Another casualty of the Syrian Civil War has been honest and accurate reporting. Much of what is relayed from the civil war torn nation is overt propaganda and evidently biased depending on which side the reporter or news agency is supporting.

Recently, a picture has been making the rounds on the interwebs showing a woman being stoned to death by angry, Muslim men for the ostensible reason of having a Facebook account.

When one searches “Syrian girl stoned to death for using Facebook account” you get 294,000 results. iCNN, The Daily Mail, Breitbart, Tundra Tabloids, Examiner, India Today, Global Times,Israel Hayom, Daily Bashkar, FrontPageRag and numerous other news sites and blogs reported the story.

One immediately notices something wrong with the picture, it looks to be a still from a movie and indeed it is: The Stoning of Soraya M.

The story first originated ironically in Iran’s, Fars News Agency, which is pro-Bashar Al-Assad and cites the Arabic website Al-Rai Al-Youm as its source. It is ironic because the still that was used to claim that Syrian rebels were stoning a woman for having a Facebook account was originally about a supposed “true-story” recounting of the stoning of “Soraya M.” in an Iranian village in the 80s.

Iran’s government castigated the movie as false and Orientalist but apparently years later their news agency has no quibbles in pushing their own Orientalist style fear-mongering that eventually played into essentialized characterizations of Islam and Muslims.

Surprisingly The Blaze, not usually known for its accurate reporting about Muslims and Islam actually published a decent write up on the story, noting its origins and the way the unconfirmed reports spread like wild-fire across the internet. (h/t: Shuaib)

Baru-baru ini beredar foto di internet yang menggambarkan seorang perempuan yang dilempari batu hingga mati oleh sekelompok orang dengan wajah beringas gara-gara memiliki akun facebook. Ketika dilakukan pencarian tentang kebenaran berita ini melalui Google, ditemukan 294.000 hasil pencarian dengan pembahasan yang sama. Mulai kantor berita iCNN, The Daily Mail, Breitbart, Tundra Tabloids, Examiner, India Today, Global Times, Israel Hayom, Daily Bashkar, FrontPageRag dan banyak situs berita lainnya beserta blog yang melaporkan isu yang sama.

Dilansir dari Islamophobia.com (19/02), ada seseorang yang mengenali sesuatu yang salah dengan gambar tersebut. Ini mirip dengan hasil capture dari sebuah film berjudul The Stoning of Soraya M.

Cerita asli tentang perempuan dalam foto tersebut pertama kali muncul di Iran oleh agency bernama Fars News Agency, yang kabarnya agency ini sangat pro dengan pemerintah Bashar Al-Assad.Begitu juga dengan website arabAl-Rai Al-Youm yang bertindak sebagai sumber utama.