
AI: Summary ©
And then in 2012 when the conflict broke
out in Syria, I wasn't really aware of
the nuances.
Even though I'd travelled to Syria before that
and I knew that there was oppression taking
place and stuff, I wasn't aware of the
kind of finer details about the Alawite minority
population, their beliefs and how they had, you
know, most of the control and power in
government.
And so it was a group of brothers
that came to visit me and they were
like, look, we want to take a convoy
to Syria.
You've got experience.
You've been leading convoys through all of these
countries.
We want you to lead the convoy.
And I remember going to all the organisations
that I knew and saying, look, guys, this
is what we're doing.
And basically nobody wanted to help us.
Everybody was like, no, it's too hot.
We can't help you.
You know, we need to see what the
British government is going to say about this
first.
You know, this kind of cowardice, kind of
colonised mindset, I call it.
So, yeah, we ended up taking a small
convoy, some of the brave hearts from the
UK, Muazzam Baig came with us, obviously, Guantanamo
survivor, one of my teachers, one of my
mentors, may Allah bless him.
And you don't need to say anything about
his bravery and sacrifices for the Ummah.
So we took 13 ambulances, it was.
Some organisations did help us under the table.
And yeah, April 2012, we took the first
aid convoy from the UK.
It was difficult, but we managed to get
those ambulances into Syria.
So yeah, when I went in April, I
was like, how can I leave this place?
You know, people are getting killed.
I saw, you know, mothers, you know, crying
over their children who had been killed by
barrel bombs.
And I just said to myself, how can
I, as a man, see this take place
and leave?
I thought of the ayah in the Quran,
where Allah SWT says, بَعْدَ أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ
الْمِشْكَانِ وَالْرَجِيمِ As-salāmu alayhi wa s-salām.
وَمَا لَكُمْ لَا تُفَاتِلُنَا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ وَالْمُسْتَزْعَفِينَ
مِنَ الْرِجَالِ وَالنِّسَاءِ وَالْوَلدَانِ الَّذِينَ يُقُولُونَ رَبَّنَا
أَخْرِجْنَا مِنْ هَذِهِ الْقَرْيَةِ The verse basically says,
and what is wrong with you, that you
don't struggle in the cause of Allah SWT,
when you see the men, the women and
the children who are screaming out, يا رب,
save us from this oppressor.
And that just reverberated in my mind.
And I remember seeing, you know, the video,
the images of Bashar's soldiers, burying, you know,
people alive and saying to them, say, لا
إله إلا بشار.
And I just said to myself, I can't,
and so literally, I went back to the
UK, organized another convoy, told my wife, who
would only be married for 10 months, I
said, listen, pack your bags.
We're going to Syria.
And that's it.
In December 2012, we were in Syria, and
we never looked back.
I took two convoys to Syria myself.
After that, I was inside Syria and the
brothers continued to organize convoys, and I would
basically organize everything internally.
But this is where the story gets a
bit, I mean, it's part of our journey.
And this is where, I mean, it wasn't
all, what do they say, all rosy posy,
if you call it that.
So in 2013, we brought in a really
big aid convoy of ambulances from the UK.
At that time, ISIS was on the rise.
Basically, there were 99, 99 of those vehicles
were being driven by Muslims.
One was driven by a Christian called Alan
Henning.
So the convoy was at least 250 people,
because you have more than one driver for
each vehicle.
And out of those 250 people, we had
one Christian.
And Alan was a guy that basically he
had empathy for the Syrian cause.
He was very receptive to the dawah.
He was very close to becoming Muslim.
And he was just a simple guy, a
taxi driver.
When we got the ambulances in and the
ambulance reached Syria, they got to a place
called Dana, and ISIS came and kidnapped Alan
Henning.
Oh my God.
Wow.
So they kidnapped Alan Henning, and what ended
up happening is that many people on the
convoy obviously got scared, ran back to the
countries.
It was chaotic.
I tried negotiating with many of their leaders.
We said to them, look, guys, this is
haram, what you're doing.
We have given this person a covenant of
safety and security.
He is not someone of great importance in
the UK.
The UK is not going to pay you
a ransom, because ISIS, they were like, we're
going to strike fear into the hearts of
the kuffar, and we're going to get a
ransom.
And I pleaded with them.
I negotiated with them for months.
I was one of the people that negotiated
with them, or tried to negotiate with them,
and unfortunately to no avail.
Eventually, they ended up putting Alan in an
orange jumpsuit and filming it, and basically decapitating
him and executing him.
And that was very, very problematic.
When that happened, again, that was a turning
point for me, because my mom always told
me, and it's something that's a part of
my character, and it sometimes gets me into
trouble, but it's an Islamic principle, you know,
that speak the truth, whether it's for you
or against you.
It's an ayah of Quran too.
So at that point, I came out publicly
against ISIS, me, Bilal, a few others, you
know, troublemakers.
And we basically started telling people that these
people don't represent Islam whilst we were inside
Syria.
This is what people need to understand.
Many ulema, many people were still on the
fence.
They weren't sure.
And we took a lot of heat.
People were saying, you know, I'm a munafiqeen,
how can you say this?
These guys are mujahideen.
And we're like, guys, we're in Syria.
People were like, no, you're looking at Western
news.
We're like, we're in Syria.
We know these people.
We see what they're doing to the Muslims,
right?
And so yeah, they tried to kill me.
I had a black toy, a Hilux, they
put a bomb in under it, but Alhamdulillah
I survived.
I had a gym.
I had a youth project where I would
train youngsters in a refugee camp.
They put a bomb in that.
I survived.
Alhamdulillah.
MashaAllah.
This is an insane story.
I did not expect this at all.
By the way, everyone, I came into this
totally cold, not having a clue.
But this was, this is insane.
Keep going.
I've got loads of stories, bro.
This is just the beginning.
Wow.
So yeah, so we continued.
Alhamdulillah, we persevered.
Those were difficult times.
Many people said to us, look, you're crazy.
What are you doing?
And we said, look, this is the truth.
We have to make sure that, you know,
people know the reality.
And it took quite a while before other
people caught on and realized, yeah, actually these
guys are what, you know, these lot are
saying.
But subhanAllah, obviously now there's no dispute over
this, but at that time it was a
very difficult stance to take.
But Alhamdulillah, there was a lot of blessings
and barakah in that.
Obviously, we didn't do it for any reward
or for any reason.
We just done it because it was the
right thing to do.
Because we saw that the damage that they
were inflicting, the murder, you know, they had
a thing called qatal maslaha.
We kill people for the greater benefit.
This is one of the...
Wow.
Like when we would talk to their scholars,
like their shari'in, they called them, they
would say, yeah, they would profess we got
qatal maslaha.
We had a maslaha to kill that person,
so we killed him.
And because, you know, we're building an Islamic
state, it's fine.
That's some insane fit.
Yeah.
So some insane, insane, you know, situations.
So this is like one of those things
when people say things to me, I say
to them, look, guys, you're talking from things
that you've seen on videos and stuff.
We personally met these people, we've been in
their courts, we've, you know, we've negotiated and
we've spoke to these people and, you know,
we know these people firsthand.
We know, like we've heard it from the
horse's mouth, I'm not, this is not a
second or third party source, do you understand?
And yeah, like I said, people found it
difficult to believe at that time, but obviously
over time we were proven right.
Not that that means anything.
What matters is what, you know, Allah SWT
is pleased with and nothing else.
But it's also nice to, you know, to
when people recognize that actually you guys took
a stance that was very difficult and the
right stance to take.
Yeah, I mean, you're given the way they
act, if they're doing a Qatil Maslaha, I'm
sure they're going to do a Qatil Taskeet
or Qatil to get someone to close their
mouth, right?
So, so that's, so you survived two attempts
from ISIS to, to kill you, to bomb
you essentially.
And then at what point did you say,
nah, forget this, I'm going back to England.
And at what point did you say, no,
you know what, I'll stay here.
There was, there was never, I'm going back
to England.
It's a rumor.