Islamic State Editorial on Media and the Masses

Observers have been waiting for an official Islamic State statement regarding the U.S. announcement of the killing of the group’s leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi. This week’s issue of the group’s newsletter al-Naba’ contains nothing on the matter, though I have to admit when I first saw the title of the editorial in al-Naba’, I thought it might be a denial of the U.S. claim to have killed Hashimi. Instead, however, the editorial compares global media today to the sorcerers of the Pharaoh, who sought to mislead the people away from following Moses. So the global media today work in the service of the “Tawagheet” and are able to mislead the masses and direct their minds to focus on trivial and silly causes (e.g. the case of the Moroccan child ‘Rayan’ who fell down a well and attracted attention throughout the Arab world via social media) while ignoring children killed in American airstrikes and dying from hunger, cold and weariness in the camps of Iraq and Syria. The editorial concludes that the Islamic State supporters who work in the field of media must double their efforts to confront the media sorcerers who serve the Pharaohs of today.

Below is the editorial translated in full.