Picture the scene: it’s a slow day at the office. There are two international news stories on the radar: the Rohingya boat crisis, and ISIS. “Wait,” someone says. “There’s a link here. Hang on… They’re both.. Muslims!”
First, the Independent heralded the arrival of Myanmar’s “great terror” because a Taliban hardliner called on the Rohingya, members of a persecuted Muslim minority group in the country, to take up arms.
Then Newsweek ran a story implying that ISIS may already be recruiting Rohingya on the basis of generalising comments about the organization’s presence in the region.
This paragraph was particularly troubling:
“Although he could not comment specifically on the Rohingya case, the head of the Singapore International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism, professor Rohan Gunaratna told Newsweek that the terrorist group have become apt at attracting and recruiting vulnerable Muslims. “Isis recruiters have developed a deep understanding of how to radicalize and militarize alienated Muslims,” he said.”
Let’s not kid around here: all he’s saying is that ISIS knows how to recruit Muslims.
A correction appended to that story removed quotations from a Human Rights Watch spokesperson who, they said, “withdrew their comments”.
Phil Robertson, that spokesperson, said on Twitter that he never gave them in the first place.
That story spawned a host of copycat articles which jumped to the conclusion that ISIS is already recruiting Rohingya.
And now the Huffington Post has used it as the basis for another alarmist post titled ‘How ISIS Could Destroy Myanmar’.
We counted the number of ‘if’ and ‘could’ in the HuffPo piece. Nine. That’s one assumption in almost every paragraph.
Of course the question about the roots of Islamic terror is important. And ISIS does have a foothold in the region. They have called on Rohingya to join them.
But let’s remember the real bottom line here. (And, no, that’s not if just one Rohinga is recruited by ISIS the country will fall apart, as HuffPo puts it).
Not a single Rohingya Muslim is known so far to have sworn allegiance to ISIS.
Photo / Coconuts Yangon
