Here’s a good example of how the Mainstream Media can be just as vulnerable to viral memes as anyone else. A map began making the rounds on Twitter sometime ago, showing a large hunk of Africa, Central Asia, The Caucasus Region, and parts of Europe, consumed under a black mass with ominous white Arabic text, called “ISIS’s five-year expansion plan” by NBC News. There’s just one problem — it has nothing to do with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria— or with reality at all.
The map has been floating around Twitter for a while, but only after ISIS’ success in Iraq did it go viral. NBC picked up the picture and ran with it, publishing their article on June 30. The Daily Mail was right behind with their own article:
The Daily Mail went so far as to include a translated version of the map in their article, which reads like the sort of map that a 14-year-old gamer with no knowledge of geopolitics would draft for a science fiction setting:

Do you see that “Sham” sandwiched between Land of Alkali Metals, Hijab, Iraq, and Corduroystan? That’s your first clue.
And there’s a reason why it reads like someone with no knowledge of geopolitics drafted it: because it was not intended to be geopolitically correct. NBC listed a Twitter account called “ThirdPosition” as their source for the map: anyone with knowledge of history recognizes that term. “The third position,” the position between communism and capitalism, is better known as fascism.
And that’s exactly what you get from “ThirdPosition’s” twitter feed, according to io9:
Adding to the story’s credibility, the ABC News web page cites the Twitter account of a neofascist group, “ThirdPosition,” as one of its sources. Indeed, visitors to ThirdPosition’s Twitter feed can learn such intriguing facts as that World War II began when “Germany overthrew its overlords. It adopted a seperate [sic] banking system outside Jewish cartel influence. That is why we made war.”
According to NBC, the black parts of the map are regions that ISIS hopes to add to its “Sunni-run state.” But according to Quartz, the map is a fake:
“It’s an old image put out by fans of the group,” says Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who also maintains a blog, Jihadology.net, that analyzes primary source material produced by Islamist movements. “There is nothing official about it nor is there some alleged 5-year plan.”
While ISIL obviously does have plans to control territory and impose its extreme take on Islamist politics, this particular map is just a historical mash-up of past Muslim political entities. They range from the empire that emerged from modern-day Saudi Arabia in the 7th century to the Ottoman Empire, with its roots in Turkey, that collapsed in 1923. (The Daily Mail has a rough English-language version of the map.)
It is also an ironic creation, considering that many of the polities whose territory is encompassed by this map endorsed brands of Islam and politics that would offend ISIL. To over-simplify, ISIL’s ideology comes from the branch of modern Islam that seeks a purifying return to the early days of Islam, rejecting later “innovations” in the religion that, they believe, corrupt its original spirit.
Quartz goes on to point out that the map is ironic; like most fundamentalists, ISIS wants to go back to the “roots” of their religion, when it was “pure.” There are many territories under the black that would offend ISIS’ religious “sensibilities”.
It is also an ironic creation, considering that many of the polities whose territory is encompassed by this map endorsed brands of Islam and politics that would offend ISIL. To over-simplify, ISIL’s ideology comes from the branch of modern Islam that seeks a purifying return to the early days of Islam, rejecting later “innovations” in the religion that, they believe, corrupt its original spirit.
As for the territorial boarders of the fictional map, it’s cobbled together from a variety of historical and ahistorical sources — the Ottoman Empire, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Khwarazmian Dynasty, and others — and not at all true.
Maybe next time you’ll think twice before you believe anything you hear from . . . NBC?
h/t: io9
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