Bismillahir-Rahmanir-Raheem
All Praises belong to Allah, Who Has Made Striving in His Cause an act of worship, and Who Has Created all of creation for the purpose of His Worship, and salutations and blessings be upon His Noble Messenger, Muhammad Bin ‘Abdillah, the best of all creations of Allah, and the Termination of Prophethood.
There is a recent article I have been made aware of in Newsweek Magazine claiming to be a ‘rare interview’ with me. I wish to clarify that I did not grant any interview for Newsweek Magazine to the author at any time.
However I did on two occasions speak to the author off-the-record, for her purported academic research projects she was working on. She had been recommended by a mutual acquaintance who requested that i grant her an audience for her academic research project. My knowledge of her was as an academic researcher, and I was never at any time told by her that she is a journalist. At the beginning of our interaction, I made clear that our conversations are private, off the record and not for attribution, she said that sometimes she may need a public quote from me outside our private off-the-record conversations. I explicitly told her that in such a case she should formally ask for such a quote and if i can oblige her, then i will.
However in this case of her purported ‘rare interview’, I was not asked nor did I give a quote to her. Rather our off the record private conversations were turned into an interview without my consent, and were significantly misquoted and embellished with rumours, to misrepresent me as some sort of spokesman/affiliate/propagandist for the socalled Boko Haram.
I do not represent, speak for, nor am I affiliated to the socalled Boko Haram, whether it is Jamaa’atu Ahlis-Sunnah Ld-Da’wati Wal-Jihad, or the Islamic State’s West African Province, in any capacity whatsoever. I also have never referred to these groups in their present or future states with the word ‘We’ as used in that article, which denotes an affiliation and relationship that I simply do not have with them.
One would frankly expect better standards from an international news outlet such as Newsweek, but in an age of falling journalistic standards where integrity, accuracy, honesty have become secondary to the need to produce ‘scoops’ no matter how dishonestly sourced/produced, or devoid of facts they are, it is sadly no surprise that such a hatchet piece would be considered let alone published by Newsweek.
I have demanded and am expecting a retraction of this purported interview, along with an apology from Newsweek for this incident, which if I do not receive, I will be forced to take the necessary measures to secure.
Thank you all.
On this day, twenty-second of June 2017, third of Shawwal 1438,
Fulan Nasrullah
