Within the Arab world, there has been much focus in popular media recently on a new Israeli law that would apply the death penalty to Palestinian militants, with widespread rumours of an imminent execution of thousands of Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel. This populist anger has translated, for example, into pro-Palestinian demonstrations in parts of Syria focusing both on the Palestinian prisoners and the ongoing Israeli closure of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Hamas’ spokesman Abu Obayda even offered an expression of thanks for the demonstrations in Syria. Contrary though to what has been suggested by some Syrian exiles, the demonstrations are not evidence of an Iranian hand or influence. Rather, they reflect mobilisation by some Palestinians in Syria andmembers of the Syrian Sunni Arab constituency for a cause that still has popular resonance among Sunnis in the country, even as Syria’s new leadership continues to signal that it does not want a confrontation with Israel.
Islamic State reframes popular outrage to center its imprisoned members while reinforcing a narrative of abandonment and renewed violence.
For its part, the Islamic State has seized on the news and the popular attention given to it, engaging in a typical example of its ‘reframing’ technique. That is, the group will note something that grabs popular attention, then try to highlight the contrasting lack of attention to what it sees as similar if not worse suffering of those Muslims who are members and supporters of the Islamic State.
In this particular case, the group notes by contrast the conditions facing its members and supporters who are being held in Iraq’s prisons and often face execution following quick trials. In addition, it is also the case that some of Iraq’s ‘resistance’ factions- most notably Kata’ib Hezbollah- run black sites where people have been disappeared on allegations of Islamic State membership. The group asserts that its members and supporters are fighting for an Ummah that has effectively ‘forsaken’ them: a typical example of the ‘vanguard’ theme in the group’s messaging, whereby it acknowledges and is even proud of the fact that it does not enjoy popular support, but will still supposedly lead the way to the ultimate triumph for the wider Ummah.
Despite the attempted reframing around Islamic State prisoners being held in Iraq, the editorial still reiterates familiar calls to action amid the latest popular outrage: the true believers should retaliate for the closure of al-Aqsa Mosque by targeting Jewish places of worship worldwide, while also attacking and killing Jews wherever they can as happened during the Sydney attack in December. At the same time, the group also asserts that fighting the ‘Rafidites’ (Shia) is itself a step on the path to liberating Jerusalem and Palestine from the Jews. This is because the Shia are seen as an ‘apostate’ sect that afflicts the Ummah from within and is effectively a tool for the original disbelievers to undermine Islam. The final battle that results in the extermination of all Jews can only take place when the Muslims are cleansed of ‘apostate’ contamination: a topic I discussed in more depth in a Middle East Quarterly study.
Below is the editorial translated in full with annotations.
Our Aqsa and Our Prisoners
At first glance, it will appear to you from the title that we are talking about the issue of the Palestinian prisoners for whom the Jewish parliament newly approved the ‘execution law’ 78 years after invading captive Palestine, but we are talking about others besides them, from those who are executed in the prisons of Iraq night and day without noise or condemnation.
For all these years the Jews haven’t been executing prisoners inside their prisons? Meanwhile, in Iraq prisoners are executed inside the prisons of the ‘Rafidite resistance’ like a drink of water, without ratification or decision! This has been ongoing since the first day that the Rafidites seized rule in Iraq with the help of ‘allied forces’!
The stranger thing is that in Iraq the Muslim prisoner is condemned andexecuted on the same day as the charge-sheet is issued! So you don’t know which of the two comes first: the charge-sheet or the decision to execute? Hold up, you haven’t yet seen what is strange. in Iraq, the Muslim prisoner is executed by gunfire from the ‘Rafidite resistance’ even after the decision to release him is issued! For release and execution in the Rafidite prisons do not differ.
The obligation on Muslims everywhere is to rise and strike Jewish targets worldwide, whose locations are well known and publicly identified.
In Iraq, our mothers and sisters- the believing, pious, worshipping and patient believing Muslim women- are executed for their steadfastness just like the men! The ‘women’s rights’ organisations do not make any demands for them, nor are politicised demonstrations organised for them, because they are Muslim women on the prophetic methodology and not on the methodology of so-and-so.
In Iraq, the degree of overcrowding in the Rafidite prisons is more than 200%! Such that deaths regularly occur inside the prisons because of overcrowding and epidemics, especially in Iraq’s summer. And what will make you know what Iraq’s summer is?
There is no specified number of Muslim prisoners in Iraq’s prisons, because imprisonment is a development that continuously takes place throughout the week, and this has been the case for many years. Many of these operations are secret and take place outside any official investigations, or so-called ‘enforced disappearance’ operations per the descriptions of disbelieving ‘legal institutions’ that are struck with deafness and blindness when the matter concerns Iraq’s prisoners. The majority of them take on the role of flayer andjustify and legitimise this on the pretext of ‘terrorism.’
In Iraq there are secret underground prisons run by the factions of the ‘Iraqi Islamic Resistance’ that only enjoy this characterisation and framing in the statements of the ‘Iranian Republic’ and its extremely deviant Palestinian arms.
In Iraq, execution inside the prisons of the ‘Rafidite axis’ is like execution in the other prisons of gangs. It only needs a bullet or tightly tied rope- (with the one to be executed already dying 1000 times)[i]- before it is tightened by the thugs of the ‘resistance’ on the necks of those who only accepted submission to their Creator, and have only sought help and assistance in their Creator, whose lives are taken away while their Tawhid[ii] remains in their souls.
The prisoners of Iraq endure execution, disappearance, and suffering without noise or condemnation from the wider Muslim world.
Please, the stranger aspect of this has not yet come to you. For the patience of the heroes of Iraq in captivity is no less than their patience outside it. In some sectors of Iraq, the mujahidin have not eaten anything besides ‘wheat without salt’! Despite this, they have not abandoned their fronts and they have not violated their pact with God, as they endure all this tribulation for the sake of their Lord, and in order to support an Ummah that has forsaken them while they continue to sacrifice for it and lead it to what is good for its religion and this world. How strange, oh Iraq, how strange!
In Iraq, 100,001 true heroisms of faith do not meet the need of the people of hypocrisy and false witnesses, nor do they entice their media, defective lens or blind channels. Oh people of Iraq, who will be capable of what you are capable of? Oh people of Iraq, how much times more have those who forsake forsaken you than they have forsaken sad al-Aqsa? But it has been established andproven that those who betrayed Baghdad of al-Rashid[iii] will not revive the glory of Hattin.[iv] And those who sold Damascus will not purchase Palestine.
Among the strange paradoxes in the Rafidite book is that the Jewish decision to execute the Palestinian prisoners in the Jewish prisons coincides with the escalation in the wave of execution of Muslim prisoners in the Rafidite prisons! It is as though the Jews and Rafidites agree on waging war against the Muslims however much they differ among themselves.
An aspect of God’s forsaking of the Rafidites’ axis is that al-Aqsa has been closed for more than a month- unprecedented since the ‘Lapse’,[v] and only taking place in the era of the ‘True Promise’![vi] In addition, the ratification of the law to execute Palestinian prisoners was only adopted in this accursed time that has brought damnation on its allies, contrary to what they hoped for.
Those who claim to defend the Ummah have abandoned its fighters, even as they continue to sacrifice and endure.
Amid the catastrophe of closing the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque, the obligation on Muslims everywhere who are burning with longing to support the Masra[vii] of their Prophet is to get up and burn the Jewish temples spread throughout America, Europe, Russia, India and elsewhere, and likewise the Jewish temples in Tunisia, Morocco, the Emirates and Syria, and their locations are well-known and their details are publicised. They should also target Jews’ neighbourhoods and gatherings everywhere. May they revive the deed of the ‘two Sydney heroes’ on ‘Hannukah’[viii] and may they revive the Jews’ funerals on ‘Passover’, andthus will the path to Jerusalem be as we have known it from the Book of our Lord and the Sunnah of our Prophet, and not any other ‘authority’.[ix]
Among the delights of the history of Bayt al-Maqdis[x] is that its first liberation was in the time of al-Faruq Omar[xi]: merely being named after him has been a charge that requires kidnapping, killing and burning at the hands of the criminals of the ‘Rafidite resistance’ in the streets of Iraq! Its second liberation was in the time of Salah al-Din who paved the way for it by abolishing the Rafidite Obaydi state[xii] and securing the Islamic State from their treachery. These are historic gems and benefits regarding methodology, which show that fighting the Rafidites is a step on the path to liberating Jerusalem, and the generations of Muslims must realise this before they come to feel regret about it.
The path to Jerusalem requires confronting external enemies and cleansing internal apostasy within the Muslim community.
In our Islamic religion, the link between al-Masjid al-Haram[xiii] and al-Masjid al-Aqsa lies in the creed of Tawhid, for Islam is what granted sanctity to the two Masjids, and thus al-Aqsa is like al-Masjid al-Haram: ‘Surely His allies are the pious ones.’ That is, the monotheist believers who proceed on the Prophetic Methodology and not the methodology of Iran and its accursed axis, for they are our staunchest enemies just like the disbelieving Jews, per the Almighty’s words: ‘You will surely find that the people of strongest enmity to the believers are the Jews and idolaters.’ And if the Rafidites are not among the idolaters, then who are?
An aspect of the unseen inimitability of prophecy regarding Bayt al-Maqdis is that the decisive battle with the Jews will be cleansed from all these Jahili axes and movements, per the evidence: ‘The stone or tree will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of God, here is a Jew behind me, so come and kill him.’ The Rafidites who call on and seek the help of those besides God are absolutely outside the circle of this call, so congratulations oh Sunnis on this prophetic tiding. Cling to it and be keen to be among its men.
As for the mujahidin and their prisoners in Iraq, they are not waiting for anyone to go on a loud demonstration or protest. They only want you not to stand in their way tomorrow, and not to stand in the rank of their enemy when their horses hooves reach Bayt al-Maqdis, just as those before you did when they allied with the Crusaders in Baghdad and Damascus to wage war on them. History does not forgive and the noble angels record.
[i] Because of the prison conditions and prior torture.
[ii] Islamic monotheism.
[iii] Referring to the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid.
[iv] A battle fought between Salah al-Din and the Crusaders in 1187, constituing a victory for the former.
[v] Referring to the 1967 War that resulted in Israel taking over the West Bank and Gaza.
[vi] Referring to the name of Iran’s operations as part of its ongoing war with Israel and the U.S.
[vii] Referring to the fact that the Prophet Muhammad, according to Islamictradition, ascended into heaven from Jerusalem.
[viii] Referring to the Sydney attack in December 2025.
[ix] A slight at the existence of marja’iya (source of religious authority, such as a senior religious cleric) among the Shia.
[x] Another name for Jerusalem.
[xi] Omar bin al-Khattab, the second Rashidun caliph. He conquered Jerusalem.
[xii] Referring to the Fatimid Caliphate, which was ruled by an Ismaili Shia dynasty, with Salah al-Din abolishing its rule in 1171 CE.
[xiii] The mosque in Mecca where the Kaaba is located.
Published originally on April 3, 2026.
