There’s no doubt that ISIS is incredibly evil. No question. They are committing terrible atrocities. They must be stopped.

However, let me provide a word of caution, in the interests of truthfulness (which, last I checked, is a biblical concept even for Facebook). Not everything you HEAR that they do is correct.

• The photo of three AK-47s being pointed at a little child? It’s from Yemen.
• That photo of eight persons being crucified by ISIS? It’s from the Turkish massacre of Christian Armenians in the early 1900s.
• That girl beheaded by ISIS? Actually, she was decapitated when a Syrian shell struck her home in 2013.
• That photo of a group of women in Mosul, hands raised, being led away by two gun-toting men to become ISIS slaves? Taken during a staged rescue of hostages during SOFEX, a special operations trade-show in Jordan.
• That photo of Mohammad Fazi, one of the Guantanamo detainees released in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, sitting behind five severed heads? Not him. It’s a Dutch national who ran off to fight in Syria. The photo was taken before Bergdahl’s release.

More recently, Christians have been circulating–since early August–an email about ISIS systematically beheading children in the city of Queragosh. The writer says ISIS is 10 minutes from where his team is working. It supposedly comes from someone named Bonnie Lang, who supposedly spoke by phone to Sean Malone of Crisis Relief International.

Actually, Sean Malone heads Crisis RESPONSE International, which DOES work in the areas in question. However, the CRI website says nothing about any of this. Another organization, the National Christian Foundation, quoted the email as coming from “our on-the-ground sources” and said it was keeping it anonymous “for security.” Actually, the anonymity was so they could falsely take credit for the report.

Demonizing the enemy happens in every war. During World War I, propaganda told of Germans throwing babies into the air and catching them on their bayonets. America’s enemies convince citizens of the terrible things American soldiers will supposedly do to them.

ISIS is evil. They are massacring people. But that doesn’t justify spreading lies.