US News

Lebanese teens launch anti-ISIS flag-burning campaign

A trio of fearless Lebanese teens have ignited an Internet anti-terror sensation — urging people around the world to burn ISIS flags and then upload the images.

It’s the Ice Bucket Challenge of politics, and since tweeting their own flag-burning on Saturday, the anonymous teens have seen their radical challenge go viral.

“I NOMINATE THE WHOLE WORLD TO THE #BurnISISFlagChallenge,” reads the brave boys’ original post, which was accompanied by video of their burning a paper image of the terror group’s flag.

The boys’ symbolic flag-burning happened in the middle of a busy public square in Beirut, according to Lebanese news accounts, and was a response to video of ISIS beheading a Lebanese army sergeant and kidnapping some 20 Lebanese soldiers.

Since then, hundreds of posters from Lebanon and across the Mideast, Europe and the US have weighed in across social media with videos and photos of their own, along with commentary ranging from high praise to outrage.

“Incredible courage from Lebanese Muslims in the face of ISIS barbarity,” posted an editor from Queens.

“It’s got Allah & Muhammad written on it,” tweeted @SadiiaaTaqwa. “I’m against them, but burn a flag with Allah written, I wouldn’t suggest that,” she added.

The black ISIS flag bears the Muslim tenet “There is no god but God and Muhammed is his prophet,” but has become an emblem of merciless violence, including the videotaped beheadings of two American journalists.

“They burn the Israeli flag in Lebanon all the time,” blogged Shalom Bear of the JewishPress.com. “So what’s the big deal if they switch it up for a change?”

”I call on everyone to show their contempt for ISIS,” self-avowed atheist Rayan Zehn of Norfolk, Virginia, said in his own video, in which he burned a printout of the flag. “Go ahead,” he added. “Burn the f–k out of a symbol of both ISIS and Islam.”

https://twitter.com/IBTimesUK/status/507538593284243458/

The teens’ act of defiance was quickly met by a call for prosecution and the “sternest punishment” by the Lebanese justice minister, although at least one member of the country’s parliament has offered to serve as the boys’ lawyer should the case go to court.

Desecrating religious symbols and inciting sectarian strife are both punishable under Lebanese law.

First reported in the US by MotherJones.com, the #BurnISISFlagChallenge was inspired by this summer’s viral ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, a fundraising effort for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.