US President Barack Obama has said the beheading of US journalist James Foley is “an act of violence that shocks the conscience of the entire world”.
Mr Obama compared Islamic State (IS), the group which made a video of Mr Foley’s killing, to a “cancer” and said its ideology was “bankrupt”.
I’m not sure why suddenly, when a journalist is killed, this behaviour from ISIS is suddenly ‘an act of violence that shocks the world’s conscience’ when ISIS is well known for beheading people, never mind crucifying them or burying them alive, and at the end of July released a video showing the mass murder of hundreds of Iraqi men tied up and bussed out to the desert just as James Foley was….where was the ‘shocked conscience of the world’ then?
Indeed the BBC’s Frank Gardner admits as much:
Shocking as it is, the video of James Foley being beheaded by a masked jihadist is not without precedent.
But he goes on…..
Pursuing an extreme form of Sunni Islam, IS has persecuted non-Muslims such as Yazidis and Christians, as well as Shia Muslims, whom it regards as heretics.
These grisly murder videos are abhorrent to most Muslims and non-Muslims alike and they’ve even been discouraged by Osama Bin Laden’s successor as a “vote loser”.
“It (ISIS) attracts the worst kind of psychopaths,” he said. “This is not about religion. It’s not even about territory.”
Gardner plays down the religious aspect to all this….which is in fact, obviously, central to everything ISIS does….Gardner is making a claim that ISIS carries out everything it does for no reason other than they are ‘psycopaths’, thus Gardner tries to separate their actions from the ideology of Islam.
Unfortunately what ISIS is doing is like a full colour, live action replay of history, the history of Islam when Muhammed first swept across the Middle East introducing Islam to the world at the point of a sword taking advantage of the weakness of the Roman and Persian empires just as ISIS exploits Obama’s reluctance to stand and fight for Western values at a time when the rest of the Arab world is in turmoil…..Muhammed slaughtered whole people’s, beheading the men and enslaving the women and children….sound familiar?
This has everything to do with religion and territory….hence ISIS proclaim an Islamic Caliphate.
And as for Al Qaeda distancing itself from the extreme violence of ISIS as the BBC constantly tells us…..maybe not so much:
“We announce solidarity with our Muslim brothers in Iraq against the crusade. Their blood and injuries are ours and we will surely support them……We stand by the side of our Muslim brothers in Iraq against the American and Iranian conspiracy and their agents of the apostate Gulf rulers.”
Other than those issues Frank Gardner is totally correct.
The BBC goes on to explore the intention behind the release of the video and the possible political fallout from it.
James Foley: Extremists battle with social media
PJ Crowley: James Foley video not intended for US
The BBC looks at the use of social media and the uploading of violent images and pictures of dead Muslims as propaganda intended to shock and recruit new ISIS members to ‘defend Islam’.
The BBC tells of urgent attempts to close down such propaganda.
Which you might think was more than a little ironic when the BBC itself has spent a great deal of time and effort broadcasting similar propaganda for Jihadists.
Only today the BBC was telling us every 20 minutes or so that the Israelis had killed the wife and daughter of a Hamas member, clearly intended by the BBC to incite a negative reaction to Israeli military actions in Gaza…in other words pro-Hamas, pro-terrorist propaganda exploiting the deaths of a girl and her mother.
Recently the BBC has been encouraging a positive image of the ‘Caliphate‘….a questionable approach when establishing a ‘Caliphate’ is a prime motivation of ISIS.
The BBC rounded up its discussion, in which 90% of the comments were pro-Caliphate, by saying that ‘For many Muslims the Caliphate is something to aspire to, to unite the community and provide a sense of security…the idea of the Caliphate’s resurrection is not forgotten.’
No kidding!
Then of course we have the output from the various BBC journalists in Gaza whose preferred choice of report centres around dead and dying children and women, blown up hospitals and schools. There is little about Hamas, its fighters and their real intentions.
The BBC’s choice of image and tone is hardly different from that which ISIS might choose to utilise in its own propaganda.
It is therefore something of an irony that the BBC reports with a straight face the outrage at ISIS’ exploitation of social media and its shockingly violent and graphic videos that are intended to grab world Media’s attention when the BBC itself indulges in a not too dissimilar course of action.
The BBC explains why this sort of propaganda is a problem….
Frank Gardner, the BBC’s security correspondent, said the video could encourage people to join IS.
Ever wonder just how many British Jihadi recruits were ‘encouraged to join’ by the BBC’s acceptance of the extremist’s narrative that foreign policy was to blame for the ills of the Muslim world and that Muslims, both in the UK and worldwide, are oppressed by non-Muslims?
The Metropolitan Police said it was investigating video footage posted online showing Mr Foley being killed.
It warned that “viewing, downloading or disseminating” the video may be an offence under terrorism legislation.
Perhaps the likes of the BBC’s Jon Donnison will get their collars felt for promoting a narrative favourable to Hamas terrorists?
The BBC also tells us….
Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy, who worked alongside Mr Foley in 2011, said: “Without him… these tyrants will get away with things without people probing and pushing to show people what’s really happening in these war zones.”
Perhaps the BBC would like to show us where they have ‘probed and pushed to show people what’s really happening in a Gaza controlled by the ‘tyrants’ of Hamas.’
