UN report of female genital mutilation orders by ISIS in Mosul called false by multiple sources

On the 27th of July, the UN claimed that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known simply as Islamic State, has ordered up to 4 million women in Mosul to undergo horrific "female circumcision" or genital mutilation. Tribal leaders are reporting that these stories are false, and multiple Iraqi sources are calling it false.

A thinkprogress story calling this report false cited multiple sources including Jenan Moussa of Al Anan TV

“My contacts in Mosul have NOT heard that ‘Islamic State’ ordered FGM for all females in their city,” Jenan Moussa, a reporter with Al Anan TV tweeted. Other journalists weighed in. “Iraqi contacts say Mosul story is fake,” stated freelance journalist and blogger Shaista Aziz, adding that an Iraqi contact said: “ISIS are responsible for many horrors, this story is fake and plays to western audience emotions.”

The BBC is reporting that the whole story may have been a disinformation campaign that snookered the UN citing in particular that the Fatwa was signed by by "The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" when the group in question now calls itself simply "Islamic State" and would be very unlikely to use a discarded prior name to sign anything.

Not surprisingly, right-wing bloggers like Alex Jones are already piling onto the aparently false FGM reports to trash talk Code Pink, feminist groups that oppose further US intervention in Iraq, and even the Democrats who as we know are just as pro-war as the GOP.

A comment beneath a Russia Today story went even farther, comparing this claim to the similar lies the US told claiming that Saddam threw Kuwaiti babies out of incubators.

That incubator story was eventually traced to the lobbyist firm of Hill and Knowlton, who also put out counterfeit Earth First! literature during the slightly earlier Redwoon Summer. Although cut from whole cloth of nothing but lies, that "incubators" report played a big role in starting the 1991 Iraq War I, and in the UN's involvement in that war. Given the UN's long history of supporting invasion and occupation of Iraq, there is good reason to distrust any report from them on human rights or anything else in Iraq. Jacqueline Badcock, the UN's "humanitarian coordinator" in Iraq went public with the story and there was even a claimed fatwa with the ISIS logo on it. Of course, anyone in any group that is at war with ISIS (and there are lots of them) could have easily forged this claimed fatwa.

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