This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for biographies. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted.Find sources: "Ibrahim Qashoush" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
.mw-parser-output .hidden-begin{box-sizing:border-box;width:100%;padding:5px;border:none;font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .hidden-title{font-weight:bold;line-height:1.6;text-align:left}.mw-parser-output .hidden-content{text-align:left}You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (June 2021) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the German article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 8,947 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Ibrahim_Qaschusch]]; see its history for attribution.
You should also add the template ((Translated|de|Ibrahim_Qaschusch)) to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.
(Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Ibrahim Qashoush (Arabic: إبراهيم قاشوش, transliterated as Ibrāhīm Qāšūš; born September 3, 1977, in Hama, Syria; died July 3 or July 4, 2011, in the same place) was the victim of a murder that took place during the Syrian Revolution. Posthumously, the international media ascribed him the role of a leading author and singer of protest songs in his home city. He became a symbolic figure of the civil war as a civilian presumably murdered as revenge for his musical performances. Later media reports, however, call this account into question.[1]
Depiction as a murdered protest singer
Protesters sing Yalla Erhal Ya Bashar! in Hama's Assi Square on July 2, 2011
There are hardly any confirmed facts about Qashoush's life. Even in Hama, his name was largely unknown throughout his life.[1] American journalist Anthony Shadid, who interviewed Hama residents about Qashoush in July 2011, reported the existence of numerous rumors in the New York Times.[2] In various, contradictory media reports, Qashoush was described as a firefighter,[3] a security guard,[1] a construction worker,[4] and a popular singer.[2]
Qashoush was allegedly kidnapped on July 3, 2011, and was found dead in the Orontes River the following day.[5] His throat had been cut and his vocal cords had been removed. A few days after his death, pictures began to circulate along the message that Qashoush was the alleged author and singer of the popular protest song Yalla Erhal Ya Bashar! (Arabic يلا إرحل يا بشار; translated as "Come on, Bashar, leave!"), which is directed towards President Bashar al-Assad and the ruling Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party.[6][7] Since June, the song had been sung at mass demonstrations in the center of Hama, and quickly spread as a revolutionary hymn for the entire Syrian protest movement.[2] The protest on July 1 was, at that point, the largest anti-Assad demonstration in the country.[8]
Reactions
After news of his murder spread and due to reports from other demonstrators, Qashoush began to be celebrated as the "nightingale of the revolution," a martyr, and a symbolic figure of the revolution both within Syria and internationally.[2][9] All over the world, writers guilds, among other organizations, demonstrated against the murder of the protest singer by making public statements.[10][11] The case became so prominent that, in a rare, exclusive interview in December 2011, American television journalistBarbara Walters addressed Qashoush directly with President Assad. Assad responded that he had never heard of Qashoush.[12] Even the annual report of the U.S. Department of State on the state of human rights in Syria, published in the spring of 2012, mentioned Qashoush as a singer who was tortured and murdered by a police officer as revenge for his protest songs.[13] As such, Qashoush also began to be discussed in academic literature.[14]
Syrian authorities contradicted the account of Qashoush as a protest singer murdered by members of an intelligence agency, which began to spread in activist circles, and stated that he had nothing to do with the song, but rather had been working as an informant and that his murder by an unknown entity was being used to instigate further violence.[15] In 2012, the blog The Truth About Syria referred to statements given by an oppositionist from Hama, who had confessed in prison and spoke on camera about Qashoush, among other things.[16]
Later clarification by Abdel Rahman Farhood
In a magazine article released in the United Kingdom in 2016, exiled Syrian opposition activist Abdel Rahman Farhood confessed his identity as the real author and singer of the protest song attributed to Qashoush.[1] According to him, in July 2011, he himself learned from the media that the singer of Yalla Erhal Ya Bashar! was found murdered. As a result, it was inadvisable for him to contradict this account, which had apparently been accepted by revolutionaries and government loyalists alike. He never knew Qashoush and, like everyone else, did not know who Qashoush was or who killed him.[1] As early as July 2011, the New York Times portrayed Farhood as the song's writer and at least occasional singer.[2] In 2012, the blog The Truth About Syria also identified Farhood as the author and singer of Yalla Erhal Ya Bashar![16]
Musical appreciation
In February 2012, Malek Jandali, a pianist of Syrian origin, released a musical work based on the melody of Yalla Erhal Ya Bashar! and named it "Freedom (Qashoush Symphony)".[17][18]
