When you think of the self-proclaimed Islamic State your mind probably wanders to barbaric images of executions – beheadings and drownings, setting fire to infidels. What you probably don’t think of is Greggs.
But in what would appear to be an incredible feat of hypocrisy, it turns out the boys who are fighting so adamantly against Western ideals just can’t wage terror without a cheese and onion pasty or mocha latte in their stomachs.
After uncovering a series of bizarre Western products that the jihadis just cannot live without, we’ve decided to compile a list of the weirdly ironic things Daesh crave on the battlefield.
Greggs
Meet Abu Abdullah Britani, a British jihadi living in Syria. Britani claims that he wants to die by a drone attack, but his hatred of the West seems to waver somewhat as all he secretly really wants is a Greggs, reports the London Evening Standard.
Speaking to YouTube channel Face The Truth, Britani said:
I miss home. I miss some of my friends, some of my family, some of my family will be watching this. I miss Greggs.
Costa & Starbucks
It turns out radical Islamists over in the self-proclaimed caliphate really miss Western coffee chains.
Another British extremist, the Instagram-famous Abu Waqqas al-Albani, took to the photo sharing site to post pictures of his guns, ammo and suicide belts.
Albani captioned some photos with a rallying call for an attack on Gatwick Airport, similar to the one in Brussels earlier this year, reports the Daily Mail.
He wrote:
Go out with a bomb bruv rob man and beat them, kill them get some action in your life fam do something fisabiliah. Start with family first anyone who sanders the teaching of Islam and the prophet plan and rob man and chop his face and throw him in the sea. All it takes is a kitchen knife and a brain.
But when he’s not inciting the brutal murder of innocent people on the internet, it turns out Albani enjoys food and drink from Costa – or rather he wishes he could get some of it.
Posting on Instagram, he shared a snap of a Costa muffin adjacent to a frothy cup of coffee with the caption, ‘I.miss this’.
And back in November, news organisations from around the world ran a story on a number of Western fighters who were complaining about the poor and bitter taste of coffee in Syria.
One apparent jihadi, using the now deactivated twitter handle @GreenBirdDabiq, wrote:
I know it may be shirk but sometimes I do miss Starbucks. The coffee here is beyond wretched.
Coco Pops
Next up is the teenage British Daesh fighter known as Abu Dujana.
When appearing on an ‘ask me anything’ feed on Ask.Fm, Dujana was questioned about day-to-day life in the self-proclaimed caliphate, reports Al Arabiya.
He enlightened users with answers such as:
Mujahideen receive 40 dollars a month and 40 for each wife or child they have. Also housing is free if available.
Most people have Samsung galaxy phones, don’t bring iPhone. Don’t bring too many clothes you can get everything here.
He also told users how they could go about joining the self-titled Islamic State.
But when asked what he missed most about the west, he simply replied:
I only miss my family, nothing else. Ok I miss coco pops, I admit that.
Fish Fingers, Skittles, Apple Pies and Jaffa Cakes
Unsurprisingly, the guy who misses this smorgasbord of British snack favourites is nicknamed ‘the supermarket jihadi’.
27-year-old Omar Hussein used to work at a Morrisons in Buckinghamshire, but he now spends his days fighting for Daesh in Syria.
But life in Syria isn’t as great as ISIS propaganda makes out – Omar misses fish fingers, Skittles and Jaffa Cakes like crazy, reports the Daily Mail.
In one of his latest Q&A posts on Twitter the extremist was asked what, if anything, he misses about his old life in the UK.
The answer was evidently simple for the the supermarket jihadi as he immediately replied: “Jaffa Cakes, Skittles, apple pies, Birdseye fish fingers – just the food.”
There is a surreal hypocrisy behind the claims made by the jihadis in this article.
They want to wage a holy war against the evil of Western ideals, but they all crave the comforting fast food that is symbolic of everything they want to destroy.
It’s out and out hypocrisy, and can be seen as proof that a large portion of those joining Daesh are confused about the realities of what they’re actually fighting for.
