Conspiracy theories have often preoccupied the minds of many Muslims and Arabs, who looked to them for a fictitious explanation of the world that would keep them in line with and justify the explicit use of violence in Islam.
There is no doubt that ISIS committed crimes based on the practices of Muhammad in regard to slavery, massacres, and rape, which angered many Muslims. However, many Muslims saw ISIS as revealing the hidden teachings of Islam, which contradicted what they propagated about the true nature of this “religion of peace.”
As part of their effort to exonerate Islam and restore its “divine message,” activists and users of social networks have consistently published videos and posts in which they were committed to discrediting ISIS while also defending Islam as a whole.
There were also preposterous allegations, including the claim that ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, was nothing more than an ambitious Jew, recruited by the Israeli Mossad to undermine Islam and foment civil unrest within the Arab countries.
In this video below, which was aired over six years ago on the Al Kahera wal Nas Egyptian TV channel, ISIS founder Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was depicted as an Israeli agent (with the real name of Simon Elliot), trained by the Israeli Mossad to stir up chaos. The video also quoted an article published on the Veterans Today website, which reported on this incredible fraud.
In 2017, many conspiracy theorists, with others from Iran, began to spread another baseless myth in an effort to falsely associate Israel and the United States with ISIS. This time the center of the “conspiracy” against “the peaceful religion of Islam” was in Libya.
It alleged the presence of a senior Mossad operative in Libya named Abu Hafs, whose real name was Benyamin Ephraim. He posed as a Muslim scholar and a commander of ISIS.
Further, the same story was recently broadcast by a USA-registered media agency, claiming the incident was factual and that it was part of ISIS’s “hidden history.”
Step Press Agency’s uploaded a video on its YouTube account almost a week ago with the following description. “When you hear about the Israeli or Jew Abu Hafs, you should know that the contradiction of his name is not what most intrigues the story of a cleric in Libya and a devout Qur’an preserver. At the call to prayer, he was the first to respond, and if people disagreed about their religious matters, they all sought out his fatwa after becoming a scholar of religion. He had earlier formed a group of fighters under his command and penetrated the terrorist organization ISIS. But simple jurisprudence errors led to the scholarly cleric being unmasked, just to prove he was an Israeli spy in Libya!”
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Some sources in Washington DC (who have asked to remain anonymous) stated that this agency has links with the Muslim Brotherhood movement, and that its founder came from Syria via Turkey and received financial grants from some official US agencies in 2013.
Step Press Agency’s website confirms that it was established in 2013, has millions of followers on social media, and it is officially registered in the United States.
It describes itself “as a news agency that deals with Arab affairs and the issues of the Arab peoples in all their aspects and sheds light on ancient and contemporary Arab history away from any political, ethnic, or religious ideologies. Plan of work; STEP Agency sets up a team of journalists and media professionals who work in all Arab countries within an institutional framework in order to reach a new Arab media channel that represents the creativity of Arab peoples.”
It should be investigated whether US taxpayer dollars have been spent to subsidize anti-Semitism and spread rumors and fallacies that served only to foment prejudice and loathing against Jews in general or Israel in particular.
It is important to note that, during the second term of President Obama, the U.S. Department of State believed that Assad relied heavily on ISIS to crush what appeared to be a legitimate protest against the Alawite regime in Damascus.
In this video, the U.S. State Department openly alleged that the US journalist James Foley was killed by ISIS because he had exposed the crimes of the Assad regime.
During the tenure of Secretary John Kerry, the US Department of State through its Global Engagement Center spent millions of taxpayer dollars supporting and running social media campaigns in support of the Free Syrian Army and other groups that eventually turned out to be involved in terrorist activities against religious minorities, including Christians.
In those days, the State Department was always keen to exonerate the Muslim religion from any association with ISIS.
The recent images of a US military convoy moving back in Syria may indicate that such practices will be encouraged within the lobbies of Washington DC’s Harry S. Truman building.
Samir A. Zedan is a former Senior Counter-Terrorism Analyst at the US Department of State, and a former Development Outreach and Communication Specialist at USAID/Iraq. He has contributed to hundreds of articles published in major media outlets with assignments in the Palestinian Areas, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and Europe.
gravenimage says
The use of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to exonerate Islam from any connection to ISIS
………………
The idea that it is Jews running the Islamic State and practicing perfect Shari’ah is just ludicrous. The only problem most Muslims have with ISIS is that they want their own gang running the Caliphate instead.
saturnine says
Once Muslims realize that Muhammad himself was a Jew sent to make Islam look bad by robbing, raping, slaving, deceiving, child molesting, murdering, they will surrender and accept that Jews are too powerful and can never be defeated.
gravenimage says
Ha ha!