Photo of drama scene from Jordan circulates as mass rape incident in Syria

Accounts on X published a photo showing a group of girls with a man holding a weapon behind them, claiming that the photo is recent and shows mass rape of women from Syria. The photo was accompanied by the following caption: “Unfortunately, the beginning of the Jihad of Sex in Syria and the rape of women by terrorists who have coup plotters against legitimacy.”

Kashif verified the image via “Google Images” and found that it is old and the claim is misleading. The image is old and from a cinema scene during the “SOFEX” exhibition in Jordan in 2014.

The Madaniah News website published the photo on 7/5/2014 with the title: “Photos… SOFEX presents Islam as a ‘terrorist’…and stirs up widespread controversy among Jordanians.” It explained that the photo is from the SOFEX 2014 military exhibition of weapons and vehicles in Amman and simulates: “a military parade by a counter-terrorism force, where the terrorists appeared as ‘bearded’ men accompanied by ‘veiled and niqab-wearing’ women, who played the role of kidnappers of a group of foreign tourists.”

Arab Media website also published the same photo on 8/5/2014, with the title: “A scene of combating terrorism provokes the ire of Jordan’s Islamists.”

After the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s rule on 8/12/2024 and Ahmed al-Sharaa taking over the leadership of the new Syrian administration, great concerns were raised about imposing Islamic rule in Syria due to al-Sharaa’s history of joining al-Qaeda led by Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, and then establishing Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria in 2013, and appearing in an interview on Al Jazeera that year calling for Syria to be run according to Islamic law. Meanwhile, Al-Sharaa recently conducted an interview on CNN, during which he spoke about his vision for a new, moderate Syria “that accommodates everyone under one umbrella.”

On 16/12/2024, the official spokesperson for the new political administration in Syria, Obeida Arnaout, said that, “The nature of women, by their biological and psychological nature, is not compatible with all positions in the state, such as the Ministry of Defense, for example.” He added: “It is still too early to talk about their work in the field of justice, and it will be left to the specialists and constitutional lawyers who are working to reconsider the form of the new state and the determinants that will be set for women’s work as an important and honored element, and the necessity that the tasks assigned to them be compatible with their biological nature.”