Recently a Western backed Syrian Rebel movement put a video on its YouTube channel claiming it was the heroic rescue of little girl by his brother in the face of “Assad regime snipers”, it went viral, making it across Facebook and onto the mainstream news. The masses were well and truly hooked. They were completely absorbed on the narrative of the video and it influenced their feelings on the Syria conflict.
Here is the original video :
Now I noticed as soon as I watched it that it appeared to be fake, the whole situation, the effects and so on. Also I was suspicious because it appeared to have no credible source however I could not prove it, so I just thought, if the events are true, then it is a horrible situation and a very brave act by the boy. However if it is all faked, then what is the purpose of showing such a situation ? The masses were almost unanimous that the video was real and that it showed the “Barbaric Assad regime” which must be destroyed etc, and this is not just coming from average people, but also people who claim to lead and teach in the community and even mainstream press. Recently the people behind the video have stepped forwarded and admitted it is fake, the Norwegian group led by film director Lars Klevberg admitted he wanted to make this clip and make it look as realistic as possible and make people think, he told the BBC
“If I could make a film and pretend it was real, people would share it and react with hope,” BBC Source
So what can be learned from this exercise? Firstly makes me wonder what is true and what is propaganda, in this instance the effects were a little amateur so someone with a keen eye could see something wasn’t quite right. However with a bigger budget a group could easily make videos that appear to show situations that were not true for a political gain.
In Islam we can not just take things that we hear as facts, for example in the Quran we have the phrases:
Also we have a complete system for authenticating hadith, we would not just accept a hadith with no source, with no knowledge of the person’s reputation and also the content would have to be examined. If we apply this logical system to this video, in each of these criteria the video would have been exposed, or in the very least thought as doubtful or suspicious. However many, in fact the vast majority ignored common sense and took this video to be true and were tricked, hopefully this is a lesson that there are groups who do want to deceive the masses and without careful thought the masses will be tricked. Who knows how many people left their homes to fight in Syria due to such videos, all based on a lie and propaganda? There is definitely a campaign a foot to influence the Muslim masses and its up to the community to wake up and realise what is going on.
Here is the producers of the fake video and how they made and tricked so many people.