AMSTERDAM – Leaving behind an easy life and warm family relations, a growing number of young Muslims in the Netherlands are travelling to Syria to fight against Bashar Al-Assad’s regime.“Protecting the people against murderous soldiers… gives satisfaction,” Abu Fidaa, a Dutch Muslim who joined anti-regime fighters in Syria, said in an e-mail to the Volkskrant newspaper cited by Dutch News on Sunday, June 16.
“Muslims in the west who are looking on helplessly need psychiatric help, not us.“Jihad in Syria has a therapeutic effect.”
In a series of e-mails sent between May 26 and June 12, Abu Fidaa said he was fighting against the Assad regime in Syria along with 100 to 150 Dutch Muslims.
“We are spread over several locations with brothers from other countries to ease the integration,” he writes.
“The other brothers come from Belgium, Germany, Canada and Russia.”
Denying reports about being paid fighters, Abu Fidaa says that the fighters pay for their own trips to Syria.
“The cost of a plane ticket, hotel and taxi come to a couple of hundred euros. And living here is very cheap,” he writes.
“We get a good monthly amount and if you are involved in a field battle you normally get part of the spoils.”
The Dutch jihadist also dismissed claims that the youth were being recruited against their will.
“What use are young men to don’t want to fight?” he asked.
“If youngsters are being recruited it is by the west thanks to its barbaric wars in Muslim countries. The years of images we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan have planted a longing for jihad in our hearts.”
More than 93,000 people have been killed in two years of fighting between Assad’s regime and opposition fighters in Syria.
The fighting has forced more than one million Syrians to flee their home to neighboring countries in addition to the displacement of two millions others inside the country.
Thousands of foreign fighters are believed to have joined the war against Assad’s regime in Syria.
On Thursday, Sunni Muslim scholars called for Jihad in Syria against Assad’s regime.
Earlier this month, prominent Muslmi scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi called on Sunni Muslims to join opposition forces in their fight against Assad’s regime.
Butchered Civilians
The young Muslim man condemned the West for ignoring the butchering of Syrian civilians on the hands of Bashar forces over the past two years.
“We know the west will spend all its money, use every conspiracy theory it can… to combat the Muslims and Mujahideen in Syria who chose Shari`ah over democracy,” he wrote.
“We have seen this in Afghanistan, Yemen, Waziristan, Somalia, Mali. We expect this conflict will come to Syria as well when Bashar has fallen.”
He referred to earlier wars on Muslims in the Balkans, calling on Muslims to protect themselves.
“As a Muslim you know you have many enemies who can strike at any moment,” he wrote.
“Look at what happened between the Bosnians and the Serbs who lived in peace for years.
“In the Netherlands Wilders has been given a podium in the political arena to make the most racists statements. We advise Muslims to seriously think about emigrating,” he said.
Staying thousands of miles away from their homes, the young Muslim fighter denies that his travel to Syria was a result of psychological problems.
“Stranger still, the brothers who have managed to kill one of Bashar’s soldiers have finally been given peace in their hearts.”
There is no end in sight to the conflict in Syria, which has divided world powers.
Russia and Shiite Iran support Assad, while the United States, along with some European and Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab nations back a fractured opposition.
Damascus and some of its opponents have said they will consider peace talks, but no meetings have been arranged.
onislam.net
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