Today’s show host Karl Stefanovic has been featured in a ISIS propaganda video which encourages followers of the extremist group to immigrate and appeals for new recruits.
According to Fairfax Media, who have viewed the video, the 12-minute long Daesh production released overnight takes Channel Nine footage of Stefanovic from when he was recording a live cross from outside Le Carillion bar, where more than a dozen people were killed in the Islamic State assault on Paris in November.
The involuntary cameo is part of a video, titled “So we will give him a good life”, which has a narrator praising the attacks in San Bernardino and Paris and then cuts to Stefanovic’s live on air reacting to a crowd of people spooked by a series of loud bangs, which at the time were mistaken for gunshots causing a chaotic stampede.
The video also includes scenes of fighters training, and holding weapons and children in their arms, as well as bizarre clips of people painting a peaceful picture of life under Islamic State – a far cry from the actual reality of beheadings and floggings in the streets of Raqqa, a place described by many as a giant prison.
The Nine Network has not yet commented on the video but Stefanovic posted a cheeky tweet on Thursday morning which said:
“Make sure all you isil bastards tune in Monday. We are giving away heaps of cash and good times.”
Still shots of US president Bracck Obama and French President Francois Hollande also feature in the patched together video which is all set to an threatening song that Fairfax Media reports sings about death and sacrifice.
“We are men that love that death just as you love life. We are the soldier that fight in the day and the night,” the man reportedly sings.
“Going forth preparing to roar are the brothers of light with kuffar in sight. They rank so many and weapons are heavy but soldiers of Allah are more than ready.”
Why we should call terrorist extremists ‘Daesh’?
In 2015 former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said he will use the term ‘Daesh’ instead of ‘Isil death cult’ when referring to the Islamic State terrorist organisation.
Australia’s allies in the Middle East reportedly encouraged the move saying that the terrorist group reportedly loathe the moniker Daesh – which is also an acronym, but of the Arabic words that mean the same thing as ISIS: Al Dawla al-Islamyia fil Iraq wa’al Sham.
Pronounced Da’ish – with a long emphasis on the long “e” – Mr Abbott aimed to further neuter the term by mispronouncing it “Dash”.
“Daesh hates being referred to by this term, and what they don’t like has an instinctive appeal to me,”Mr Abbott told the Herald Sun.
“I absolutely refuse to refer to it by the title that it claims for itself [Islamic State], because I think this is a perversion of religion and a travesty of governance.”
Joseph Bahout, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Huffington Post that the word Daesh in Arabic “sounds like something monstrous” and is a way of “stigmatising” the organisiation.
The terror group’s leaders have threatened to “cut out the tongues” of those who refer to them as Daesh or DAIISH, according to international media reports.
In a move that is aimed at legitimising the group and removing the word “Islamic” from their title French president, François Hollande, is also pushing the use of Daesh when referring to the group.
VIDEO: Karl Stefanovic caught in panic on the streets of Paris
