Sep 7, 2012 No Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Excerpted from ATLAS SHRUGS: Jihad and the social network. Despite their disdain and utter contempt for Western thought, these savages sure love our toys. HASHTAG #Jihad Part II: Twitter Usage By Al-Qaeda And Online Jihadi Affiliated Groups Explodes; Apps Increasingly Used As Tools For Cyber Jihad MEMRI
By: Steven Stalinsky*
Table of Contents
Part I: Tweeting Jihad And Martyrdom: Minbar Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad, Website Of Imprisoned Jihadi Leader And Scholar Sheikh Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi
Part II: Ansar Al-Mujahideen Arabic Forum (AMAF), An Al-Qaeda Affiliate, Tweets
Part III: Muhammad Zawahiri – Brother Of Al-Qaeda Leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri – Joins Twitter
Part IV: Former Bin Laden Jihadi And Gitmo Detainee Walid Muhammad Hajj Tweets In Support Of Al-Qaeda, Jihad, And Martyrdom
Part V: How Online Jihadis Are Using Twitter – The Taliban Video That Revealed Planning Behind June 1, 2012 Attack On U.S. Military Base In Khost
Part VI: New Egyptian Pro-Al-Qaeda Google Blog Group Joins Twitter
Part VII: The New Breed of Al-Qaeda Groupies on Twitter – Abu Malik Al-Maqdisi
HASHTAG “#Jihad” – Easy to Find, Easy to Remove Terrorist-Related Content From Twitter
Introduction
As part of their online media strategy, jihadi organizations have in recent years begun using Western websites and technologies – uploading videos to YouTube[1] and to the San Francisco-based Internet Archive,[2] creating official Facebook pages,[3] and over the past year, “tweeting” news flashes from the jihadi fronts. During that time, MEMRI’s Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Project has monitored how Al-Qaeda-affiliated online jihadi groups and their followers have embraced Twitter.
As the number and activity of jihadis and terrorist groups on Twitter continue to multiply exponentially, the issue is attracting more attention from media outlets and from U.S. government and military officials; while the latter have been reluctant to take action, Twitter officials remain neglectful.
Highlighting this is a September 3, 2012 article titled “Twitter Becomes Terrorists’ New Propaganda Machine” in USA Today, which quotes Marine Lt. Col. Stewart Upton, spokesman for Regional Command Southwest, as saying of terrorists’ use of Twitter: “They’re all over Twitter… they’re incessantly tweeting.” He adds that over the past year, Central Command has reported about 10 social media violations to Twitter. The paper noted that Twitter could suspend an account if the user violated policies, and quoted Twitter spokeswoman Rachael Horwitz, who said that Twitter does not discuss specific accounts, including military requests, as saying: “We have a process to report terms of service violations.”
Previously, on August 22, 2012, The Washington Times reported that U.S. intelligence agencies that monitor the Internet for terrorist activity are now regularly in touch with the U.S. military’s Central Command, who have on their behalf been contacting U.S. social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, “urging them to halt terrorist recruitment or inciting violent attacks noting that it violates their terms of service.”
Since Twitter began operating in 2006, there is not one publicly known case of a jihadi or terrorist organization’s account being shut down. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the Twitter presence of these groups is constantly increasing.
Among the organizations that openly utilize Twitter are many that are officially designated by the Western and U.S. governments as terrorist entities, such as the Taliban (alemarahweb and ABalkhi),[4] the Somali Al-Qaeda-affiliated group Al-Shabaab Al-Mujahideen (HSMPress),[5] Hamas (hamasinfo) and its military wing Al-Qassam Brigades (AlqassamBrigade),[6] Hizbullah and its media arm Al-Manar TV (almanarnews),[7] and other groups. (For a full list of MEMRI research on jihadi and terrorist groups on Twitter, see Appendix I.)
While the phenomenon of jihadi and terrorist organizations on Twitter is in its relatively early stages, if it is left to continue unabated, the service will increasingly be used to help build an online community of individuals who support terrorism and are enemies of the U.S. Many of these Twitter users are also now utilizing apps to spread online jihad, which gives Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations additional weapons for their cyber-jihad.
As previous reports in this series have noted, Twitter has in fact already become a cyber-weapon used against the U.S.. Furthermore, MEMRI’s attempts to alert Twitter, and in particular its CEO and media department, of this and of the risks it entails have been repeatedly ignored.
The following report highlights some recent examples of jihadi and terrorist organizations, sheikhs, and other groups who have joined Twitter. Those Twitter accounts, all in Arabic, use the social media site for multiple purposes, including giving religious justification for jihad and terrorist attacks; sending links minute by minute of the latest Al-Qaeda media releases; accounts held by numerous former prisoners jailed for terrorism to provide an outlet to reach followers on their opinions; training purposes for attacks against American forces; and as a vehicle for new terrorist and jihadi groups to easily spread their message for recruitment.
Part I: Tweeting Jihad And Martyrdom: Minbar Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad, Website Of Imprisoned Jihadi Leader And Scholar Sheikh Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi
An extensive report published earlier this year by the staff of the MEMRI JTTM (see Minbar Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad English-Language Site, Owned by Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi, Peddles Jihad to Non-Arabic Speaking Muslims in the West, March 12, 2012) gave detailed information about one of the main online centers of the global Salafi-jihadi movement[8] – Minbar Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad (MTJ), “The Pulpit of Monotheism and Jihad,” belonging to Sheikh Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi.
As the report noted, Al-Maqdisi has long been at the fore of the radical Salafi movement in Jordan, and is considered a religious authority and spiritual leader by many Salafi-jihadis worldwide. His website has served as a primary means of disseminating Salafi-jihadi doctrine and texts, and jihad-related fatwas. The website is overseen by Al-Maqdisi himself, in addition to a shari’a committee of radical Salafi-jihadi clerics from various Arab countries, some of them residing in the West.
In addition to its main Arabic-language website, MTJ has an English website, Tawhid.net. This website serves as an online library of Salafi-jihadi material translated from Arabic, including sermons, articles, books, magazines, and interviews by Islamist luminaries such as Al-Maqdisi himself, Sayyed Qutb, and Al-Qaeda leaders past and present, including Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam, and others. Also offered is original English-language material, much of it by the late Yemeni-American cleric Anwar Al-’Awlaki, who is featured prominently on the site with books, articles, audio recordings, and magazines such as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQAP) English-language magazine Inspire.
With its English forum, MTJ aims to propagate jihad and serve as a virtual library for the Salafi-jihadi education of Muslims who are distant from active jihad communities. This includes preaching jihad as an individual duty incumbent upon all Muslims; eliciting support for Al-Qaeda and disseminating its leaders’ messages online; playing up grievances suffered by Muslims in the West’s anti-Islam “Crusade”; and glorifying slain jihadis, publishing fatwas in support of suicide operations, and so on.
Minbar Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad’s Twitter Account
On January 12, 2012, Minbar Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad launched a Twitter account, twitter.com/MinbarTawhed, and has since posted over 200 tweets. Most of the tweets include content from MTJ’s website as well as links to the main MTJ website itself. Tweets include rulings on fatwas and answers to Islamic law questions – many of which are related to jihad.
Examples Of Topics In Tweets By Minbar Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad
Minbar al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad tweets on a number of topics. The following are examples:
Becoming a martyr in the battlefield of jihad.
The permissibility of fighting with the mujahideen without pledging allegiance to a specific group.
The permissibility of working with Jews and Christians to collect money to go wage jihad.
Rulings on using stolen money for jihad.
The permissibility of killing drug dealers in the land of jihad.
Rulings about disclosing the secrets of the mujahideen.
Whether one should wage jihad or pay off a bank debt.
The permissibility of joining the mujahideen fighters in the Levant.
Waging jihad in Nigeria, Tunisia, Libya, Syria.
Leaving one’s country to wage jihad in another country’s battlefield.
Rulings on joining the armies of Western countries.
Minbar Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad Uses Twitter Apps Twishort And TwitMail Service To Post Longer Texts
Over the past year, the Middle East has seen the emergence of a plethora of apps and other tools which have helped to innovate social media usage in the region. What makes Minbar al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad’s Twitter account unique is its extensive use of such Twitter-specific apps, including Twishort and Twitmail.
MTJ uses Twitter’s Twishort (twishort.com) service to ask questions that link to the answering longer fatwas or rulings. These Twishort tweets often include hashtags such as #jihad, #fatwa, and #mujahideen. Users do not need to register to use Twishort. To use the service, they post longer texts on the Twishort website, and the service then tweets the first 140 characters, including a link to the longer post, from the user’s Twitter account. Most MTJ Twishort links lead to long items directly on MTJ.
