In Lebanon, Activists Nominate Everyone for the #BurnISISFlagChallenge
What started with buckets of ice water to fight ALS has expanded into a huge range of materials and causes — rice to raise awareness of hunger in India, rubble for war-ravaged Gaza, soapy lather in Ebola-stricken West Africa, bullets in the United States following the shooting of Michael Brown. Now the trend has incorporated a new ...
What started with buckets of ice water to fight ALS has expanded into a huge range of materials and causes -- rice to raise awareness of hunger in India, rubble for war-ravaged Gaza, soapy lather in Ebola-stricken West Africa, bullets in the United States following the shooting of Michael Brown. Now the trend has incorporated a new element: fire.
What started with buckets of ice water to fight ALS has expanded into a huge range of materials and causes — rice to raise awareness of hunger in India, rubble for war-ravaged Gaza, soapy lather in Ebola-stricken West Africa, bullets in the United States following the shooting of Michael Brown. Now the trend has incorporated a new element: fire.
Since last weekend, people in Lebanon have been burning the black flags of the Islamic State to protest the militant movement’s extreme brutality. “I nominate the whole world to #Burn_ISIS_Flag_Challenge. You have 24 hours. GO!!” one activist posted alongside a YouTube video.
The flag burnings follow ISIS’s beheading of a Lebanese sergeant and capture of more than 30 Lebanese soldiers and policemen during clashes near the Lebanon-Syria border last month. ISIS is still holding most of the captured forces hostage.
#BurnISISFlagChallenge has taken off on social media and so has the controversy around it. The ISIS flag is emblazoned with the Muslim declaration of faith: “There is no god but God and Muhammad is his Prophet.” That’s led to angry debate over whether the flag stands for ISIS or for all of Islam — and whether burning it represents an appropriate condemnation of ISIS’s brutality or is actually an affront to Allah.
Lebanon’s justice minister denounced the three Lebanese teenagers who began the flag-burning campaign in Beirut last Saturday, saying it was “an insult to the religious slogans of the Abrahamic faiths, and could stir up sectarian conflicts,” the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported. But a member of a Christian-led bloc in Lebanon’s Parliament disagreed, saying he’d defend the three boys accused in court if needed.
Comments on the YouTube video range from “Burn ISIS burn!” to “YOU SON OF A BITCH THATS NOT ONLY ISIS FLAG THATS FLAG OF MUSLIMS.”
@SadiiaaTaqwa they don’t represent Islam and its prophet. So you can burn it consciously
— Nadim Bayeh (@NadimBayeh_) August 31, 2014
I nominate Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ahmet Davutoglu for the #BurnISISFlagChallenge
— Onat Mansur (@OnatMansur) September 5, 2014
*Clarification, Sept. 8, 2014: The original photo at the top of this post was not the flag of the Islamic State. The photo has since been changed to one that shows the correct flag burning.
Justine Drennan was a fellow at Foreign Policy from 2014-2015. Twitter: @jkdrennan
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