Sawab Centre undermines Daesh propaganda and its myth of a utopia

The Sawab Centre, a joint UAE-US initiative to combat online propaganda of Daesh and other extremist groups and promote positive alternatives to extremism, announced the launch of a campaign to highlight and expose the lies and illusions of Daesh.

Under the hashtag of #DaeshFraud, the three-day campaign will run from 10th to 12th July in Arabic and English on Sawab’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube platforms.

As Daesh loses territory on the battlefield, more and more information is coming to light which further belies the group’s claim of having established a utopia of well-stocked markets, a functioning economy, and a happy and contented population.

Recovered documents, testimonies of witnesses and defectors, and physical scars to the landscape are telling a very different story, one of subjugation of locals, discrimination against group members, and the plundering of natural resources and ancient antiquities to feed the group’s terrorist machine. In this campaign, Sawab has collected and curated much of this documentary evidence in order to ensure its wide dissemination over social media.

Though the decay at the core of Daesh’s rule is well understood by the vast majority, there remain weak-minded or troubled individuals who are susceptible to the falsehoods peddled online by the terrorist group.

As it retreats in desperation, the group hopes to inspire these individuals to perpetrate attacks against innocent civilians in countries around the world, from Medina to Manchester to Marawi. By exposing this Daesh charade, the Sawab campaign will directly contradict the group’s narrative, undermine its efforts to inspire attacks, and provide the alternative counterpoint to vulnerable individuals in order to sway them from choosing the path of violence and delusion.

#DaeshFraud is the Sawab Centre’s eighteenth proactive social media campaign. Other Sawab campaigns have focused on the terrorist group’s devastation of families, communities, and ancient civilisations, as well as positive themes such as the importance of diversity to a well-functioning society and the important contributions of women in preventing and resisting extremism and in advancing their societies.

Since its launch in July 2015, the Sawab Centre has encouraged governments, communities, and individual voices to engage proactively to counteract online extremism. Over this time, the Centre has given voice to the millions of people around the world who oppose Daesh and other extremists and support the Center's efforts to expose terrorist groups’ brutality and criminal nature.