ISIS are now trying to use Justin Bieber to recruit young people

They used a hashtag


In another characteristically unpleasant move, ISIS is using Justin Bieber to target young people. A tweet – which has now been removed – links to a violent video of a man with a British accent talking about killing “Kuffars”, or non-believers. The tweet used the hashtag #JustinBieber, which means the tweet would appear in the feed of anyone searching for Justin Bieber.

Bieber has nearly 76million followers on Twitter, and #JustinBieber is used around 750 times an hour according to HashTag.org. There is no age filter for this kind of content on Twitter.

ISIS went for maximum appeal, also including the hashtags #Hollywood, #Delhi and #Bollywood.

It’s consistent with the ISIS brand assault. Comedian Shazia Mirza warned that, to some teenagers, ISIS are “the One Direction of Islam”. Speaking on her show, the The Kardashian’s Made Me Do It, she said: “If some hot hairy Muslim Brad Pitt had written to me at 15 and sent me pictures asking me to join him it might have seemed like an exciting way out. But it would have been nothing to do with religion.”