Radicalization on the Internet?

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Akil N. Awan is a Lecturer in
Contemporary Islam and the Research
Council UK Fellow in the
Contemporary History of Faith, Power
and Terror at Royal Holloway,
University of London. He is also a
Research Associate with the Centre for
Ethnic Minority Studies, and the New
Political Communication Unit at Royal
Holloway, and on the ESRC project
Shifting Securities: News Cultures
Before and Beyond the Iraq War.
Radicalization on the Internet?
The Virtual Propagation of Jihadist Media
and its Effects
Akil N Awan
Introduction
The spectre of a retrograde, puritanical
and belligerent ideology may seem
anachronistic in the twenty-first century.
However, Jihadism (as opposed to the
classical reified conception of Jihad) is a
thoroughly modern phenomenon. The
Internet, that most contemporary of
media, is increasingly its medium of
choice: Jihadist websites, forums and
blogs flourish. Prominent Jihadist
ideologues like Ayman al-Zawahiri argue
that:
We must get our message across to
the masses of the nation and break
the media siege imposed on the jihad
movement. This is an independent
battle that we must launch side by
side with the military battle.
The Jihadists’ marginalized status
vis-à-vis the mainstream media is a
consequence of what Phillip Hammond
refers to as ‘the media war on
terrorism’.
1
Bemoaning this ‘media
siege’, they have turned to the Internet
as their principal ideological battlefield.
Virtual propagation of Jihadism proceeds
apace, with an exponential growth in
Jihadist websites from fourteen to over
4,000 between 2000 and 2005 alone.
2
The audiences of this virtual corpus
of Jihadist media are extremely difficult
to ascertain, unless users willingly
disclose this information. Audience
demographics are however dictated to a
large degree by extraneous factors
pertaining to accessibility of the
medium itself such as age, gender,
location, socio-economic status, and so
on.
3
In addition, the audience profile is
further limited by the content available,
in particular its linguistic demands. The
overwhelming majority of virtual Jihadist
forums are published in Arabic alone
4
and so inaccessible to a large proportion
of Muslims as well as other Internet
users. British Muslim audiences are
predominantly (74 per cent) South
Asian
5
and are therefore more likely to
speak Urdu, Punjabi, or Bengali, than
Arabic. This article focuses on English-
language Jihadist fora, as these are
readily accessible to British Muslim
audiences.
Functions
Jihadist fora serve four key interrelated
functions:
1. News: Many Jihadist forums consider
their news coverage to be an important
part of their raison d’etre, particularly as
existing coverage of Muslim conflicts is
deemed to be unrepresentative and
skewed towards their opponents’
viewpoints. A number of sites, such as
Jihadunspun.com and Islammemo.cc,
operate principally as news outlets.
2. Propaganda: Perhaps the most
important role of virtual forums is the
uncensored publication and
dissemination of the ideology and culture
of Jihadism. This ranges from the
ideological treatises and theological
‘evidences’ underpinning the culture of
Jihad, and ‘official’ statements and
communiqués from Jihadist groups and
leaders, to the circulation of ‘acts of Jihad’
such as graphic ‘beheading’ videos, or IED
attacks on Coalition targets in Iraq.
3. Training: Aside from propagating
ideology, virtual forums also provide the
means through which those with the
DOI 10.1080/03071840701472331
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Terrorism
inclination may actualize their Jihadist
aspirations. A plethora of technical and
military manuals cover topics as diverse
as hostage kidnapping, weaponry
manufacture and deployment, guerrilla
warfare, training and tactics and bomb-
making. For example, the manufacture of
acetone peroxide, the substance
allegedly used in the 7 July and 21 July
attacks in London, is comprehensively
treated in the online Al-Aqsa
Encyclopaedia.
4. Expression: The relationship between
some users of Jihadist fora and the
pursuit of violence or terrorism-related
activities is incontrovertible in some
cases (The 2004 Madrid train bombings,
21 July 2005 London ‘bomb plot’, and
2006 Canadian bomb plot are all prime
examples). However, less often
recognized is that for other, less
hard-line audiences, Jihadist fora may
serve an important function in
subsuming diverse strains of political
activism, unrest, and dissent, and so
providing a conduit and framework for
its non-violent expression. Consequently
they can have a cathartic function,
allowing audiences to vent their anger
and frustration without resorting to
violent means, similar to the role played
by Al-Jazeera with Middle Eastern
audiences as posited by Mohamed
Zayani.
6
Relevant forms of expression
include engaging in dialogue and debate
with other members (such as the
perennial debates over the legitimacy of
targeting civilians or other Islamic sects),
or even venting one’s frustration through
creative means such as poetry, which
can highlight to other members one’s
empathy with the Ummah as a victim of
oppression, whilst alluding to the moral
quandary of being unable to match
humanistic aspirations with actions.
Legitimacy
Legitimacy is crucial for any media
source which aspires to credibility. This
holds particularly true for Jihadist
sources which exist primarily to
challenge the hegemony of mainstream
media. Jihadist websites attempt to gain
legitimacy in diverse ways. Aware of the
ease of access to opposing viewpoints
and alternative accounts, and the
increasing competency of media-savvy
audiences, many ostensibly champion
impartiality and audience discretion.
Despite the patent propaganda of some
of its articles, Jihadunspun (JUS)
highlights its impartiality by presenting
mainstream media reports in an
unbiased way and then contrasting them
with Jihadist reports (backed up by
selective photographic or video
evidence), inviting its audiences to
differentiate between its ‘truth’ and
others’ ‘censored accounts’. This leaves
JUS less open to accusations of bias and
propaganda, ironically shifting the onus
for objectivity onto the mainstream
news media outlets which fail to
represent Jihadist viewpoints, and are
depicted as towing the official Coalition
line, as is the case with embedded
journalism in the Iraq war.
7
This more sophisticated brand of
Jihadist media receives further boosts to
its potency and legitimacy from the
conspicuous absence of commensurate
reports from ‘Islamic conflict’ zones
within the mainstream Western media.
Where there is such coverage, it usually
lacks graphic portrayals of violence and
its aftermath, reinforcing the perception
that the Western media presents, at
best, a censored, sanitized version of
conflict, failing to admit real Muslim
suffering, or at worst, is somehow
complicit in the events. Many Jihadist
and insurgency groups in Iraq shrewdly
exploit this glaring absence of coverage
by collecting and compiling data and
footage (for example, by dispatching
cameramen alongside combatants) in
order to back up their own claims and
refute those of the Coalition and
mainstream media.
8
Sophisticated design and
production values often contribute
disproportionately to perceptions of the
quality and legitimacy of content.
Recent developments include streaming
video news programs, such as the
weekly Sawt al-Khilafah (Voice of the
Caliphate); a highly professional
fifteen-minute news round-up with
accompanying studio anchor. Similarly,
indications of popularity and prestige
also help to ensure claims are accorded
greater credibility: thus a search for the
term ‘Jihad’ on Google (16 May 2007)
returns search results that feature
Jihadunspun at position five, no mean
feat. Indeed, Jihadunspun has even been
included in Google News as a bona fide
‘news provider’, much to the chagrin of
US officials and anti-Jihadist civic
groups. Jihadunspun’s professionalism
Leading Jihadist Ayman al-Zawahiri.
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extends to appearing to take great pains
in determining the authenticity of the
material they publish. They elected not
to print an alleged US casualty
photograph from the Al-Ansaar news
agency, which had been circulating on a
number of Jihadist forums, on the
grounds that it was falsely ‘doctored’.
Not content with ‘proving’ the falsity of
the image by drawing attention to its
incorrect perspective and multiple
resolutions, they generated their own
composite image based on the same
original, presenting it alongside both
Al-Ansaar’s image and the original
photograph from CNN, illustrating how
easily such manipulation could be
achieved.
Radicalizing Efficacy
Whilst a number of studies have
attempted to describe the varied
contours of virtual Jihadist media,
9
their
use in actual radicalization is extremely
difficult to ascertain in most cases. Much
of the material they produce constitutes
propaganda and aims at indoctrination,
and some Jihadist groups are well aware
of the Internet’s potential radicalizing
efficacy and appear to be explicitly
focusing their energies upon virtual
radicalization and recruitment. The
Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF)
recently wrote:
This is the Internet that Allah has
enlisted in the service of jihad and of
the mujahideen, which has come to
serve your interests – given that half
the battle of the mujahideen is being
waged on the pages of the Internet –
the sole outlet for mujahideen media.
10
A recent posting on the al-Hesbah
forum by the GIMF, entitled the ‘Pledge
of Death in God’s Path’, went further
and requested a pledge of allegiance
(bay’ah) from site visitors, in the hope
that they might be prepared to engage
in jihad and swear ‘allegiance to death
. . . in the very near future . . . so that
Osama bin Laden will have an army in
Afghanistan, an army in Iraq, and a huge
army on a waiting list on the Internet
pages’.
11
This recruitment drive is not
solely militaristic: in response to the
‘media war’ and the ideological battle
being waged, the GIMF recently
advertised ‘vacant positions’ for those
wishing to help with the ‘media Jihad’ by
producing videos and assembling
footage of Jihadists in Iraq.
12
In other recruitment bids, many
forums list the exploits and ‘glorious’
martyrdoms of those slain in the ‘global
arena of Jihad’. Messages from leaders,
such as the following from Abu Mus’ab
Al-Zarqawi (d. 2006), also attempt to
stir audiences into action, and are
disseminated widely on Jihadist forums:
Awaken from your slumber, and arise
from your apathy. You have slept for a
long time. The wheels of the war to
annihilate the Sunnis have not and will
not halt. It will reach the homes of
each and every one of you, unless
Allah decides otherwise. If you do not
join the mujahideen to defend your
religion and honor, by Allah, sorrow
and regret will be your lot, but only
after all is lost.
13
This recruitment drive is proving fruitful
as there is clear evidence of the role
played by virtual Jihadist forums in
radicalization in a limited number of
cases. The 2004 Madrid train bombings
are prime examples. The Internet text
‘Iraqi Jihad: Hopes and Dangers’ suggested
that strategic bombing of trains would
compel Spain’s withdrawal from the US-
led coalition in Iraq, and is thought to
have been seminal to the actions of the
perpetrators.
14
Similarly, Hussein Osman
(a defendant in the 21 July 2005 London
‘bomb plot’ trial) told Italian investigators
that his group regularly watched videos
of the conflict in Iraq and used the
Internet to ‘read up’ on Jihad. He denied
any direct links to Al-Qa’ida but admitted
to utilizing their online platforms.
15
Official reports on the 7 July London
suicide bombings also noted (in a general
way, not directly referring to those
attacks) that the Internet was becoming a
valuable tool for extremists, being used
for propaganda as well as training and for
grooming potential recruits through chat
rooms.
16
More recently, a terrorist plot
involving seventeen young Canadian
Muslims was foiled by the Canadian
Security Intelligence Service after
surveillance of a chat room in 2004,
where inflammatory anti-Western
rhetoric is thought to have precipitated
a ‘home-grown’ bomb plot.
17
Yet even in
such cases, where the use of Internet
communication appears as prima facie
evidence of its role in radicalization, in
fact the Internet only seems to have
provided the initial impetus: the plot
quickly became more conventional in
terms of planning and actualization after
the group meetings at a ‘training camp’
in Northern Ontario.
In diaspora Muslim
communities in Britain
and elsewhere, the
consumption of
alternative news media
is often based upon
mistrust and cynicism
towards ‘Western news’
Despite limited evidence for Internet
radicalization in such cases, it is difficult
to ascertain the degree to which virtual
Jihadist fora influence wider audiences
and users. For all we know, they may be
proverbially ‘preaching to the converted’.
For example, Omar Bakri Mohammed’s
Internet relay chat sessions on the Paltalk
network in January 2006, where he
publicly exhorted to violence and Jihad,
were solely targeted at the small coterie
of his followers, with little attempt to
reach a wider audience.
18
Similarly, the
vast majority of messages posted on the
Mujahedon.net forums originated with a
very small core group of active users: 99
per cent were passive or casual users.
Some analysts doubt whether exposure
to the Internet can ‘turn anyone into a
terrorist’, arguing that as an elective
medium, it is more likely to reinforce
existing worldviews than to radicalize.
19
It
is alluringly simple to blame the Internet,
but Jihadist material has long been widely
available in other media formats. For
example, Azzam Publications, one of the
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most prolific and well-known Jihadist
media producers on the Internet prior to
its closure in 2001, operated for many
years as a print publishing house in
London. Similarly, the Maktabah Al-
Ansaar bookshop in Birmingham, which
also doubles as an ‘Islamic news agency’,
has been providing Jihadist videos since
as early as 1999, providing evidence of
Muslim persecution around the world,
and chronicling its corollary: the rise and
exploits of Mujahideen in Afghanistan,
Bosnia, Palestine, Kashmir and
Chechnya.
20
Virtual Jihadist Media as part
of the Alternative News
Paradigm
Jihadist media often fulfil some of the
same functions as particularistic ethnic
media. If one ignores the extreme and
sometimes violent tone and content of
Jihadist sources, they are often
concerned with the same issues and
topics deemed important by mainstream
and moderate British Muslim news
media such as the Islam Channel, and
publications such as Muslim Weekly,
Muslim News and Q-News. In diaspora
Muslim communities in Britain and
elsewhere, the consumption of
alternative news media is often based
upon mistrust and cynicism towards
‘Western news’,
21
and thus motivations
for production as well as content
converge in both cases.
Jihadist websites may also converge
with non-Muslim sources, although in
more limited ways. Many mainstream
websites (such as welfarestate.com,
truthseeker.co.uk, and
loosechange911.com) support
‘conspiracy theories’, a staple of some
Jihadist media. Another shared aspect is
extreme audio-visual content, such as
the images and videos of beheadings,
civilian casualties, and other graphic
violence, also a staple of ‘gore sites’ like
Ogrish.com and Rotten.com. The video
beheading of Nick Berg was downloaded
from Ogrish a staggering 15 million
times,
22
granting the material a far
higher profile than could possibly have
been envisaged by the perpetrators and
immediate disseminators.
Content-sharing platforms can also
contribute to the wider availability of
Jihadist media. The popular Jihadist-
inspired rap video, Dirty Kuffar, by the UK
group ‘Sheikh Terra and the Soul Salah
Crew’, has been hosted on a very small
number of Jihadist forums including
Tajdeed.
23
The video has not gained
widespread acclaim or notoriety through
the Jihadist community, who most likely
consider it to be amateurish and perhaps
even offensive in using Western-style rap
music. Instead, it has relied upon more
mainstream platforms such as Putfile,
Google Video, and Youtube to gain a
fairly high profile.
Images of Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi’s bloodied
corpse are paraded in
mission briefings and
relayed in the
mainstream media,
while images of dead
Coalition soldiers on
Al-Jazeera spark moral
outrage
However, perhaps the most important
aspect in which Jihadist media converge
with non-Jihadist sources is in their
presentation of alternate narratives and
paradigms to those of the mainstream
media, and particularly those originating
with Coalition forces or the US
administration. Many websites and blogs
are intensely critical of mainstream
media ‘collusion’ with the Coalition,
which they see exemplified by the
statement of CBS news anchor Dan
Rather: ‘When my country’s at war, I
want my country to win; there is an
inherent bias in the American media’.
24
Sites claiming to present the ‘fuller
picture’, where many stories bear some
resemblance to Jihadist media reports,
include Whatreallyhappened.com,
Thetruthseeker.co.uk, Iraqbodycount.net,
and Informationclearinghouse.com.For
example, in December 2004 a number of
Jihadist websites reported that an
insurgency attack against Abu Ghraib
prison had been sparked by a letter from
a female inmate named Fatima, having
been written in her own blood and
smuggled out of the prison. The now
infamous ‘Fatima’s letter’, in which she
reported having been raped repeatedly,
along with thirteen other girls, was
subsequently circulated via many other
sites and e-mail lists. The US State
Department continues to deny the
allegations, claiming that no sexual
assault upon female detainees ever
occurred at the prison, and that the
letter was a complete fabrication.
25
However, rape of female detainees at
Abu Ghraib is well documented.
26
The US
military’s official investigation into the
Abu Ghraib scandal, the Taguba Report,
identified rape as one of the many
abuses that had taken place,
disconcertingly opting to describe it as ‘a
male MP guard having sex with a female
detainee’.
27
A collection of 1,800 photos
and video stills depicting abuse at Abu
Ghraib, never released to the public but
shown to members of Congress, holds
further evidence of sexual abuse of
female detainees.
28
Whether or not Fatima’s specific
story is apocryphal is less significant
than the fact that sexual abuse of
women prisoners had taken place, and
thus the story was quickly able to gain
currency in the context of growing
mistrust of news and propaganda
originating with the US Administration
and Coalition forces, and disseminated
by what are viewed as its proxies, the
mainstream news agencies.
29
This
mistrust has many roots. As well as
suspicions over the true motives for the
invasion of Iraq, and damning
indictments of the United States and
Coalition partners in the light of
the lurid excesses witnessed at
Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and
elsewhere, evidence of falsification,
concealment, or infiltration of untrue
‘news’ into the mainstream media has
undermined trust. Examples include the
Pentagon’s fictitious account of the
‘heroic rescue’ of Private Jessica Lynch
from al-Nasiriyah,
30
false Coalition
claims with respect to the ‘uprising’ in
Basra,
31
the claim that white
phosphorous was only used for
illumination purposes in the assault on
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Fallujah (and subsequent admission that
it was used indiscriminately as an
incendiary weapon
32
), or the denial that
napalm was used in Iraq (and
subsequent admission of the use of
MK77 bombs, the more deadly successor
to napalm
33
).
Similarly, perceptions of hypocrisy
and double standards have also been
detrimental both to the Coalition’s claim
to the moral high ground, and to the
credibility of mainstream news media.
Images of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s
bloodied corpse are paraded in mission
briefings and relayed in the mainstream
media, while images of dead Coalition
soldiers on Al-Jazeera spark moral
outrage. The US administration extols
the virtues of freedom of press and
speech, while apparently unable to
tolerate alternative viewpoints, as
epitomized by its sustained ‘war’ on
Al-Jazeera (the Kabul office bombed in
2001; bomb attacks on its journalists’
hotel and the killing of Tareq Ayouh in
Baghdad in 2003; the imprisoning of
several correspondents; the attempted
ban on reporting from Iraq; and the
mooted bombing of the Qatar
headquarters according to a leaked
memo of 2004).
34
Beside such attempts
to deter reporting from the other side,
government-made television news
segments have been found to constitute
improper ‘covert propaganda’ by the
Federal Communications Commission.
35
All such actions exacerbate distrust, and
grant alternative paradigms and
narratives far greater legitimacy. Overall,
the ‘adoption’ of Jihadist stories by non-
Jihadist and non-Muslim media has had
a considerable effect in countering the
marginalization of Jihadist voices.
Conclusion
The ideological conflict that underlies
the ‘Global War on Terror’ is increasingly
conducted on the Internet’s battlefield.
Virtual forums are recognized as one of
the most important ‘fronts’. The
exponential growth of Jihadist websites,
forums and blogs with increasingly ‘high
end’ production values, sophisticated
critiques of prevailing narratives, and
ostensive attempts at impartiality does
not occur in a vacuum. To a great extent
they are reactive, their raison d’etre
being supplied by the mainstream
media’s perceived collusion with
governmental misinformation or at least
uncritical acceptance of it. Jihadist media
are far from alone in these critiques, and
there has been a growing convergence of
interests with other non-mainstream
media outlets. The general proliferation
of sources of news, information and
commentary, coupled with increasingly
media-savvy audiences, who are far less
likely to accept the veracity of any one
narrative and more likely to evince
dissatisfaction with conventional modes
of mediation, is challenging ‘media
imperialism’.
36
Web 2.0 applications
have also helped the Jihadist message
gain wider circulation, and significantly,
outside of its traditional ambit, too. This
has proved crucial: Jihadist media forums
are no longer the proverbial ‘lone voice
in the wilderness’.
Jihadist forums represent something
of a challenge for Western governments.
Much has been made of the radicalizing
effects of Jihadism on the Internet, but
this is proving to be a ‘red herring’.
Viewing and surfing habits are no
indication of extremist proclivities or
terrorist inclinations. In many cases
(indeed, the vast majority of cases, in my
opinion) Jihadist fora are completely
innocuous, and actually serve a cathartic
role. Their radicalizing effects have been
vastly over-inflated by media and
scholars alike, particularly in discussions
of Western diasporic audiences. For one
thing, websites catering to an English-
language audience constitute a very
small percentage of this body of media
(less than 1 per cent of the total) and
thus it is not easy to find high-quality
English-language Jihadist sites.
More importantly, despite
widespread dissatisfaction with Western
foreign policy among British Muslims,
37
which implies sharing many of the
grievances of global Jihadism, the actual
resort to Jihadism is numerically
negligible. The current state of Jihadism’s
appeal is perhaps best indicated by the
title of an article on Jihadunspun by the
Kashmiri Jihadist Abu Usama Al Mujahid:
‘Our Youth Are Allergic To The Word
Jihad’.
38
Despite this lament, radicalization is
a growing problem amongst Diaspora
Muslim youth. But this complex and
multi-faceted process has numerous
antecedents and causes,
39
and it is
reductive in the extreme to assume
that these complex processes and
problems stem principally from media
effects. More subtle and nuanced
understanding of the relationships
between Jihadist media and their
audiences is needed. The ancient Greco-
Roman practice of blaming the
messenger for bearing bad tidings,
without considering the nature of the
message or the reasons behind its
appeal, will prove to be lamentably
short-sighted in the fight against
radicalization.
■
NOTES
1 Phillip Hammond, ‘The Media War on Terrorism’,
Journal for Crime, Conflict and the Media
(Vol. 1, No. 1, 2003), pp. 23–36.
2 Scott Atran, ‘The “Virtual Hand” of Jihad’,
Global Terrorism Analysis (Vol. 3, No. 10,
2005), pp. 8–11.
3 United Nations Development Project ‘Section
13: Technology: diffusion and creation: Internet
users (per 1,000 people)’, in Human
Development Report 2005 (2005):
<http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/>; Office
for National Statistics, National Statistics
Omnibus Survey: Internet Access – Households
and Individuals (2005) :<http://www.
statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Contact.asp?vlnk=
2251&More=Y&ComboState=&Btn.x=
27&Btn.y=16>.
4 Stephen Ulph, ‘A Guide to Jihad on the Web’,
Global Terrorism Analysis: Terrorism Focus
(Vol. 2, No. 7, 2005), pp.5–7; R Paz,‘Reading
Their Lips:The Credibility of Jihadi Web Sites in
Arabic as a Source for Information’, Project for
the Research of Islamist Movements (PRISM)
(Herzliya, Israel: (2004): <http://www.
e-prism.org/images/Read_Their_Lips.doc>.
5 Office for National Statistics, Census 2001: The
UK population: by religion, April 2001, Office
for National Statistics (2005): <http://
www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=293
&Pos=1&ColRank=1&Rank=176>.
6 Mohamed Zayani, ‘Arabic Public Opinion in the
Age of Satellite Television: the Case of
al-Jazeera’, in E Poole and J E Richardson (eds.)
Muslims and the News Media (London: I B
Tauris, 2006), pp. 176–88.
7 Lawrence Pintak, ‘Framing the Other:
Worldview, Rhetoric and Media Dissonance
Since 9/11’, in E Poole and J E Richardson
(eds.), op cit, pp. 188–99; Steven Kull, ‘The
Press and Public Misperceptions About the Iraq
War’, Nieman Reports: Special Online Issue:
Coverage of War and Terror (2001-2004)
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(Summer 2004), pp. 64–66; Hammond, op cit,
pp. 32-34.
8 International Crisis Group, ‘In their own words:
Reading the Iraqi insurgency.’ Middle East
Report (No. 50, February 2006),
<http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?
l=1&id=3953>.
9 Gabriel Weimann, Terror on the Internet: The
New Arena, the New Challenges (Washington:
United States Institute of Peace, 2006), pp. 15-
33; S Atran, op cit, pp. 10–11, and Stephen
Ulph, op cit, pp.5–7
10 Quoted in Setphen Ulph, ‘Mujahideen to Pledge
Allegiance on the Web’, Global Terrorism
Analysis: Terrorism Focus (Vol. 2, No. 22, 2005),
pp. 1–2.
11 Ibid.
12 Anton La Guardia, ‘Al-Qa’eda places recruiting
ads’, The Daily Telegraph, 8 October 2005.
13 MEMRI, ‘Leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq Al-Zarqawi
declares “total war” on Shi’ites, states that the
Sunni women of Tel’afar had “their wombs filled
with the sperm of the Crusaders”’, Middle East
Media Research Institute: Special Dispatch
Series 987 (USA: 2005).
14 Congreso de los Deputados, Comisiones de
Investigación. Sobre el 11 de marzo de 2004,
Session 13, 19 July 2004 and Session 30,
15 November 2004 (Madrid: 2004): <http://
www.losgenoveses.net/11M/CI_007.pdf and
/CI_017.pdf>.
15 F Elliott, S Goodchild and J Phillips,‘Extraordinary
admission to interrogators by London bomb
suspect’, The Independent, 31 July 2005.
16 Intelligence and Security Committee, Report
into the London Terrorist Attacks on 7 July 2005
(London: The Stationery Office, May 2006),
Cm 6785; Home Office, Report of the Official
Account of the Bombings in London on 7th July
2005 (London: The Stationery Office, May
2006), Hc 1087.
17 Nicolaas Van Rijn, ‘Plot began in chat room:
CSIS monitored discussions on bombing
targets’, Toronto Star, 5 June 2006.
18 Sean O’Neill and Yaakov Lappin, ‘Britain’s online
imam declares war as he calls young to jihad’,
The Times, 17 January 2005.
19 Scott Shane, ‘The Web as al-Qaida’s Safety
Net’, The Baltimore Sun, 28 March 2003.
20 Daniel Foggo, ‘For sale in Britain: bin Laden
training video’, The Daily Telegraph, 21 October
2001.
21 S Ahmed,‘The Media Consumption of Young
British Muslims’ in E Poole and J E Richardson
(eds.), op cit, pp. 167–76; M Gillespie, M
Michalski, A Preston, R Paterson and T
Cheesman, After September 11: Television
News and Transnational Audiences (London:
BFI, BSC, ESRC, ITC and OU, 2002),
<http://www.afterseptember11.tv/download/
11%20September%20Research.pdf>
22 David Talbot, ‘Terror’s Server:Fraud, gruesome
propaganda, terror planning: the Net enables it
all. The online industry can help fix it.’,
Technology Review (MIT) February 2005:
<http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/
14150/page1/>
23 <http://tajdeed.org.uk>
24 Quoted in Pintak in E Poole and J E Richardson
(eds.), op cit, p. 194.
25 US State Department, ‘A Trio of Disinformers:
Islam Memo, Muhammad Abu Nasr, and Jihad
Unspun: Obscure Web sites play major role in
disinformation’ in International Information
Programs: Identifying Misinformation.
(Washington, DC: 2005): <http://usinfo.
state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Apr/
08-205989.html>.
26 Dan Glaister & Julian Borger, ‘1,800 new picture
add to US disgust: Stills shown of women forced
to bare breasts’, The Guardian, 13 May 2004;
Tracy Wilkinson, ‘A Double Ordeal for Female
Prisoners’, Los Angeles Times, 11 May 2004;
Luke Harding, ‘Focus shifts to jail abuse of
women’, The Guardian, 12 May 2004.
27 US Army, Article 15-6 Investigation of the
800
th
Military Police Brigade [prepared by
Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, 2004], p. 17:
<http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/
taguba.pdf.>
28 Glaister & Borger, op cit.
29 Pintak, op cit, International Crisis Group, op cit,
Kull, op cit, Hammond, op cit.
30 Richard Lloyd-Parry, ‘So who really did save
Private Jessica?’ The Times, 16 April 2003.
31 Hammond, op cit, p.29.
32 BBC News, ‘US used white phosphorus in Iraq’
November 16 2005: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/
2/hi/middle_east/4440664.stm>.
33 Colin Brown, ‘US lied to Britain over use of
napalm in Iraq war’, The Independent, 17 May
2005.
34 Jeremy Scahill, ‘The War on Al Jazeera’, The
Nation, 19 December 2005; Phillip Knightley,
‘History or bunkum?’ British Journalism Review
(Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 7–14).
35 David Barstow and Robin Stein ‘Under Bush, a
New Age of Prepackaged Television News’, The
New York Times, 13 March 2005.
36 Prasun Sonwalkar, ‘New Imperialism: Contra
View from the South’, in C Paterson and A
Sreberny (eds.) International News in the
Twenty-first Century (London: John Libbey,
2004), pp. 111–25.
37 FOSIS, The Voice of Muslim Students. A Report
into Attitudes and Perception of Muslim
Students Following the July 7th London Attacks
(London: Federation of Student Islamic
Societies, 2005): <http://www.fosis.org.uk/
committees/sac/FullReport.pdf>;
Guardian/ICM, ‘Muslim Poll – November 2004’,
The Guardian, (London: 30 November 2004):
<http://image. guardian.co.uk/sysfiles/
Guardian/documents/2004/11/30/Muslims-
Nov041.pdf >; YouGov, Results of survey of 526
British Muslims within survey on ‘Britishness’
commissioned by the Daily Telegraph, 25 July
2005: <http://www.yougov.com/
archives/pdf/TEL050101030_1.pdf>.
38 Al Mujahid, ‘Our Youth Are Allergic To The Word
Jihad’, Jihad Unspun, <http://www.
jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article
=103103&list=/home.php>, accessed 2006,
extracts in Robert Spencer ‘Our Youth Are
Allergic To The Word Jihad’, Jihadwatch, <http://
www.jihadwatch.org/archives/006592.php>.
39 Akil N Awan, ‘Transitional Religiosity
Experiences: Contextual Disjuncture and Islamic
Political Radicalism’, in Tahir Abbas (ed.)
Islamic Political Radicalism: A European
Comparative Perspective (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp. 207–31.
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