Retail giant Amazon has ended offering four different issues of the English-language ISIS magazine Dabiq, which the terror group published to recruit Western jihadists.
The magazines were being sold on Amazon sites in the United States, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Gift-wrapping was available.
The magazine is published by Al Hayat Media Center, the media arm of ISIS, and is described by the group as “a periodical magazine focusing on the issues of tawhid (unity), manhaj (truth-seeking), hijrah (migration), jihad (holy war) and jama’ah (community),” MINA reports.
Al Arabiya News notes Al-Hayat is also produces and distributes the graphic videos showing the beheading, burning and torture of several Western journalists and aid workers.
The latest edition, titled “They plot and Allah plots,” featured pro-ISIS propaganda at the expense of First Lady Michelle Obama.
Justifying the exploitation of sex slaves, it read, “maybe Michelle Obama’s price [on the sex slave market] won’t even exceed a third of a dinar, and a third of a dinar is too much for her!”
Michael Ryan, a scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, tells the news outlet Amazon isn’t to blame for helping to disseminate the terrorist propaganda.
“Every ISIS member with a smartphone is potentially a propaganda center able to use Twitter or other apps to put up material almost immediately,” he said.
“The only way one could stop it in real time is to take down the Internet in a country or locale, which is counterproductive in a modern country that depends on the Internet for commerce and public services.”
But Abeer al-Najjar, a media studies academic at the UAE-based American University of Sharjah, disagreed.
“They hold some responsibility in the sense of how to regulate and how to organize,” she told Al Arabiya News.
“Especially when it comes to values that are commonly agreed upon from international organizations.”
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