“Listen, we’re the maddest mad bastards there are in the world of fundamentalist terrorism and we’re not going to be outdone by anyone,” declared Ibrahim Kakfessah in a statement to the Fundamentalist Monthly Digest, as his group, the Mad Fundamentalist Bastards claimed credit for a recent massacre in Afghanistan. “We’re all about putting down a marker and setting a new standard for terrorist atrocities – it’s all been getting too tame of late and we need to get back to terror basics.” In their latest atrocity, the group electrocuted over a hundred people In a Kabul swimming pool, on the grounds that their beards simply weren’t long and stern enough. “The beard is an essential part of fundamentalism – it speaks of one’s commitment and seriousness toward the cause of blindly pursuing the imposition of insanely restrictive rules on society, all in the name of God,” he opined. “Only the Godly can grow such beards in honour of our creator. This is why women must cover their faces, in order to hide the shame of their beardlessness. Except the bearded ones, obviously. They are just freaks and must be stoned to death in the name of God.” Kakfessah’s statements have sparked fears of an escalating competition between the most radical terror groups in order to establish who is the most extreme and therefore the purest fundamentalists.

Such a development isn’t unprecedented – during the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, hard line nationalists, dissatisfied with what they perceived as the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) too liberal approach to terrorism, formed their own, more violent, splinter group, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). Such schisms among religious fundamentalists, however, are less common. The apparent catalyst for the Mad Fundamentalist Bastard’s new campaign of free terror has bee the Taliban retaking power in Afghanistan, following the departure of foreign troops. “We used to look up to them – they were the baddest of bad terror bastards! They made all others look like pussies. Yet now they have gone soft and sold out,” he told Terror Tips Today last week. “They used to be against the whole concept of government – yet now they are the government! Taking power with a minimum of violence! Where were the full on massacres, the burning of women wearing shoes? Worse still, they waited for the infidels to leave instead of driving them out, killing them all and drinking their blood! Indeed, they even held talks with the Satans Trump and Biden to arrange for a withdrawal! It is beyond contempt!”

According to experts, for fundamentalists like those who make up the Mad Fundamentalist Bastards, religious revolutions can only be born of fire and violence. “It isn’t enough to just topple a secular or rival religious regime,” explains Tim Socks, Senior Lecturer in Global Terrorism Studies at Staines Horticultural College. “As they are perceived as being not just the enemy, but as being the embodiment of evil, they must be slain and every trace of them obliterated.” Consequently, he contends, organisations like the Mad Fundamentalist Bastard are especially contemptuous of fellow fundamentalists who themselves successfully take power. “Inevitably, when they form a government and take over the functions of the state, a degree of compromise is necessary in order to keep things working,” the academic says. “Which means that they are no longer fundamentally ‘pure’ – as far as the Mad Bastards are concerned, the existing state and all its institutions should be destroyed and a completely new regime based solely on their principles be instituted. Such total revolutions are incredibly rare – the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia comes to mind as an example and just look at the death and destruction they visited on their own population when they instituted ‘Year Zero’.” As a result, he argues, these new hard line fundamentalists are more likely to be a threat to regimes like the new Taliban government in Afghanistan, than they are to the West.

Nevertheless, another self-styled ‘extreme’ terror group – apparently formed by disillusioned Mad Bastards – has already committed an atrocity designed to outdo the Mad Fundamentalist Bastard’s swimming pool massacre. “We bow to no one in our use of extreme violence to pursue holy values,” the Well Hard Totally Crazy Clerical Collective declared in a statement claiming responsibility for the recent ‘Amsterdam Strip Club Mass Castration’. “We challenge anyone to prove that they can be more brutal and extreme than us in a crusade against the infidels!” The incident, which saw over fifty men who had been watching a strip show in the Dutch city castrated using knives, machetes, axes and bolt cutters by a group of heavily bearded maniacs, with the attackers triumphantly waving the severed members in the air, has stunned terror organisations around the globe with its audacity and sheer brutality. The Clerical Collective – who daubed their full name in blood on the venue’s wall, using severed members like paint brushes – claim to unite a wide range of fundamentalist extremists from across te religious spectrum. “We come together in a universal detestation of the immorality and the disgusting worship of the sins of the flesh which permeate today’s Godless society!” their statement claimed. “Unlike those so-called Mad Bastards, we believe in taking our war direct to the enemy in their dens of iniquity, rather than just frying fellow fanatics whose beards don’t measure up!”

The actions of the Well Hard Totally Crazy Clerical Collective have left the Mad Fundamentalist Bastard’s Ibrahim Kakfessah furious. “How dare these heretics challenge our devotion to extremism in the name of the Almighty?” he ranted in a video sent to news organisations, his beard bristing and banging his fist on his desk for emphasis. “I promise you that we will create new atrocities, ever more appalling, for the greater glory of God! We will not be beaten!” Despite the fact that the Well Hard Totally Crazy Clerical Collective have started their extreme terror campaign in Europe, he stands by his assessment that such groups, ultimately, will pose little threat to the West. “The example of INLA suggests that the sort of people who set up these groups are themselves psychopaths,” Sock muses. “Inevitably, as with the INLA, they collapse into internal infighting and annihilate each other. There is little chance that this collective of fundamentalist fanatics will hold together for long and it will soon go the way of INLA, with the crazy bastards chopping each other to pieces in obscure theological disputes.”