Islamic State Weekly Newsletter: ‘Media Warfare is Key Component to Our Campaign of Global Jihad’

The Islamic State (ISIS) is far more agile and intelligent than most Western policy-makers, political leaders and certainly the mainstream media. In fact, the Washington Post eulogized ISIS founder and caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar,” scoring points for the group’s jihad agenda. If anyone thinks that ISIS is now dormant, think again. Not only is the group proliferating in Africa, but it’s well aware of what media campaigning in the West entails. “ISIS Editorial: Media Warfare is Key Component to Our Campaign of Global Jihad,” MEMRI, October 27, 2026:

On October 15, 2026, the Islamic State (ISIS) weekly newsletter, Al-Naba’ issue 569, devoted its lead editorial to promoting the organization’s media apparatus, saying it is as powerful as armed combat and underlining its important role in the group’s global jihad.

The editorial, titled “Caliphate Media: Platform and Battlefield”, argues that ideological and information warfare are inseparable from military operations and portrays content production as a religious obligation for supporters.

Media Portrayed As Battlefield

Opening the article, the author contends that the struggle between believers and their enemies extends beyond physical combat, writing that the conflict “is not confined to battlefields and houses of war alone,” but also encompasses ideological confrontation and media warfare.

The editorial explicitly states that “the instigator of the war of battlefields is the media war” presenting communication efforts as the force that shapes and sustains military conflict.

It claims that governments that oppose ISIS have long recognized the ideological dimensions of the conflict and have mobilized extensive resources to influence Muslim audiences.

According to the article, ISIS’s enemies have deployed television channels, radio stations, newspapers, websites, and online platforms “to distort the truth and its people” and to spread hostile narratives about ISIS….

The ISIS author even cites (and quotes) former U.S. President George W. Bush “as evidence for the claim that the confrontation extends beyond military operations,” and Bush is quoted as saying:

We are fighting on different fronts – military, economic, political, and intellectual.” The editorial uses the remark to argue that adversaries themselves acknowledge the ideological nature of the struggle.

One of the biggest downfalls of Western culture is its emphasis on image. The prevailing obsession with image is so completely warped that Trump even warmly endorsed one of the worst jihadists of our time, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda leader who collaborated with ISIS to commit heinous human rights atrocities and then changed into a suit. Al-Sharaa skillfully managed the Western media, playing it like a fiddle. See al-Sharaa’s background HERE.

Al-Sharaa operated side by side with ISIS until he double crossed its leader, al-Baghdadi. Yet he simply changed his name to Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, or restored his original name, told the West what it wanted to hear, and the West believed him. But al-Sharaa nevertheless remains a grave enemy to the West and especially Israel.

The Western media has served ISIS well by making the group out to be an aberration within Islam, isolated among mainstream Islamic leaders, and on the decline. For instance, Turkey’s alliance with ISIS remains largely unknown to Westerners. The American Foreign Policy Council published an article exposing Turkey’s quiet alliance with ISIS:

On the surface, Erdogan’s government appears to be in lockstep with the West regarding the threat posed by the world’s most notorious terror group. Indeed, Turkish authorities regularly publicize the apprehension of high-profile members of the organization like Mustafa Abdulwahab Mahmud, a top ISIS explosives expert, who was arrestedon May 25th as part of an ongoing campaign by the country’s intelligence and security services.

Dig a bit deeper, however, and it’s clear that, beyond its own borders, Turkey has not always cracked down nearly as hard on ISIS as it would like you to believe.

Just a few days before Mahmoud’s arrest, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that it had discovered four senior ISIS members operating as part of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA). The revelations are problematic, given Turkey’s prominent place in NATO, and its role in regional policing. In truth, however, this is hardly the first time that a close relationship between ISIS and Ankara has been revealed.

In late 2020, the Kurdish-based Rojava Information Center (RIC) disclosed the identities of 40 former ISIS members who were being sheltered and posing as part of the SNA in Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad. More damning still, these militants were found to have been paid by Turkey, to be using Turkish-issued ID cards, and to be receiving commands directly from the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT)…

This information is critical to understanding the real story outside Western media headlines. The stealth jihad is a foreign concept to the mainstream Western media, which is overwhelmingly leftist and continues to frivolously support the feel-good DEI agenda — from its support of open borders and reckless unvetted immigration and its denial of 1,400 years of jihad to attempting the scientific absurdity of not being able to define a man and a woman. Note also that leftists never call out the treatment of gays in Muslim countries.

Now ISIS is proudly demonstrating that it fully understands the power of media, declaring explicitly that “the instigator of the war of battlefields is the media war,” as it continues on to present “communication efforts as the force that shapes and sustains military conflict.” It is right. Just look at the job that the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot Hamas accomplished by means of the leftist media after October 7. Then there is the KGB-trained Palestinian Liberation Organization, which managed to dupe the Western world into believing that the Palestinian jihadi “resistance” from the River to the Sea is all about social justice. Anyone whose head isn’t buried deeply in the sand only need look to history to realize that the Palestinian “resistance” is really a continued jihad in the Middle East against the only infidel country in the region, the tiny Jewish state. Islamic jihadis rampaged through the Middle East and claimed the lands of the indigenous people, including those that were once Christian, such as Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey (the heartland of the Byzantine Empire, with Constantinople as a foremost Christian capital) and others .

Furthermore, Islamic texts are littered with verses of pure hatred and denigration of Jews. Such texts are rooted in Muhammad being rejected by Jewish tribes when he made his hijrah to Medina. Yet propagandist Muslims sell the lie that the Qur’an enjoins respect for “the people of the book.” The truth about the Quran is that the newest parts of it abrogated the older verses. Words of tolerance came before Muhammad became hostile to the “people of the book” after his flight to Medina. The law of abrogation is firmly established in Islam. Simply put, the law of abrogation (naskh) simply states that newer verses of the Qur’an abrogate older ones if there is any disagreement.

Muhammad was a warlord. According to Islamic tradition, he explicitly laid down detailed rules of Islamic engagement in war. Those rules enabled Islam to conquer and hold territory throughout its 1400 year history. In the modern world, it has advanced to elevated levels of sophistication with its use of stealth jihad tactics, which include heavy use of propaganda and manipulation of the media.