Arabic news websites' most-read stories are currently those related to atrocities allegedly committed by the Islamic State (IS). The topics of these stories vary from sexual violence to beheadings, and all sorts of behavior inherent to medieval times. Some stories involve internationally known figures who are quoted saying things about IS; the row over former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s memoir is a good example.

The Clinton-IS story started when several Arab-language websites posted a report claiming that Clinton wrote in her memoir "Hard Choices" that the United States assisted the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) to cause division in the Arab world, and that Washington and its European allies agreed ISIS would be established on July 5, 2013. According to this fabricated story, however, this plan collapsed due to the June 30 Revolution in Egypt that targeted the Muslim Brotherhood and ousted former President Mohammed Morsi.

The story was broadcast on many Arab TV channels, including several major news networks. It was rather obvious that this story was untrue and entirely fabricated, which I was able to quickly verify by purchasing a digital copy of "Hard Choices" and simply searching for anything related to the news that was circulating. Nothing of what was said in the media was in the book; it was merely propaganda that exaggerated the threat IS poses to the region and the world.

For weeks now, many baseless stories have appeared online and have been published in newspapers about the brutality of IS: the forced circumcision of females; the claim that IS had made some modifications to Quranic verses; and the suggestion that IS had threatened to destroy Mecca, the holiest Muslim site. One popular picture that was shared by thousands of social media activists was that of an IS member embracing a 6-year-old girl, claiming that he had married her. Thanks to Google's image search it became clear that the story was not true and that the man and the girl in the picture appeared in an entirely different context. The girl had been taking part in a Quran recitation competition in Raqqa, northeast Syria. The man, the competition's presenter, had held the girl and tried to encourage her when she had made a mistake in reading one of the verses of the Quran.