The Courier-Mail

ISIS trumps Vat­i­can for recog­ni­tion

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ISIS ter­ror­ists now have a higher brand recog­ni­tion than the Vat­i­can af­ter spend­ing mil­lions on a slick so­cial media and public re­la­tions cam­paign.

The shock­ing find­ing yesterday, re­vealed in global state lead­er­ship rank­ings, has dis­gusted Aus­tralian po­lice and law­mak­ers, who are strug­gling to stop for­eign na­tion­als from join­ing the mur­der­ous regime.

For­mer US deputy as­sis­tant sec­re­tary of state for public diplo­macy Colleen Graffy said yesterday the ter­ror­ist regime was ma­nip­u­lat­ing the global news media.

“These re­sults show that IS now has a higher in­ter­na­tional brand recog­ni­tion than the Vat­i­can, eclips­ing a 2000-year head start by the Pa­pacy,” Pro­fes­sor Graffy said.

“ISIS has man­aged to mag­nify its im­age by ma­nip­u­lat­ing the global news media – start- ing with us­ing their pre­ferred brand­ing: ‘Is­lamic’ and ‘State’ when they are nei­ther.”

Queens­land Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sioner Ross Bar­nett said ISIS was “re­viled” across the world.

“If they have a brand it is in­stantly as­so­ci­ated with mur­der, bar­baric cru­elty, tyran­ni­cal op­pres­sion of civil­ian com­mu­ni­ties and ir­re­versible de­struc­tion of an­tiq­ui­ties,” Mr Bar­nett said.

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