‘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 coming.
In a later post, Hafid lists his priorities for the beginning of the campaign:
First, I want a list of the names of the American universities. Second, I will post the emails of the professors here, and the administrators (of the forum), you, and the good people will select the subjects that will be sent. We must write a draft in English addressed to the professors in the style that we know our master, Muhammad (PBUH), our renewing shaykh Usama, and our amir al-Baghdadi would use to address the West.”
Jihadis generally have a reputation for being more savvy communicators than the U.S. and its allies. A campaign like this will tarnish that reputation because its intended effect–the demoralization of the emails’ recipients–will have the opposite impact during the holiday season.
Document (Arabic): 12-18-08-shamikh-campaign-to-email-university-professors