Anti-West Media Backlash Ripples Through ME After Paris Attacks

The recent Paris attacks were largely condemned by media in Muslim and Arabic countries, but some pundits writing in local languanges saw it differently, putting the blame not on Islamic State militancy but on the West and its values.

Turkish commentator Fehim Tastekin, who works for the independent daily Radikal, wrote that the “birth certificate” of IS was prepared by the United States and its allies after the Iraq invasion in 2003. He blames Saudi Arabia, an oil rich Gulf country that is a close ally to the United States and France, for financing Salafist ideology which is the backbone of IS militant theology.