Abu Bakr-al Baghdadi: Dead Or Alive?

Around 2000 years ago, a man who preached religion against the establishment resurrected within three days of being dead. He was Jesus Christ.

Who knew, centuries later, a perceived anti-Christ would also resurrect himself not once but multiple times, all at the behest of the media. A cat has nine lives, and it appears that the Islamic State (IS) leader, the self-proclaimed Khalifa, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, probably has almost half as many.

Last week, Radio Iran reported the death of the ISIS chief. According to the report, he was injured in a United States of America led air strike close to the Syrian border.

On May 1 though, The Guardian reported that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi remained incapacitated due to suspected spinal damage and was being treated by two doctors who travelled to his hideout from the group’s stronghold of Mosul. The news did not mention anything about his death.

But this was hardly the first time that we have been subjected to contradictory reporting about Baghdadi’s death.

The world despises  (rightly so) the IS chief Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi so much that everyone wants him dead. In their desperation to kill him though, news organisations seem to be getting there even before Yamraj.

Look at this India News clip from November 2014, where the anchor extremely enthusiastically announces the “breaking news” of the death of the IS commander.

But was he dead? Well, clearly not because the very next week NBC News released a new audio clip where he claimed he was healthy – and definitely alive.

Wait, but then how did India News get the images of his dead body?

Rumors of his death were doing the rounds in July 2014 too. Soon though, he was reported to be delivering a sermon at a mosque in Mosul, northern Iraq.

And then in September 2014, Iraqinews.com published a report, clarifying that news of Al Baghdadi being injured or dead somewhere in Syria as reported the previous week in certain Iraqi, Turkish and Kurdish media outlets, were false. The report also pointed out that the image used as proof of Baghdadi’s death was actually the corpse of ISIS fighter Sami Abdullahu.

It is understandable that reporting from war-torn Iraq and civil war struck Syria is difficult, considering the IS only disseminates information through its websites and twitter handles. But to announce a false death based on semi-authentic sources, not once but multiple times, raises serious questions about the media’s credibility. So the next time, you hear about Baghdadi’s death, hold your horses before you pop the champagne.