ISIS has released a new Mandarin-language song aimed at recruiting China's Muslims to take up arms, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The slickly produced four-minute song, released Sunday by the Islamic State’s propaganda machine, contains catchy lyrics that also just happen to praise death in name of Islam. With lyrics like "to die fighting on this battlefield is our dream," the song is really more of a war chant (also known as a nasheed).
While it's becoming more and more common for radical jihadist groups to recruit within China, this is a notably rare instance where the propaganda is in Mandarin. Most propaganda tends to target China's primarily Turkic-speaking Uighur minority population in Xinjiang.
Released just two weeks after ISIS executed Chinese hostage Fan Jinghui, the song “is yet another example of the IS seeking to broaden its reach and support base," according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist groups online. President Xi Jinping vowed to crack down on terrorism following Fan's murder, but China has not yet carried out any military action in Syria or Iraq.
A sample of the songs lyrics (as translated by the WSJ's China Real Time team):
We are Mujahid, our shameless enemy panics before us
To die fighting on this battlefield is our dream.
We are Mujahid, our shameless enemy panics before us
To die fighting on this battlefield is our dream.
ISIS is known to recruit worldwide. A recent U.S. intelligence report estimates that nearly 30,000 foreign recruits from over 100 countries have flocked to Syria and Iraq since 2011.
[Image via Activist Post]
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