ji·had·ica

The generational divide

Tore Hamming October 9, 2016

This is the third Q&A of the interview series with Ahmed Al Hamdan (@a7taker), a Jihadi-Salafi analyst and author of “Methodological Difference Between ISIS and Al Qaida“. Al Hamdan was a former friend of Turki bin Ali, and a student of Shaykh Abu Muhammad Al Maqdisi under whom he studied and was given Ijazah, becoming one of his official students. Also, Shaykh Abu Qatada al Filistini wrote an introduction for his book when it was published in the Arabic language. The interview series contains contains five themes in total and will all be published on Jihadica.com. You can find the first Q&A here and the second here.

Tore Hamming:

One of the differences between IS and AQ is the generational divide; the veteran Jihadists in the camp of AQ and the younger generation being attracted by IS. Do you think this is still the case and, as IS is loosing momentum, what do you think will happen to the younger generation of Sunni Jihadists – will they abandon Jihad, seek refuge in AQ or try and establish a new group?

Ahmed Al Hamdan:

The answer to this question will be complex and overlapping. Yes, the majority of the youth are inclined towards the ISIS, and that is because the majority of the young people have a strong impulse and are drawn towards violence, and towards rushing for maximum revenge and killing and torture without carefully considering the benefits and harms which will come as a result of their actions. And these actions of theirs in many cases are not in accordance with the Shariah, rather they stem from that which satisfies them. Hence Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri warned Shaykh al Zarqawi about that and he said in his letter to him that O” ne of the most dangerous matters for the leaders is the enthusiasm of their supporters, especially the youth who are excited and burning to support the religion of Allah. So it is important that this enthusiasm is moulded with wisdom” .(1)

And Shaykh Usamah bin Ladin illustrated this point in a letter to Shaykh Abu Baseer al Wuhayshi saying “The enthusiasm of the youth is a necessary element to win the battles. However it should never be what determines the course of the war by making the leadership to run behind the enthusiasm of the youth. It is as the poet Al Mutanabi has said: “Thoughtfulness comes before the courage of the brave -This (thoughtfulness) comes first and that second”. (2)

So according to Al Qaeda, the matters are not measured by enthusiasm but rather by looking at what they result into.

It is not only myself who has noticed this matter that the youth mostly incline towards the one who speaks the harshest and the hardest. In fact even Shaykh al Maqdisi has said that “Many of the youth are lacking in education and upbringing due to them not sitting sufficiently in the gatherings of the scholars and due to their weakness in the knowledge of the manners of the Prophet, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, and his noble companions and our righteous predecessors. Therefore there has spread among them sicknesses and diseases and bad manners, and they incline towards extremism which is mostly caused by ignorance and due to their assumption that the best path is the harshest path.” (3)

Previously the enthusiastic youth had no choice other than Al Qaeda. And their policy which we have just stated previously, did not allow them to unleash themselves as they wish, and so they were forced to go along with that policy and suppress this excessive desire. However now there is another outlet for the youth to do whatever sadistic things they want and to unleash themselves without thinking about any outcomes or consequences or without looking into the benefits or harm resulting from these actions. And hence many of the enthusiastic youth found their long desired objectives getting fulfilled in this group ISIS.

Secondly, many of the youth are new to the Jihadi experience and this is different from that of the elders who have lived through the previous Jihadi experiences and have seen the reasons for its failure and have seen that those same reasons are being repeated by the Islamic State. For example, antagonizing everyone and opening battle fronts with everyone and preferring to fight the Islamic groups more than fighting the enemies that are agreed upon by all, and extremism and breaking away from the Ummah, and other such things which have made them stay away from supporting this state so that it does not lead to them falling into those same mistakes again. The Prophet, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, has said “The believer is not stung from the same hole twice”(4), and this is contrary to this new generation who did not know anything about Jihad except from an audio speech or a video clip, and who did not live through the real experience in the field from which one can learn how to distinguish between the right and the wrong.

Another matter which causes ISIS to attract more youth than Al Qaeda, is the hugeness of their media campaign which is directed specifically towards the youth and their continuous communication with these youth, and we mean here the non-Arabic speakers. For example ISIS is keen to translate its publications and spread the statements made by the people of a specific country (such as England) and for directing their message to the youth in their country urging them to come (to them). Also the main official magazine of this group is published in English and they have opened a channel, Al Amaq News, which is also in the English language.

This group ISIS is very eager to make sure it attracts the youth. Perhaps they intensified their propaganda in English because it is a universal language understood by many nationalities. So they hit many birds with one stone. In contrast, there is a very huge shortage from the side of Al Qaeda in focusing on the call towards the youth to join them, and it has not translated its recent releases, and there would be no continuous and direct contact with them in the English language. And its magazines which are released in the English language are not regular, meaning two months may pass without an issue getting released. And this is what causes many of the youth to interact with those who are addressing them and who try to make events revolve around these youth.

On top of that which we have previously stated, the delay by Al Qaeda in responding (to the allegations of ISIS against it), by them hoping that the situation could be rectified through reconciliation, has led many of the youth into joining the ranks of the Islamic State. Then these people gradually went further to the point of being a partisan to their group at an early stage. Then they began to call their friends or those who have just been released from prisons to support or join the Islamic State. I myself, for example, when I was released from prison and I saw that most of my friends are supporting the ISIS, then I would mostly end up supporting them, and I would give priority to their statements for judging the events and matters in which there were disagreements in Shaam (Syria).

And another thing is that if ISIS loses momentum, then the existence of its old propaganda materials can still be effective for recruitment in the long term. For example, Shaykh Anwar al Awlaki was killed in the year 2012 and his words still recruit and inspire the people despite the Shaykh having departed 4 years ago. So the only solution for Al Qaeda is to use the existing cadres they have to match the efforts of ISIS in their media propaganda. Otherwise ISIS will be the only choice for one who wants to join the Jihad.

But there is another matter which may help Al Qaeda without them having to engage in daily media wars with ISIS. That is that a lot of Arabs and non-Arabs who joined ISIS after watching the videos released by ISIS which portrayed itself as the perfect ideal, when they entered it, they were shocked by the security controls. These security controls emerged at a later time after the Islamic state gained control over Raqqa and Sharqiyya, and after al Adnani announced that whoever wanted to split the ranks would have their heads split. So that resulted in a fear of leaving ISIS and the dissidents then participating in recording personal experiences in which they state the mistakes and the negative aspects of ISIS and then this becoming a strong obstacle in their recruitment and propaganda. So ISIS has taken preemptive steps amongst which is that it has restricted the role of many of the well-known people who pledged allegiance to it, such as Bin’ali, Dr. Sa’d al Hunaiti and Mahdi Zaydaan and others who had a heavy presence in the media, due to their fear that they may defect later on. And so the appearance of these personalities in the media almost became non-existent under ISIS. Their second step would be to bring forward the one who expresses doubt. And the existence of this doubt would lead to a preemptive attempt to find out which person may possibly defect so that they may deal with him early. And due to this doubt some actions of the members would sometimes be misinterpreted, and thus there would be abuse and exaggerations by wrongly interpreting some actions of the members in a way in which they were not intended. For example, one of the soldiers asked for a biography of Al Adnani and Baghdadi as they were the leaders of his state and he wanted to know more about them, and so he was accused of being a spy. This mania in their dealings has made many of the soldiers annoyed, especially since their loyalty comes under doubt. For this reason many have started wanting to leave because they find themselves living under a dictatorial regime. This is with regards to the youth. As for the young women, the matter which has made some of them to strive to leave is that they have been forcefully married. The young women who migrate to the land of the Khilafa without a guardian, she will not be left like this, rather she will be made to marry, and even if she is already married previously then she will be separated from her husband and made to marry again. Likewise the woman who migrates with her husband, if he gets killed, then she will be made to marry with or without her consent. And this has happened on many occasions with the women. And now I will leave the issue to the previous Amir of Jabhat al Nusrah in Albukamal to tell us some of what he has witnessed from the stories of those who have defected:

One of them sent to me an audio recording of the leader of the Muhajireen in Jabhat Fath al Sham ‘Abu Hajar At-Tunisi’ in which he said these words:

“I will narrate to you some of the stories of some of the women and men who have fled to me. Some of them are funny and some will make one cry, there are various types, and the stories are many. I will narrate one such story to you.

Two British women came to me, one of them is now in the custody of Jabhat. They had fled. They narrated to me that there was a large house there where they put the widowed women and those women who had fled from their parents after they had convinced them that their parents were Kuffar who are living in western countries and in the apostate states. So these women came and they put them in this house and they said to them “It is compulsory for you to marry. Not a single one would remain without being married, whether a widow or one who has come newly”.

And they said: “The house was very narrow. Some apartments were above others and there was difficulty in living, eating, drinking and using bathrooms because for every hundred women there were only two bathrooms”.

They said that there was an Iraqi woman with them who spoke English well, that is she was an Iraqi woman who was like Al Anbari in criminality and rudeness, and she would behave badly towards the women. She would bring men who would mostly be Iraqi leaders and she would choose the most beautiful of them and her face would be uncovered forcibly in front of them. And if he wanted to marry her she would be married to him. Marriage was mostly forced; otherwise they would have to sit in the house in difficulty until the woman would think to herself and say “I will get married… It is okay.” (5)

And these two women who fled did so about a year and a half ago when the situation was a little easier. They made an agreement with a Taxi driver and gave him money and he got them out. He moved them from place to place under the pretence that they were his wives. They arrived at a place and then I went and received them and brought them to my house. With me were my wife and her mother and sisters. It was extremely cold and they were shivering. They asked me about someone they knew who was married to a British sister whom they knew previously. And they also knew him. He used to live in Britain. I put them in my house with my wife, gave them food and drink and then took them to that brother.

They sat with the brother for some days and then they made Takfeer on him. And after they left, the brother told me “they made Takfeer on you also”. Of course, they were saying that ISIS is oppressive and criminal, and we thought that they had repented. However it became clear that they were Takfeeris and the brother said to me “they say you are a Kaafir.”..!

So I said “why did they say I am a Kaafir? What did I do?” 

And he said to me “they said that you support the Zionists”

I said “How do I support the Zionists? Do I have a weapons factory?”

He said to me “No, it is because you bought “Pepsi” and one of them said “he is an apostate, him and his wife because they made us drink Pepsi” and the other said “only he is an apostate because he is the one who brought us Pepsi”.

As for the youth whom I took them out, one of them was imprisoned by Ahrar. And when the leader in Ahrar “Muhammad Najeeb” asked him,”What is your opinion about ISIS?”, he said “apostates”. So he started laughing and asked “how are they apostates?”

I had gone to take him out by virtue of having known him in Tunisia and I knew that he was a very simple and naive person. So I brought him out. And I once asked him “Do you consider Baghdadi as a Kaafir?”

He said “yes I consider him to be a Kaafir”.

So I said “why do you consider him to be a Kaafir?”

He said “He is from the 5 heads of the Tawaghit who call the people to worship them.”

So you would feel…, glory be to Allah…, that they are strange people. You would find him making Takfeer on all the people and having lost faith in all the people. And the first ones who they make Takfeer upon are ISIS…! And they believe that the most evil people on the face of the earth, even more evil than Israel are ISIS…!

Naturally more than 90% of them believe all the factions to be apostates and Kaafirs even though they act towards them with goodness and even though the Free Syrian Army who helped them to get out were good towards them.

Once I helped one of them to get out alongwith his family and he used to cry. And after he left the areas under ISIS, he remained for a period of three months in Azaz, meaning he remained 5 months in total before leaving. And one of the brothers told me that when he reached Turkey he said “There is a lot of good in Abu Hajr and many things, but he is still an apostate because he remains with Jabhat”. Glory be to God..! Strange minds…! I say that if the door is opened for them, not one of them would remain (in ISIS). There are now a very large number of defectors with Faylaq and with FSA, and only Allah knows how many. Hundreds, possibly thousands have left them, and if the door is opened not one would remain with them.

There even is a very large number of men and women who have spoken to me and who want to get out, and as it is known, whoever wants to leave and is caught, then the judgment upon him according to them is either prison or death, as they consider it as incitement against the Islamic state.

Their prisons are full and they have a large number of prisoners, the majority of whom are Muhajireen. There was a man there called Abu Harith at Tunisi who knew me and his friends left before him, and I sent him my number. But then when he wanted to leave, they caught him. And I later received the news that they killed him. One time two youth from Tunisia left them and one of them stayed with one of the youth for five days, and he stayed those five days without praying because his commitment in religion was only recent. And they were in Idlib smoking and would have a cup of coffee in their hands and be playing billiards as if they were hanging around in the capital of Tunisia. Then they went to Turkey and I heard that one of them went to Europe and he has a girlfriend who was an ISIS supporter, who also fled from there, and he went to be with her in Sweden.

Of course those of them who are not polluted with the perverted Takfeeri mentality are very few. One of them was a businessman from Tunisia who was not too old. He was 24 or 25 years of age. And he did not become polluted much by Takfeeri mentality. But on the other hand the majority of those who leave believe that ISIS are apostates, and some of them even make Takfeer on the one who does not make Takfeer on ISIS.

They have a very strange hopelessness and they no longer believe that there is Jihad.

There are a number of them who have gone to Sudan and a number of them went to Europe. And there are those who surrendered themselves and there is a very large number of them in Turkey. Naturally they make Takfeer on all the people and they say that as all the people are Kuffar, then it is better to remain with the Kuffar in Turkey than with the Kuffar in Syria or to go to another country.”

We come to know from the testimony of the brother that many of them abandoned Jihad for various reasons, whether that was due to increasing extremism which made all the groups disbelievers in his opinion (ie. disbelievers fighting against disbelievers), ‘so why should I fight?!’ Or due to his reaction when he saw the opposite of his idealised dreams which this defector had hoped for, that this would be the desired Islamic state under which we would lead a life of ease and comfort. But what he saw disappointed him and so his convictions got shattered and he lost hope and got frustrated and wanted to abandon everything and return back to where he was originally. And this has happened before, even with one of the greatest leaders of Al Qaeda, and that is Shaykh Athiyatullah al Libbi, if Allah had not kept him firm with the brothers who were with him. He said after he took part in the Algerian experience how the extremists in Algeria contributed to the corruption of the Jihad until it deteriorated and became weak. He said “I personally went through a difficult experience in Algeria and came through surviving by my skin, and I thought that there will be no Jihad in the foreseeable future in my life, and I was almost in despair and I was afflicted by sadness, worry, gloom and despondency and similar things which are difficult to describe…!! It was only that Allah had protected me by giving me some firmness and benefited me through the company of the brothers, and by being consoled with the people of previous experience and goodness.” (6).

And both of these are harmful to the Islamic State – if they returned back to their countries and gave their testimonies about what they went through, and if they spoke about the huge difference between the media and the reality. And this is especially so if the one who returns back or the one who defects is someone who is obeyed and has followers. This will cause many to re-examine themselves and change their path.

ISIS fears that Al Qaeda will be an alternative, and so it took another preemptive step, that is they considered it a priority to speak about it and attack it and to try to distort it. If you see the magazine “Dabiq” which belongs to ISIS, you would feel that Al Qaeda is targeted more than the Americans, the Rafidhah (Shi’a) and the Nusayris by the media propaganda of this group. So when you become filled with this propaganda whether it is based on truth or falsehood, then even if you split from ISIS, you will not join Al Qaeda. And this is the practical application of the theory

of the propaganda of lies as spoken about by Shaykh Abu Qatada in his audio series on globalization. He says, ‘A certain party will tell lies to their supporters and will continue lying to them until they reach the point where these lies take the place of certainty, and even if the truth is revealed to them after having reached this stage, then it will have no effect upon them as they have lived with the lie until they have reached the point of no return. This principle can be summed up in the saying of the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Gobbels “Lie and continue to lie until the people believe you”.

So we have 3 options:

  • Join Al Qaeda and resume the stage of Jihad
  • Abandon Jihad altogether and all that is related to it, and return to the stage that was prior to migration and prior to practicing the religion (And this is if the governments accept this, because sometimes you may want to make such a step but because you participated in Jihad, the governments will mostly throw you in prison when you return back to your country. And rather than live a new life your association with the Jihadi prisoners in prison will compel you to continue on the same path rather than give up.)
  • The formation of a new entity, independent of Al Qaeda which will attract all those who have lost faith in Al Qaeda and ISIS alike.

As for which will be the most chosen option, it is difficult to judge that for now.

Footnotes:

[1] Letter to Shaykh Abu Musab al Zarqawi, p. 14.

[2] Complete letters and directives of Shaykh Usama bin Ladin, p. 771.

[3] Answering the questioner on matters of new issues (1/16).

[4] “The believer is not stung from the same hole twice” Saheeh Muslim: 2998, Saheeh al Bukhari :6133.

[5] A long time ago I asked Shaykh al Maqdisi about women travelling to the Khilafa state after one of them asked me about this. And I wrote an article about that which is translated into English, and he sent this audio recording in which he says: “This is one of the calamities which we have advised them about, and they disregarded our advice. They have even taken their passports from them, and the widows from amongst them are married off by the will of the judge whenever their husbands are killed. They cram the women along with their children in crowded and neglected places like stables of animals, in large groups. One of them comes and proposes marriage to them and they accept it just to get out of this overcrowded and neglected place. The situation is very miserable. Many of them are regretful and wish that they were able to flee. Despite all that, there are still those who are naïve and leave their countries and go there. We have heard several misfortunes.

I have sought permission from Shaykh al Maqdisi before spreading this recording as well as the answer, and he agreed to it, and modified and added to the text. Both these recordings are exclusive and have not been published before.

[6] Answers to the Hisbah forum, p. 14.

 

Tore Hamming:

I will add in with a brief comment to the topic of the generational divide.

Joining the ‘hottest’ Jihadi outlet of the time has always been the choice of the youth. We know from the Sinjar records that in the time of al-Qaida in Iraq, the average age of people joining was between 24 and 25. From internal Islamic State documents, processed in the CTC’s “The Caliphate’s Global Workforce” we see an almost similar average age of people joining the Islamic State, with recruits being between 26 and 27.

The Islamic State has thus become the standard choice of the youth wanting to join a Jihadi project. It has provided the youth an outlet where they can channel their frustrations violently and especially their media machine has been of essential importance to attract people. The hope of al-Qaida is that although the Islamic State propaganda machine has been efficient in attracting people, then the experience of having witnessed the state from the inside will cause them to leave. However, the big question is then where will they go? Will they join al-Qaida, leave Jihad altogether or will a new movement see the light as the Islamic State is losing momentum?

At the moment, it is still too early to come up with an answer to the question. Al-Qaida will, of course, do its best to attract people who become disillusioned with the Islamic State project – both al-Zawahiri and al-Maqdisi have kept the door open for people to join al-Qaida. The al-Qaida leadership has been criticised for its ‘long and boring’ lectures, which were in contrast to the more aggressive rhetoric of Islamic State leaders. However, al-Qaida is currently experiencing renewed popularity. Al-Zawahiri is on a charm offensive in his recent video statements and a younger generation of al-Qaida sympathetic ideologues like Abdallah al-Muhaysini is helping to increase the cool-factor of the movement in the eyes of the younger generation.

A whole generation is currently growing up with violence as a normality. Some of them will eventually continue of the road of Jihad, but that they necessarily choose either the Islamic State or al-Qaida is not a certainty.

The ‘Who’s Who’ of the Most Important Jihadi Accounts on Twitter?

Nico Prucha August 20, 2013

In this part of our series for Jihadica on the Jihadi Twitter phenomenon, Ali Fisher and Nico Prucha take a closer look at 66 Twitter accounts recommended by a Jihadi online forum user.

To be clear, we are analyzing these accounts that are defined in this posting as most important for jihadi sympathizers, but it does not necessarily mean that the individual Twitter accounts are an integral part of this worldview.

A posting on the Shumukh al-Islam forum recently provided a “Twitter Guide” (dalil Twitter). This ‘guide’ outlined reasons for using Twitter as an important arena of the electronic ribat; identified the different types of accounts which users could follow; and highlighted 66 users which Ahmad ‘Abdallah termed “The most important jihadi and support sites for jihad and the mujahideen on Twitter”.

We mentioned this guide in our first post kicking off the series on Jihadica. In this post we intend to clarify the meaning of Ahmad ‘Abdallah’s Twitter guide, published at end of February 2013 on Shumukh al-Islam. We will then analyse the data on the twitter accounts which he claimed to be the most important within the overall jihadi context. An overview of this data is also available in our infographic, 66 Important Jihadis on Twitter (click here or the image for the full size):

In both this post and the infographic we have used ‘Jihadi Accounts on Twitter’ as shorthand for those named in the unwieldy ‘the most important jihadi and support sites for jihad and the mujahideen on Twitter’. It is not the intention of this post to discuss whether, or not, the 66 users should be considered jihadis, but to identify the accounts recommended in the guide to using Twitter in the jihadist context, recommend in the forum thread.

Twitter as the “electronic ribat”

Twitter, for Ahmad ‘Abdallah, has an important role as an electronic ribat. Following a classical rhetoric and it’s comprising meaning, Ahmad ‘Abdallah terms “Twitter one of the arenas of the electronic ribat, and not less important than Facebook. Rather, it will be of much greater importance as accounts are rarely deleted and its easier to get signed up”, without providing a phone number as ‘Abdallah writes. The advantage is that you can follow anyone without having to be accepted as a friend as on Facebook, but “you will see all of their postings just as on Facebook.”

A note on the term ribat in contemporary jihadist mindset

To translate and conceptualise the Arabic term ribat can be very contentious. The term is frequently referred to in both jihadist videos and in print literature in the context of religiously permissible warfare; in a modern meaning it could loosely be translated as “front”.

Ribat is prominent due to its reference in the 60th verse of the eight chapter of the Qur’an, the “Surat Al-anfal” (“the Spoils of War”). It is often used to legitimise acts of war and among others found in bomb making handbooks or as part of purported theological justification in relation to suicide operations. Extremist Islamists consider the clause as a divine command stipulating military preparation to wage jihad as part of a broader understanding of “religious service” on the “path of God.”

Ribat as it appears in the Qur’an is referenced in the context of “steeds of war” (ribat al-khayl) that must be kept ready at all times for war and hence remain “tied”, mostly in the Islamic world’s border regions or contested areas. In order to “strike terror into [the hearts of] the enemies of Allah” (Ahmed Ali), or “to frighten off [these] enemies of God” (see below), these “steeds of war” are to be unleashed for military purposes and mounted (murabit – also a sense of being garrisoned) by the mujahidin.

The relevant part reads, according to the translation by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem:

“Prepare against them whatever forces you [believers] can muster, including warhorses, to frighten off [these] enemies of God and of yours, and warn others unknown to you but known to God. Whatever you give in God’s cause will be repaid to you in full, and you ill not be wronged.” (8:60).

Ribat has two main aspects in contemporary jihadist thinking. First, the complete 60th verse of the Qur’an is often stated in introductions to various ideological and military handbooks or videos. While some videos issue ribat in connection with various weapons and the alleged divine command to “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies.”

In the past years, the ribat has migrated and expanded into the virtual “front”, as the murabit who is partaking in the media work has been equated with the actual mujahid fighting at the frontlines.

Types of account important for jihad and the mujahideen on Twitter

As the Twitter ‘guide’ states;

“Today I have summarized for you all of the renowned accounts in support of jihad and the mujahideen that convey their news or are in their favour; some are official accounts [by jihadi groups or brigades], some of which are accounts by scholars, ideologues, and supporters. We ask you for your support, even if just by following them.” In general, Ahmad ‘Abdallah lists five different types:

–        “Accounts by Media and News Foundations” referring to all Twitter accounts maintained by the official jihadi media outlets such as Fursan al-Balagh li-l i’lam (@fursanalbalaagh) or the Ansar al-Mujahideen Forum (@as_ansar).

–        “Accounts by Scholars and Writers” meaning stars such as the London-based Hani al-Siba’i (@hanisibu) or Muhammad al-Zawahiri (@M7mmd_Alzwahiri) or the notorious Abu Sa’d al-‘Amili (@al3aamili), to list a few.

–        “Accounts by members of jihadist forums and brothers and sisters supporting the mujahideen.” This is a good example of ‘hybrid’ users, active inside the jihadi forums and social media. These accounts operate independent of the forums and remain active even when the forums are down – this means that there is no gap and no disruption of jihadi content being disseminated when the forums should be down or out.

–        “Accounts supporting the mujahideen in Syria (al-Sham al-‘izz wa-l-jihad)”. This includes media activists in support of prisoners (@alassra2012) and campaigns by the Ansar al-Sham (@7_m_l_t) a charity regularly requesting money and support (financial, logistical, personnel) in general.

–        “Various accounts”, this section includes activists such as the “unofficial account of Minbar al-Tawhed wa-l-Jihad” (@MinbarTawhed); Israeli Affairs (@IsraeliAffairs); or the high profile account Mujhtahid, “the divulging secrets of the Al Salul” an insulting reference to the ruling Saudi family (@mujtahidd).

The posting is concluded with the signature “Abu ‘Abdallah al-Baghdadi” and his own twitter account (@Ahmed_Abidullah).

“The most important jihadi and support sites for jihad and the mujahideen on Twitter”

We took the profile data for the 66 accounts listed by Ahmad ‘Abdallah to discover who these important users are individually and what we could find out about them as a group. One of the first elements in the data users tend to look at is the number of followers an account has. While not a measure of influence, it does give an indication that users have heard of the account and that they may be interested in seeing more of their content.

Of the important jihadi, identified by Ahmad ‘Abdallah, @mujtahidd – has over a million followers, but this an exception, next most followed are @IsraeliAffairs – around 180,000 followers – and @1400year – around 30,000 followers.

Who are these users?

 

Mujtahid is an Islamic term of jurisprudence, a “legist formulating independent decisions in legal or theological matters, based on the interpretation and application of the four usul”, according to Hans Wehr. It can also simply mean “industrious, diligent.”

His bio on Twitter merely consists of two Arabic names, Harith and Hummam, and his email (mujtahidmail@gmail.com). The two names also serve as a code relating to the saying of prophet Muhammad who stated these two names as of the most dear ones to God and to him (besides ‘Abdallah and ‘Abd al-Rahman). Hummam means lion and Harith cultivator. As location he simply entered: The world.

Some Twitter members claim that @mujtahidd is a “known whistleblower inside the #Saudi government”.

 

@IsraeliAffairs – has about 180,000 followers and is the next most followed account,

in his bio, he writes:

“I am Muslim, my citizenship is Arab, I work on behalf of my country which is every span of hand on earth; raising on it the Adhan [the call to prayer]!  [I am] diplomat, translator, researcher in Israeli affairs…”

@1400year – has about 85,000 followers, the third most followed account.

The Arabic name of this account is gharib fi wadanihi – “the stranger in his own country”; the sentiment of gharib is a reference to a mental passageway as the ‘true’ believer considers himself somewhat as a foreign object in this world, associating oneself to the early Muslims who had been perceived as such strangers in their historical context by their social environment. Stranger or estranged is used here in the context of Palestine and the Israeli occupation.

When the data was captured for this post his bio stated:

“The man in the picture is Rachid Nekkaz, a French millionaire of Algerian origin, who opposes France’s ban of the niqab. He said to the Muslimat of France to wear the niqab and I will pay the fine, I am honored by placing his picture [on my account].”

His updated bio, however, as shown in the screen grab above, states:

“The demise of Israel may be preceded by the demise of [Arab] regimes that made a living on the expense of their own people, laughing at them, destroying the societies (…).”

@1400year also has a YouTube account with 1,830 subscribers and 437,243 views. The links across platforms allows users to more effectively create their zeitgeist. This is similar to the way jihadist groups such as Jabhat-al-Nusra are using Twitter to disseminate links to video content shot on the battlefield in Syria and posted for mass consumption on YouTube, as we outlined in an article for the CTC Sentinel recently.

Of the remaining accounts, 32 of the 66 accounts listed have between 5,000 and 100,000 followers (click to enlarge):

The mean number of followers is 28,220 but this is heavily influenced by the three accounts with the greatest number of followers. The median number of followers is much lower 5377.

What language do they use?

The majority (56%) use Twitter in Arabic with 41% using English and 3% using French. The language of an account was determined from that listed in the twitter profile data.

Where are the accounts located?

Few users write meaningful locations in the ‘location’ field on their Twitter profile, and fewer still enable geotagging of Twitter content. However, a surprisingly high number of people tend to set the clock in their timezone, to either the correct timezone – or to a timezone in which they would like to appear to be.

Casablanca was the most common location account holders used to signify their time zone. It does not mean they are in these specific cities but it does provide an indication of the area of the world with which they associate.

Note on why using time zones can be useful:

In short, humans are creatures of habit, they like the clock to show the time – either where they are or with the location with which they mentally associate. For example, following the 2009 Presidential election in Iran, there was a brief campaign for users to show support for the protesters by changing their location to Tehran, perhaps only to confuse Iranian authorities. This strategy had more than a few problems, as Evgeny Morozov pointed out at the time. One of the more notable issues, which is relevant in this context, is the failure of the less savvy Twitter users to change the time zone as well as the location. Another problem with this strategy was the tendency of slacktivists  to use different tags, such as #helpiranelection, to those used by protesters or ‘digital insiders’ (#GR88, #Neda, #Sohrab), discussed in detail here. (The activities of slacktivists are discussed by Evgeny Morozov here) As a result, interaction on Twitter was predominantly characterised by a series of local conversations rather than a one global debate, an issue discussed in greater detail here.

When did the important jihadi accounts join Twitter?

Although one jihadi account has been active since 2009, many of the important jihadi accounts were created during 2012. This data echoes the shift away from discussion on forums and toward social media, lamented by Abu Sa‘d al-‘Amili in his recent essay on the state of global online jihad (discussed here).

The data also shows little tendency for accounts that have been active for a long time to have more followers than those created more recently.

On what day and month did the most important Jihadi accounts for Ahmad ‘Abdallah create twitter accounts? This data indicates Friday, though Thursday and Sunday are not far behind. Equally, accounts were most frequently created in June and December.

Do these accounts all speak to the same followers?

If each of the 66 ‘important jihadi’ accounts were followed by a different group of Twitter users this would mean collectively they were reaching 1.8 million users. However, @mujtahidd alone is followed by over 1.1 million followers, and the real number following the remaining important jihadi accounts is much lower than 700,000.  This is because some users follow more than one ‘important jihadi’ account. Using network analysis, we found that the network following one or more of the important jihadi accounts (excluding @mujtahidd) was a little over 370,000 users and 850,000 follower/following relationships.

As one may expect from an online social environment, many users follow one or two accounts, while a very few follow many of the ‘important jihadi’ accounts. The graph below demonstrates a close approximation of a ‘power law’ curve (this discussion hints at why power law / logarithmically normal distribution might be a useful way to approximate user ranking).

Of those users who follow on of the 66 important jihadi accounts (minus @mujtahidd), 34% follow more than one important jihadi account. However, of the users which follow more than one important jihadi account, 45% only follow two accounts. These can be thought of as casual followers.

At the other end of the scale there are 109 users who follow fifty or more of the important jihadi listed and 504 users that follow 40 or more. These are the more engaged followers.

Engaged followers of ‘important jihadi’ accounts

Knowing that a user is particularly engaged in following the same accounts as were deemed important in the Twitter guide, does not necessarily indicate any political affiliation – not least because of the number of CT scholars actively following these accounts (and perhaps some of those using Quito / Hawaii as a time zone).

It is however, instructive to consider the aggregated traits of the group as a whole, for example, of the 504 users who follow forty or more important jihadi accounts, what language do they use?

Unsurprisingly given the dominant languages used by important jihadi accounts, Arabic, English and French are the most frequently used languages. In addition, there are a small number of users who use Twitter in other languages, Indonesian, Spanish, Dutch and German.

From the aggregated profile data, a similar question can be asked about where in the world these engaged users appear to be.

Using the location users have designated to set time on their twitter account, the cultural importance of appearing (at least) in the Arabian Peninsula. Similar to the data on the 66 ‘important jihadi’ the engaged followers tend to have most frequently created accounts in 2012, equally, apart from a small number of exceptions, these users each have a small number of followers.

What does this tell us?

The ‘important jihadi’ accounts, as one may expect, tend to tweet in Arabic. They are followed by a network of around 300,000 people (if @mujtahidd is excluded) most of whom are casual observers.

There are, however, somewhere between 500 and 1000 more engaged followers. These users tend to be Arabic speaking, have created accounts in the last year to 18 months, have relatively few followers and appear to have a greater tendency to identify with the Arab peninsular than the 66 ‘important jihadi’ accounts.

In a follow-up post we’ll look at the network of the 66 ‘important jihadi’ accounts to see if there are groups within the 66 which tend to follow each other. This may reveal a relatively dense network indicating a high degree of mutual awareness within the network. On the other hand, it may reveal a sparse network, which could indicate a low awareness of each other, a decision not to follow other users on twitter – reflecting a use of twitter as a ‘broadcast’ mechanism, or that while the Twitter guide indicated the account as important within the jihadi context, the user actually has other interests, affiliations or tendency to establish follower relationships with users outside what Ahmad ‘Abdallah thought of as the jihadi context.

Decade of Fear

Will McCants September 11, 2011

As is the case for many others, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has made me reflect on their impact over the past decade. To this end, Michelle Shephard‘s Decade of Fear has been indispensable. A very personal account of her journalistic efforts to chronicle the war on terrorism over the past decade, Michelle weaves the weft of her narrative over the warp of New York just after 9/11; Somalia after the rise of the Islamic Courts Union and, later, the emergence of al-Shabab; Pakistan after the rebound of the Taliban and al-Qaeda; and Yemen at the formation of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the retreat of President Saleh.

Michelle’s account puts a human face on the knotty legal, ethical, and political problems the United States and its allies have grappled with as they tried to stop al-Qaeda and its supporters: torture for information, overthrowing stable governments who might align with terrorist groups, rendition, entrapment, collateral damage, and indefinite detention. There are also the less “kinetic” but  no-less-knotty problems like countering radicalization online in multi-cultural societies that value free speech.

What struck me most about Michelle’s account was her juxtaposition of violence and inanity. Hassan Aweys, the head of a group allied with al-Shabab in Somalia, covets Michelle’s boots. Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan’s ISI and sponsor of some of the United States’ worst enemies in the region, does not know who Tony Soprano is but, upon being told, empathizes with his bifurcated psyche. The white-polo-and-khaki-wearing Abu Jandal, UBL’s chief bodygaurd, is gracious to Western journalists while explaining that Bin Laden didn’t target the civilians in September. “He simply hit targets, and civilians happened to be around.” Kitch and karaoke permeate Guantanamo, along with euphemisms to describe poor detainee treatment.

Wisely, Michelle does not try to resolve the contradictions or unravel the knots. But she is hopeful that the Arab Spring and the death of bin Laden will take the wind out of the sails of the global jihadi movement and help the United States and its allies put the threat in perspective so they can abandon some of their worst counterterrorism tools. Me too.

Strategic Theory of the Second Generation of Jihadis

Will McCants August 3, 2011

Three days ago, Abu Hafs al-Sunni al-Sunni, a member of the Atahadi forum, posted an article he titled, “The Strategic Theory of the Second Generation of Jihadis: Propagandistic Foundations and Operational Methods.” Despite the title, it is less about strategy and operations and more about the public relations problems plaguing the jihadis. Here are his main points:

  • The first generation of jihadis did not do an adequate job of winning over ordinary Muslims. This left the field open to the quietist Salafis. Jihadis need to engage commoners by showing them videos of the suffering of Muslims and gauging their interest in doing something about it. However, one has to be careful so as not to be accused of inciting terrorism.
  • Jihadis need to avoid actions that alienate the masses, like beheadings, and demonstrate how much more ethical they are in waging war than the Americans.
  • The second generation of jihadis is woefully ignorant of Islamic scripture and law, which makes it easy for quietist Salafis to discredit them.
  • Be polite when disagreeing with non-jihadi Salafis and the clerics they follow. Many of these clerics agree with the jihadis on most things, like the Egyptian Salafi cleric Abu Ishaq al-Huwayni.
  • Focus on destroying the economy of the infidel. Burn their forests and damage their power grids.

Al-Qaeda Is Making a Cartoon

Will McCants July 18, 2011

According to a member of the Shmukh jihadi forum, the media wing of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is making a cartoon. I haven’t seen anything like this before and I am very skeptical that it is a real product. But if it’s legit and anywhere near like the purported screen shots and promotional banner below, it would indicate that AQAP is becoming even more sophisticated in its efforts to reach out to youth. Now they just need some action figures. (If this is old hat or a rip-off of some other cartoon, please let me know and I’ll update the post.)

Update: Adam Rawnsley at Danger Room has dug deeper. His references to the Super Friends and Thundercats clinch his credibility.

Update2: Yammani, the Shmukh user who posted the pics, provides an update today.  He explains that the film is in the final stages and the “brothers” asked him to share the pics and the basic concept with the forum to elicit their feedback. The brothers will then edit as needed.

Update3 (July 21): Shmukh members have translated a Reuters story on the cartoons that mentions Jihadica. They are elated at the press attention and are calling on the cartoonists to hurry up and release the film.



How Online Propaganda Works

Will McCants June 23, 2011

Shmukh user al-Sakit argues that you need a wide distribution of jihadi propaganda on mainstream forums in order to attract a small amount of people.  He observes that the three top mainstream Arabic forums have one million users each.  If you post jihadi propaganda to all of them, only 10% (300,000) are likely to look at it.  Of those, 10% (30,000) will like what they see.  Of those, 10% (3000) will embrace the idea of jihad. Of those, 10% (300) will propagandize. Of those, 10% (30) will go out to fight in a jihad.  Of those, 10% (3) will seek martyrdom.  

That’s much the way I think about it, which is why countering the effects of jihadi propaganda is so difficult.  It just needs to mobilize a few.

The Limits of Gamification

Will McCants April 25, 2011

Jarret and Alix have published an intriguing article in Foreign Policy on how jihadi ideologues and forum administrators are deliberately applying gaming principles to their discussion boards and propaganda.  The jihadis are doing so to encourage their readers to compete with one another to embody the community’s ethos and take direct action.

That’s a new way to frame some old features of jihadi discussion boards and propaganda.  But given that the features were around well before gamification was theorized, it’s a stretch to say that Awlaki or anyone else is deliberately employing gaming techniques in a “systematic” way, as the authors assert.  There are some other claims in the article that are also difficult to verify, such as the notion that competition for things like virtual badges leads to violent action (there may be some other factor causing both intense competition and violence, cases that confirm the theory are few and could be explained differently, etc).

It’s not that Jarret and Alix’s application of the theory is wrong; it just misses the larger context that makes it right.  The jihadi forums create communities whose members crave recognition, as with any community.  Competing for badges is part of that, but so is sharing dreams, crafting poems, writing hagiographies, and so on.  As someone who spent too much of his graduate career playing Warcraft, I can assure you that leveling up and getting good gear was not worth it unless you were part of a group that could appreciate it.  And that competition for levels and gear was just a tiny part of what kept me coming back given that everyone had better gear and higher levels.  What mattered more was making my online community laugh and applaud and if there is any link between the forums and violence, that impulse is where you will find it.  As for the end of my sessions online, my only orcish impulse was to raid the fridge.

Jihadi Encryption

Thomas Hegghammer February 9, 2011

The Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating story on Monday about the encryption methods employed by radical Islamist activists. The details emerged in the ongoing UK trial of Rajib Karim. The article is a reminder that there is more to online jihadism than what we see published on radical websites.

An Ex-Jihadi in the Arctic

Thomas Hegghammer October 15, 2010

I grew up in the far north of Norway, hundreds of kilometers above the Arctic Circle. As you might expect, my research interests and arctic origin do not intersect very often. Last time was back in 2004 when a plane on the way from my home town Narvik to Bodø was nearly brought down by an axe-swinging Algerian Islamist.

Last Saturday, however, the local newspaper in the nearby city of Tromsø – where I have spent many a drunken night in my youth – broke a remarkable story (hat tip: Tore Bjørgo). It was about Andrew Ibrahim Wenham, a British-Australian convert to Islam who has been living in Tromsø since 2002. The 46-year old Wenham is a respected leader in the local Muslim community and the founding director of the local Alnor mosque.  He is married to a Norwegian convert from Tromsø and leads a quiet existence. However, as the newspaper Nordlys uncovered, Wenham has a somewhat murky past.

In the late 1990s, Andrew Wenham – aka Abu Ismail – was part of a network of Jemaah Islamiyah supporters in Australia. In 1999 he attended a JI training camp in Mindanao and even spent two days alone with JI leader Hambali in Kuala Lumpur. Wenham was friends with Jack Roche, who was arrested in Australia in 2002 for plotting terrorist attacks on behalf of al-Qaida. In April 2000, when Roche returned to Perth after training in al-Qaida camps and meeting Osama bin Ladin in Afghanistan, Wenham greeted Roche at the airport and drove him home.  Wenham’s name appeared several times in the trial against Roche. However, by the time of the 2004 trial, nobody knew what had become of Wenham. In mid-2001 he had left for Yemen, where his trail went cold. Australian terrorism expert Sally Neighbour tells Nordlys that she tried in vain to locate Wenham while researching her book In the Shadow of Swords. Little did she know that Abu Ismail had retreated to the Arctic.

Confronted with the evidence gathered by Nordlys, Wenham confirmed all the details of this story. In an open-hearted newspaper interview, he insists he did not know that his friends in Perth had terrorist connections. He says he went to the Mindanao camp for the adventure and that he did not know who Hambali was. At their Kuala Lumpur meeting, Wenham had the sense that Hambali was assessing him, but the two did not stay in touch. In the spring of 2000, Wenham learned from John Bennett (another convert and member of the Perth network) that Jack Roche was planning to bomb an embassy and assassinate a Jewish leader in Australia. Wenham says he was shocked and told the local imam about the plans, whereupon the imam became furious and called a meeting to dissuade the young men. At this point Wenham decided to break with his friends. In mid-2001 he and his wife Sandra left Australia for Yemen, where they spent 10 months before moving to Tromsø, Sandra’s home town.

Wenham is not a terrorist or an al-Qaida sleeper agent. If he had al-Qaida sympathies, he would have acted on them by now, or at least left a trail of suspicious behaviour or political statements. Wenham’s past activities must be viewed in proper context. His radical dealings occurred before 9/11, before Jemaah Islamiya had carried out any major international terrorist attacks, and before Hambali had risen to fame as a leading al-Qaida associate. Wenham’s departure to Yemen also occurred before the War on Terror, which suggests it was not an attempt to hide an al-Qaida connection. His subsequent silence about his past is obviously somewhat foolish, but perfectly understandable. In the witch-hunt that followed 9/11, many Muslims in the West had their lives ruined for less serious sins than Wenham’s. Andrew Wenham was lucky; had he stayed in Australia he would probably have been sucked into the Roche investigation, and had he gone to America instead of Norway in 2001, he might well have been in prison today.

Wenham’s story is a classic case of socially driven radicalization – what Marc Sageman calls the “bunch-of-guys” phenomenon. Wenham’s arrived in Perth in 1997 shortly after converting to Islam. As a new immigrant and fresh convert, he was on the lookout for new friends. He met fellow convert John Bennett, who introduced him to, well, a bunch of guys in the local Muslim community. The fifteen men socialized extensively; they played paintball together and took religious lessons. A couple of people in the group, the so-called “Ayub brothers”, had connections with Jemaah Islamiyah. After a while, the Ayub brothers suggested to their paintball buddies that they attend a real military training camp in Mindanao. Wenham accepted; “it was like a kind of adventure”, he now says.

As with other youth drawn into radicalism through friends, Wenham’s ideological commitment probably did not run very deep. If he was ideologically committed to anything, it was most likely to a form of “classical jihadism”, i.e. conventional warfare in confined theatres of war where Muslims fight non-Muslim occupying armies. In any case, Wenham broke with his jihadi friends in 2001 and has not done or said anything since to suggest he has radical leanings.

In the interview, Wenham now says he is scared that the latest revelations might cause trouble for his family and damage the reputation of his Tromsø mosque. Unfortunately, his concerns are partly justified. The story has broken at a time when local politicians are debating whether to allow the building a large mosque in Tromsø, to be paid for with a USD 3,3 million gift from a Saudi businessman. The Saudi connection has already made the project controversial, and the Wenham story is not going to help. Let us at least hope Wenham does not suffer too much personally for mistakes made in his youth. Wenham has been an examplary citizen during his time in Tromsø. I wish I could say the same about myself.

 

 

 

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