PARIS—It took just a few hours for the Islamic State group’s opportunistic propaganda machine to capitalize on the latest bloodshed in Florida and in France, with messages claiming the two attackers as its own. It may take the group longer to sort through the implications of a killer whose backstory of conflicted sexuality and heavy drinking is at odds with a carefully crafted public image of its fighters.
But whether the links were direct or merely aspirational, they were enough to thrust IS to the center of the U.S. presidential race and the debate over the role of Islam in the world. They were enough to cause France to re-examine who should be expelled over links to extremism.
The group’s apocalyptic message is aimed as much at Muslims living in the West as it is at non-Muslims, hoping to persuade an undecided audience to adopt its extremist views — and reject Western ideals of pluralism and tolerance, preferably with bombs and bullets. Facing defeat on the battlefield, it is taking victories where it can find them.
The attack on a gay nightclub in Florida by an American-born Muslim during Ramadan and the stabbing of two police officials in France two days later would initially appear to dovetail perfectly with that worldview. Omar Mateen’s killing of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando tapped into deep fears that extremists are lying in wait to prey upon the West at home — fears that Islamic State fans at every available opportunity.
“The uncomfortable reality is that attacks such as the one in Orlando become ‘Islamic State attacks’ simply because the attackers declare them as such. The validity of their assertions matters less than the consequences of their actions,” according to an analysis Tuesday by the Soufan Group security consultancy. “Mateen may have sought to catapult his reputation from that of a homophobic mass-murderer to a ’soldier of the caliphate,’ merely by parroting the group’s name.”
