ji·had·ica

Reactions To Israel’s Gaza Campaign

As readers might guess, the discussions on the Jihadi forums are almost entirely devoted to Gaza (there’s some on Somalia–more on that later this week).  I’ve culled the most representative posts from the Faloja forum: The forum administrators warn that anyone who is unduly critical of Hamas will be kicked off during this time of crisis.  They’ve also asked that any security-sensitive information not be posted.  This hasn’t stopped members from debating whether Hamas should be excommunicated or from posting early news of Gilad Shalit‘s injury during Israeli bombing. One member asked for information about American and Israeli embassies abroad, prompting a torrent of responses (addresses, ambassadors, etc). Another member, `Abd Allah al-Qurashi, has posted a list of suggestions for what Hamas should do next.  One suggestion is that Hamas release Salafi militants it arrested [presumably members of Jaysh al-Islam] and rearm them to fight against the Israelis.  Another is

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Will McCants December 29, 2008

Q&A With Abu Qatada

Abu Qatada, often called “al-Qaeda’s ambassador to Europe” by the press, has been interviewed by his fellow inmate, `Adil `Abd al-Majid.  A transcript of the lengthy, wide-ranging interview has been posted on the Shumukh forum.  Second only to Maqdisi as an ideologue among Jihadis, Abu Qatada has been in and out of detention in the U.K. since 9/11 (he’s in again).  This interview gives us a snapshot of where he stands intellectually after seven years.  Particularly of note are his remarks on the Muslim Brotherhood,  Alan Johnston (the BBC reporter held hostage in Gaza), and dialogue with the British government.  Here’s a summary of some of the interesting bits (direct translations are in quotes): Opinion on Saudi Shaykhs – Bin Baz: No one alive today is his equal, but he made the mistake of obeying the Saudi regime, which brought great harm to the umma.  Safar al-Hawali: He’s good, but

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Will McCants December 23, 2008

Facebook Fail

Nusra2 announced yesterday that its Facebook raid was a failure.  Over 120 people signed up but the group was shut down after only 2 days.  Somehow, the statement says, the mainstream media got wind of what was happening and Facebook took action.  Nevertheless, two new groups have formed, one in English and the other in Arabic. Document (Arabic): 12-21-08-shamikh-response-to-nusra2-group-being-shut-down

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Will McCants December 22, 2008

Hussam Tammam On Sayyid Imam

Several days ago, Marc Lynch linked to a very a thoughtful article by Hussam Tammam on the significance of the revisions by the Islamic Group and by Sayyid Imam.  Today, Rob at the Shack has cited the article as one more piece of incontrovertible evidence for his Imam-doesn’t-matter argument.  I won’t rehash all of that (if you’re interested, you can start here), but as you’ll see, Tammam’s article is a lot more complicated than Rob’s assessment suggests. Tammam’s basic argument is that organizations like the Islamic Group and al-Jihad will not be able to stop violence today because the nature of Islamist authority in Egypt has changed.  In the past people had to join groups and institutions to engage in Islamist activism.  But in the last ten years, the role of organizations and institutions has faded because of the rapprochement between the Egyptian regime and Islamist groups and because the

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Will McCants December 22, 2008

Forum Activity Over Three Years

Aaron has posted some hard-won data about activity on the top-ten Jihadi forums that he’s collected over the last three years.  He hasn’t used the name of the forums, so it’s difficult for me to draw my own conclusions, but Aaron’s interpretation of the data fits what I’ve seen: It’s probably too early to say anything conclusive, but my feeling is that the jihadis are getting more resilient, and are recovering better and more quickly than they did in ’07. The recovery he’s talking about is not the recreation of lost forums–which turns out to be harder than most people imagined–but rather the migration from the top-tier forums to the second-tier forums, which I observed some months ago.

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Will McCants December 21, 2008

Email Invasion Of U.S. and U.K. Universities

‘Tis the season for cyber-invasions.  Not to be outdone by the Faloja forum’s Nusra2 Facebook invasion, a senior member of the Shumukh forum, Hafid al-Husayn, has proposed sending 100,000 emails to university professors, students, and employees containing “pictures of slain Americans and films of the mujahids’ triumphs in the Islamic State of Iraq and Afghanistan.”   In a follow-up post, Hafid explains that the purpose of the 100 Thousand Campaign is to shame the West.  He then restates his tactics, this time in English: We will invade ur universities , we will send the news of mujaheddin and the films, movie , pics of ur killed soldiers in ISI Islamic State of Iraq and Afghan. Now our goal and target is to send the news to 100 thousand lecturers student &,tech of ur universities and Institutes ,and of course they will FWD the email to many friends and beloved people , we are

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Will McCants December 19, 2008

New Jihadi Mags Analyze Mumbai, Somali Pirates

Issue 31 of Sada al-Jihad is out, as well as issue 4 of Qadaya Jihadiyya.  In Sada, Ta Ha al-Miqdad argues that the Mumbai attacks demonstrated that Jihadis have a “strategic awareness” because: They hit the commercial center of India at a time of great global economic instability. All of the attacks were from Pakistan, which demonstrated solidarity with the Muslims in India. They sent a message to the chief Crusader allies by taking citizens of those countries hostage and executing them. The attacks widened the scope of the confrontation in Afghanistan to include countries allied with the Crusaders against Muslims (i.e. India). Most important, the attacks were a message to Obama, who wants to pull out of Iraq and concentrate on Af/Pak.  Obama knows he needs peace between Pakistan and India for his strategy to work and the Jihadis have shown they can destroy this peace. In Qadaya Jihadiyya,

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Will McCants December 18, 2008

Mixed Feelings About Shoe-Thrower

One might suppose that the mood is celebratory on the Arab Jihadi forums after Zaidi chucked his shoes at President Bush.  However, a lot of posters are unhappy with reports that Zaidi is a communist.  So much for solidarity. Document (Arabic): 12-16-08-faloja-shoe-thrower-is-dismissed-as-communist Document (Arabic): 12-16-08-faloja-another-post-dismissing-shoe-thrower-as-communist

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Will McCants December 17, 2008

Invading Facebook: Theory And Practice

That’s the title of a post last week by Faloja member `Umar `Abd al-Hakim in Syria.  `Umar believes that Jihadis have successfully penetrated Youtube and it’s now time to more directly market their materials to the masses.  To this end, he gives an overview of Facebook and why it will be useful for Jihadi propagandists.  To get the ball rolling, `Umar and others announced a campaign yesterday, “Aid Invasion2” (Ghazwat al-Nusra2).  Below is a summary of `Umar’s introductory post, followed by the announcement of the campaign.  Note that the Facebook invaders believe the propaganda front is outside of the Jihadi forums, a point I have made repeatedly.  Moreover, this is not an attempt to replicate the social networks that exist on the forums; the members of the campaign want to exploit existing networks of people who are hostile to them and presumably they will adopt new identities once they have

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Will McCants December 17, 2008

Maqdisi Response To Abu Rumman Article

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi has released a statement on his website, Tawhed.ws, in which he responds to the questions of one of his followers about the Abu Rumman article I referenced yesterday.  Maqdisi denies being a revisionist but he is also clear that he is not an extremist and that he is trying to regain control of the dragon he unleased in his earlier writings.   In his statement, Maqdisi finally names his main nemesis, the brother-in-law of Zarqawi’s wife.  I haven’t seen Abu Qudama’s book yet but I’ll try to track it down. Here’s a summary: Question 1: Abu Rumman says you are shunning Zarqawi’s supporters.  Is it possible to consider this part of the “revisions,” as he says? Those of us who signed the statement are not dissociating ourselves from the brothers.  We are talking about a small group of ignorant people who haven’t studied at all, were not

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Will McCants December 15, 2008
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