A YouTube video with more than 7 million views condemns suicide bombings and urges people to “bomb hatred with love.”
The 3-minute film intersperses people uniting to oppose the actions of a would-be suicide bomber with footage of terrorist incidents in the Middle East.
Produced by Zain, a Kuwaiti telecommunications company, the video condemns terrorism and violence and urges tolerance and peace. It has earned more than 86,000 likes and thousands of comments, such as:
- “I hope this message touches the heart of all religion. God is truly great! Love and peace conquer all.”
- “Alhamdulillah, there is finally a good video with a good message by Muslims for Muslims. I hope to see our true Islam come back, as it is being trampled by all these fake scholars and terrorists. Thank you for this video!”
- “This is what Islam is truly about, unity, love and peace. ❤️ Very Powerful.”
The video has also come under criticism, according to a National Public Radio report—by “conflating attacks by extremist groups ISIS and Al Qaeda with Syria's civil war. That’s because one of the victims is portrayed as Syria’s Omran Daqneesh, who was 5 when a photo of him, sitting bloodied and covered in dust in the back of an ambulance, sparked widespread outrage and sympathy last August…” and that the video is “distorting the truth about Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.”
But it also quotes Tahaab Rais, an advertising executive from the United Arab Emirates, who said Zain had made “a brave statement” by “taking on an issue that’s affecting everyone’s lives in this region (and around the world). Respect for taking on this topic.”
