How Arab Tribes Are Standing Up In Arms Against ISIS

What's the first thing that comes to our minds when we hear the word ISIS? Are the following words what we think of: 'Muslim' or 'Islam'?  Or far worse, what's the first thing that comes to our heads when we see a Muslim woman or man walking through the streets with their traditional scarfs and thobes? Do we fail and think of the words 'oppressed', 'extremist' or 'terrorist'? What's our social level of Islamophobia and what can we do to fight it? Maybe through information, through facts and with the help of empathy, we can break the walls of ignorance that divide us. And by understanding how the Muslim population is the main victim of the militant group Daesh, we can serve as a helping hand, or at least remove our toxic opinions over a religion that constitutes 1.8 billion women, men and children, equivalent to 24% of the global population. 

Most people are not aware that Daesh, most commonly known as ISIS, has killed far more Muslims than Westerners during its existence. In a report released in 2009 by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, it was revealed that of the people killed by al Qaeda between 2004 and 2008, only 12% of the victims were Westerners, meaning that al Qaeda has killed seven times as many Muslims as non-Muslims. The same is true for ISIS. In 2016 alone, ISIS carried out 21 terror attacks, and 18 of those were carried out in predominantly Muslim countries, such as Syria and Saudi Arabia. The fatalities for non-Muslim countries by ISIS in 2016 were 83, in comparison to the 677+ Muslims that have died at the hands of ISIS in only seven months. 

The Sinai are a group of Arab ethnic tribes with an estimated population of 21,250,700 Muslim people who, for years, have been personally affected by ISIS, persecuted, raped, tortured and killed. Despite their lack of international support, their poverty and marginalized environment, they have decided to stand up and fight back.