This story is from February 12, 2017

Clerics in Mumbai use social media to battle IS

You can fight a visible enemy with guns and bombs.But how do you face the fury of online radicalization and recruitment of youngsters who are misled with misquoted verses and other sacred statements.
Clerics in Mumbai use social media to battle IS
Mahim Dargah's managing trustee and Madrassa Darul Uloom Faizane-Raza's founder filter the online posts of ISIS.
Key Highlights
  • The clerics are helping stop youths from getting swayed by extremist propaganda
  • Jihadis hunt for recruits in cyberspace by misquoting and twisting scriptures
MUMBAI: You can fight a visible enemy with guns and bombs. But how do you face the fury of online radicalisation and recruitment of youngsters who are misled with misquoted verses and other sacred statements. By quoting the right verses with their proper contexts and interpretations, of course. This is exactly what the famous Mahim Dargah, in collaboration with Goregaon-based Madrassa Darul Uloom Faizan-e-Raza, is doing.

They are fighting the terrorist outfit Daesh or Islamic State (IS) through social networks and helping stop youths from getting swayed by extremist propaganda.
Around eight months ago, Mahim Dargah's managing trustee Sohail Khandwani, the Goregaon madrassa's founder Mufti Mohammed Manzoor Ziyaee and others brainstormed on how to fight fake jihadis, who hunt for recruits in cyberspace by misquoting and twisting scriptures.
"The Dargah created an App, a Facebook page, a blog, Twitter and WhatsApp accounts. Since ISIS also approaches youths with Quranic verses and Hadiths (sayings of Prophet Muhammad), we decided that Mufti Ziyaee would respond to such propaganda by quoting verses and Hadiths with their correct contexts and interpretations," says Khandwani.
Mufti Ziyaee quotes several Quranic verses which terrorist groups use to provoke their followers. A frequently-quoted Quranic verse (9:5) goes: "When the forbidden months have passed, kill the polytheists (who are at war with you) wherever you find them."
"This verse is presented as if it is a command to kill the kafirs wherever they are. The right context of the verse needs to be understood," says Mufti Ziyaee.
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