MOSUL, Iraq, December 15, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – According to a blogger in the ancient Iraqi city of Mosul, ISIS (also known as ISIL) leaders there have issued a “fatwa” against children with Down syndrome and other birth defects.
The only source for the story is the Mosul Eye, self-described as a “blog … set up to communicate what's happening in Mosul to the rest of the world , minute by minute from an independent historian.” It has been repeated by dozens of mainstream and niche news sites, from the British Daily Mail through Fox News to Breitbart.
According to the Mosul Eye's December 14 Facebook entry, “the Shar'i Board of ISIL issued an 'Oral Fatwa' to its members authorizing them to – in the fatwa's words, 'kill newborn babies with Down's Syndrome and congenital disorders and disabled children.'”
“The Fatwa was issued by one of ISIL's Shar'i judges, a Saudi judge named 'Abu Said Aljazrawi,'” the Facebook entry continued. It claimed to have confirmed 38 killings in Mosul and Syria, by asphyxiation and fatal injection, and said most of the victims were the children of foreign ISIS warriors and Syrian, Iraqi, and Asian women.
Some commentators on the Mosul Eye's Facebook page questioned the story's credibility and accused its author of making it up to damage ISIS's reputation. “MyNews Clips,” for example, made the following claim: “I hate ISIS but this is nothing but Shia propaganda to cover up the massacre of school children's by Shia regime in Damascus suburb yesterday. Asad killed more civilians then all the rebel put together include that of ISIS.”
The American fact-checking blogsite Snopes was also skeptical, pronouncing the story “unproven” on Monday because of its single source. “While the claim … appeared in multiple international news reports, no one was able to substantiate the rumors,” it noted.
Neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch (named by the Mosul Eye as the audience it seeks for its reports) had returned LifeSiteNews's request for comment on Mosul Eye's story by publication time.
The blog, which reports with the same specificity on the number of casualties caused by aerial bombardment by European and North American air forces, claims, “We double-check every single piece of data, verify it, and cross-reference it to all that is published and secretly documented about it to confirm the most accurate and true data available about it.”
One entry on the blog suggests that its author is Christian. Under a mid-November headline, “Get Ready to Celebrate Christmas Early,” came a brief prophetic statement that ISIS's days in Mosul were numbered. “The churches' bells will ring again in Mosul, and we'll sing the songs of peace out loud. We'll replace the black flags with colourful ones. This winter won't be cold. It will be warm with candles lighting up the churches and the streets.”
