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Jihadists Describe Coronavirus as "Allah's Soldier"
(Wall Street Journal) Steven Stalinsky - Jihadists have been gloating over the health restrictions enacted in the U.S. "They used to mock women wearing the Islamic niqab - now they are doing the same," read a March 17 post on the jihadist al Tawhid Awalan channel on Telegram. Balagh, a monthly magazine published in Idlib, Syria, by clerics with al-Qaeda sympathies, calls the virus "one of Allah's soldiers": the "corona-soldier." On Hamas' al Aqsa TV, Imam Jamil al Mutawa boasted that Allah "sent just one soldier," the virus, "and it has hit all 50 states" in America, driven Israel into lockdown, but left Palestinians mostly unaffected. Syrian jihadist commander Asif Abdul Rahman suggested that Iran could use coronavirus patients as a biological weapon - like the Mongols reportedly did in the 14th century when they catapulted the bodies of plague victims into the city of Kaffa (now Feodosia, Ukraine). Iranian authorities could certainly persuade patients to die as martyrs. The writer is executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).