German Institute on Radicalization
and De-radicalization Studies

CVE Campaign "Open Letter to Islamic State" - One Week After

Our international mothers network ‘Mothers for Life’ wrote and published an open letter to Islamic State on June 3, 2015. Here we give you a first resumé about the impact in the first week.

After the letter written by mothers from seven countries was published via social media we tried to keep up with the storm of reactions. The most important facts regarding the first week after publication:

  • the letter or articles about our letter were shared and recommended about 7,000 times on Facebook alone.
  • the letter was translated into eight languages: Turkish, German, Arabic, French, Italian, Dutch, Beligan, and Spanish
  • we received the first response from the “Islamic State” after 3 1/2 hours after we first published the letter. In the first wave they tried to scorn our letter and in the second they tried to use the publicity around it for their own advantage.
  • mothers from many more countries (e.g. the Netherlands, the United States) have reached out to us to ask for help and to become members of the network

We could not have hoped for such a success in one week and we have not even yet answered all the media requests that came in. We have many more project ideas for the future and are currently working on some exciting follow ups.