Online jihad has been quite ambitious and professional on the internet – in the past years. In the last two, three years, it did increase to a great extend, including by crafting and infiltrating various groups within social networks such as facebook and co. One fine example on how Facebook was and is exploited by AQ & co is the group that was hosted by the Facebook member “fi sabeel Allah”, who subsequently uploaded pictures and provides links to various AQ videos taken from the multitude of jihadist online forums, blogs, websites. Most ambitious, fans, followers and sympathizers of “fi sabeel Allah”, who is also active within most jihadist forums, created their own pictures, that they then uploaded to this facebook group. This group is offline since several days now (I wonder why) and the reaction by the group creator, as he identifies himself, Jamshaid Malik, is somewhat pissed off at this and yet – well, it’s the internet, right? – to resurrect a new group on Facebook soon.
Online Jihad is not new. Now, in 2010, Jihadists have increased their experience on both the practical (fighting) front and the theoretical (ideological and dissemination by means of the internet) front – both fronts are based on decades of practice and the need to respond, that mostly started and was sparked by the events of Afghanistan in the 1980s. It is a dynamical process and perhaps wanna-be suicide-bombers such as Umar Faruq are for sure a minority who follow a distorted view of Islam, but this distorted view is wisely and professionally disseminated will continue to influence and radicalized more such individuals. It is global phenomenon, but also a global response that is set by this self-determined avant-garde who claim to speak and fight in the name of Islam. The dynamical process inspired and enabled by the internet does lead to such groups, such as the “fi sabeel allah” on Facebook.
Some example pictures taken from the group:
Nicely done by online sympathizers who have the IT-fluency to create such propaganda and thus become part of the adhered propaganda
Who don’t you know in this picture?
Another battlefield: Iraq. And another ‘Islamic’ group fighting for justice, peace and security: The Islamic State of Iraq.
With the standoff between Hamas and the Jund Ansar Allah in August in Gaza, the dead, killed by the al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, are being praised and cherished on the internet. Also by users within this group, who took and in parts modified pictures of the fallen in such a manner.
Online jihad is up-to-date.
Interactive in terms of consuming and multiplying contends of newly released videos, writings and photographs. In this case, “the American” in Somalia spoke in a audio recording with Arabic subtitles and the pictures was instantly transported through jihadist channels and ended up in outlets such as this one on Facebook.
Screenshot of the group. Now, with this group having been removed, it will for sure re-emergence in one way or another.
And the claimed admin of the group bitching about its take down… “The sniper of AQ” is trying to calm him down… although I don’t think he quite understands the problem.
Online Jihad: Monitoring Jihadist Online Communities 