• Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State terrorist group, died during a US military operation in northwestern Syria over the weekend.
  • The Washington Post referred to him in a headline for his obituary as “an austere religious leader,” sparking criticism that the newspaper made light of the extreme brutality for which he was known.
  • People started posting parody tweets under the #WaPoDeathNotices hashtag, such as “Hannibal Lecter, well-known forensic psychiatrist and food connoisseur dead at 81.”
  • The Post’s vice president of communications said that the headline “should never have read that way” and that the organization “changed it quickly.”
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People are parodying The Washington Post after the newspaper referred to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State terrorist group, as an “austere religious scholar” in a headline about his death.

Al-Baghdadi died after detonating an explosive vest during a US military ground raid on Saturday, President Donald Trump announced Sunday.

The Post changed its descriptor of al-Baghdadi in its headline multiple times Sunday.

  1. The original headline called him the “Islamic State’s terrorist-in chief.”
  2. Then it called him an “austere religious scholar at the helm of Islamic State.”
  3. It was finally changed to “extremist leader.”

The second reference to al-Baghdadi as an "austere religious scholar" drew the most criticism.

People said it made light of the extreme brutality for which al-Baghdadi was known, including personally promoting terrorist attacks around the world and the systematic rape of women captured by ISIS.

The headline change also inspired people to write parody headlines, under the hashtag #WaPoDeathNotices, describing the deaths of other notorious figures like the Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the "Harry Potter" villain Voldemort.

Here are some of them.

https://twitter.com/thor_benson/status/1188516043515420675?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/Doranimated/status/1188628846612008960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Kristine Coratti Kelly, The Washington Post's vice president of communications, tweeted on Sunday that the headline "should never have read that way" and that editors "changed it quickly."