Islamic State fighters defaced anything they deem to be religious idolatry as they barnstormed their way across Iraq and Syria, forging the caliphate that’s now crumbling bit by bit. Iraqi soldiers have found murals of the Last Supper with the faces of Jesus and the apostles scratched off, beheaded statues and more as they liberate Christian areas.
ISIS also tries to destroy anything deemed to be un-Islamic, including one stuffed bear that bore the brunt of their message to not celebrate Valentine’s Day in occupied west Mosul.
So when the terror group occupied Mosul and stumbled upon a school with a colorful cast of popular cartoon characters painted on its outer wall, they evidently had to take action. The campus in the now-liberated section of the city was left with blacked-out faces of Pooh and Tigger, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry, and other characters. Part of Mickey’s torso was also chipped away.
The reason? ISIS said cartoon characters — or at least their faces — imposed western influence on children.
Ironically, the head of Egypt’s State Information Service, Salah Abdel Sadek, last year blamed Tom and Jerry for stoking the rise of Islamic extremism.
Abdel-Sadek told a Cairo University conference that seeing the cat and mouse rivalry “portrays the violence in a funny manner and sends the message that, yes, I can hit him… and I can blow him up with explosives. It becomes set in [the viewer’s] mind that this is natural.”
(Photo by Noe Falk Nielsen/NurPhoto/Sipa via AP Images)
(Photo by Noe Falk Nielsen/NurPhoto/Sipa via AP Images)
(Photo by Noe Falk Nielsen/NurPhoto/Sipa via AP Images)
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