According to the theory, which appears to have started in Egypt and spread rapidly across the region, ISIS was created by the United States as part of a plot orchestrated by the former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton to replace the region’s autocratic rulers with more pliant Islamist allies.
The evidence cited to back up this claim sounds unimpeachable: passages from Mrs. Clinton’s new memoir in which she describes how a plan to bolster the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was foiled at the last moment when the Egyptian military seized power on July 5, 2013, and deployed submarines and fighter jets to block an American invasion.
Supporters of the Egyptian military on Facebook allegedly quoted from Mrs. Clinton’s memoir, but pro-Ikhwan groups claim that the passages were entirely fabricated and do not appear anywhere in the text of her book, “Hard Choices.”
The plot was reported as fact by Egyptian, Tunisian, Palestinian, Jordanian and Lebanese news organizations.
هيلاري كلينتون تفجر قنبلة وتعترف
— عون #2030 (@aon780) August 8, 2014
نعم … اتفقنا مع الإخوان على اعلان #داعش pic.twitter.com/qC9IF0muxS
عن هيلاري كلينتون ومصر: عمّون تنشر مادّة مفبركة | http://t.co/Rp59qG4STj pic.twitter.com/4OTM0DGckP
— Lina Ejeilat (@Lina18) August 3, 2014
As the Egyptian blogger who writes as Zeinobia explained, Egypt’s new culture minister, Gaber Asfour, cited a version of the theory in televised remarks in which he said that he had learned from Mrs. Clinton’s book “that the Americans decided to support and create ISIS” to undermine the military-backed government that deposed the elected Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, last summer.
