Really, how “awkward“.
In a public appearance filmed and posted online, members of Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, one brandishing a knife, held up a bearded head before a crowd in Aleppo. They triumphantly described the execution of what they said was a member of an Iraqi Shia militia fighting for President Bashar al-Assad.
Now we have known for some time that on which side in Syria’s civil war Islamists fight depends on their religious affiliation: Shiites are on the side of the government and Sunnis are on the side of the rebels. As it happens, though, identification based solely on which branch of Islam they profess to follow may lead to mix-ups.
But the head was recognised from the video as originally belonging to a member of Ahrar al-Sham, a Sunni Islamist rebel group that often fights alongside ISIS though it does not share its al-Qaeda ideology.
After inquiries, an ISIS spokesman admitted he was Mohammed Fares, an Ahrar commander reported missing some days ago. This could not be independently confirmed, but in an earlier video of a speech by Mr Fares he bears a close resemblance to the severed head in the later video.
The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, which monitors deaths in the Syrian conflict, and several activists on social media said that ISIS fighters misunderstood comments Mr Fares made referring to the Imams Ali and Hussein, the founding fathers of Shiism.
And the mix-ups can be quite embarrassing.
Militant Islamist rebels in Syria linked to al-Qaeda have asked for “understanding and forgiveness” for cutting off and putting on display the wrong man’s head.
They also promised next time to be more careful about correctly identifying the religious affiliation of their victims before beheading them or at least, before they before proudly displaying their new trophy, the victim’s head!
But of course, as everyone knows, terrorism has nothing to do with religious ideology, none whatsoever. It is all “imperialism’s” fault. Riiight.
