Moroccan Science Influencers Face Death Threats on Facebook from Extremist Group

Marouane Lamharzi Alaoui, Najib El Mokhtari, Othmane Safsafi, scientists who share several common points and who work for the influence of science and Morocco are the target of this public Facebook page, reports Le360. This page, in doing so, gives arguments to Islamophobes by presenting Islam as a religion of hatred.

According to the same media, the administrator of this page cites words of the prophet in a post where the photos of these three influencers are published, but also in the background, the photos of the advertiser, Noureddine Ayouch and the actor Rafik Boubker. The author of the post wonders: "How can one insult the Prophet, his religion and the Lord, and see freedom of expression in it?" In the same post, a Quranic verse, of which a tendentious reading is made, is quoted to legitimize the murder of these "heretics".

Widely relayed on the web, this post, calling for violence worthy of Daesh, was denounced by Internet users who invited the authorities to quickly take up this case with disastrous consequences and to act with the utmost rigor.

As for the victims, Marouane Lamharzi Alaoui, Najib El Mokhtari, Othmane Safsafi, they all wrote a long text to denounce these calls "for physical violence and murder". Fearing for their lives, they decided to file a complaint against the "administrators of this page and any person who has explicitly threatened to kill us".

In addition, they also denounced a video previously posted by this same page in which their photos were published, as well as that of the MP Omar Balafrej with, next to them, the images "of a suicide bomber who committed an attack in Iraq in 2003".