Radical Islamic Groups Exploit Internet for Jihad

The global jihadist movement wants the world to adopt Islam's 7th century values, and it's using 21st century technology to do it. In fact, Radical Islamic Web sites are years ahead of any Western counter-efforts, say Web watchers and terror trackers.
"In terms of the propaganda war, they are way ahead of us — they are 10 years ahead of us," said Stephen Ulph, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, where he is a specialist in Middle East and North African affairs. "[The Internet] seems to me to be the real center of gravity for the jihad movement."

On Wednesday, a video broadcast by Al Jazeera television network showed the deputy leader of Al Qaeda saying the United States is negotiating with the wrong people in Iraq and implying the U.S. needs to talk to his group.

The video — which bore the logo of Al Qaeda's media production house, al-Sahab — was the 15th time this year that Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri has sent out a statement. The video bore the hallmarks of his previous messages — all authenticated by CIA analysts.

Aside from the video itself — the growing technical sophistication of the terrorists was marked by the fact that U.S. intelligence officials learned about the emergence of a possible message by Al-Zawhiri from speculation that spread across "Jihad-type Web sites."

Days before the video surfaced, intelligence officials warned U.S. news outlets not to get too carried away by the announcement of an impending tape because the pattern of promoting upcoming videos via the Internet had been a technique used in the past to maximize media coverage.

Laws exist in the United States and other countries against Web sites that directly incite violence, but the U.S government has had a tough time monitoring and shutting those down. That challenge has been compounded by the fact that these jidahist sites are typically not in English, can be posted and removed quickly and utilize servers scattered across different countries on the globe.

Web sites that seek to inspire, indoctrinate and recruit Muslims for jihad don't necessarily call for violent action. Instead, they seek to persuade potential recruits with mountains of literature, religious text, interpretations and the allure of a worldwide community of brotherhood.

Robert Steele, a former clandestine case officer for the CIA who works in open source intelligence, that is, building intelligence by monitoring and trolling public information, like the Internet, said one-third of the Jihadist Web sites operating today are used to incite violence, one-third raise funds for organizations that fund terrorists, and another third indoctrinate through theology and intellectual discourse.

They are all growing in popularity.

"It's spreading like wildfire. It's phenomenally successful," Steele said.

Stephen Schwartz, author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror, said he is struck by the sophistication of technology and breadth of content on the sites, which are primarily used for indoctrination into the radical Muslim ideology of jihad.

"The jihadist Web sites are pretty extraordinary when you look at them," he said. "The combination of money, youth imagination, fanaticism, the desire for simplicity and the desire to sweep people away — it's really a potent mixture."

Opinions differ about the goals of these sites are, but most agree they include spreading the pursuit of cleansing the Muslim world of tyrants and apostates — those Muslims not loyal to their vision of the faith — through jihad. Other more vociferous sites, particularly those linked to Al Qaeda, advocate some form of action and almost all reflect hostility toward the United States and the West.

The sites are generously funded by sources in Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, countries that are typically very restrictive about Internet activity but have so far been inept at controlling Web sites or fairly lax in their concern about this particular content, say those familiar with these outlets.

"The Saudis shut down a number of these sites for a while," said Schwartz. "I don't think Pakistan has done anything to control the e-jihad. A lot of the e-jihad is being run from Europe, some are run from the United States."

Some terror analysts note the Catch-22 associated with controlling jihadist messages on the Internet — they suggest that Western adherence to civil liberties, like freedom of expression, is preventing law enforcement types from choking off the lifeblood of these Web sites.

Related Topics: Terrorism receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free center for islamic pluralism mailing list

Note: The content of external articles does not necessarily reflect the views of Center for Islamic Pluralism.