Entries Tagged 'Western Analysts' ↓

International media have been in a frenzy recently over the publication of an English-language jihadi magazine entitled Inspire. The magazine – available here (beware of possible virus) – appears to be the work of the Yemen-based group al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The magazine features the logo of the “al-Malahim foundation”, AQAP’s media arm, and contains articles by and about AQAP members such as Anwar al-Awlaqi and Nasir al-Wahayshi. Unfortunately, only 3 of the 67 pages are legible, as the PDF seems to be corrupt. The coverage has been followed by extensive blogospheric speculation about the document’s significance.

Rarely have I seen so much fuss over such an insignificant event. The hulabaloo says a lot more about Western media than about al-Qaida. Specifically it reveals a level of ignorance about the world of jihadi propaganda that I find very disappointing nine years after 9/11.

For one, Inspire is not – I repeat: not – the first English-language jihadi magazine. It is not as if non-Arabic speaking Muslims have been isolated from the world of jihadi propaganda until now. There have been several online magazines in English in the past, and most have been of higher quality than Inspire. Has everyone forgotten last year’s Jihad Recollections? Besides, there were several English-language paper magazines in the 1990s. London-based GIA supporters had a newsletter in the early 90s, Abu Hamza al-Masri’s “Supporters of Sharia” group had another in the late 90s, and Australian Islamists published the magazine Nida ul Islam from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s.

Second, online jihadi propaganda of other types – such as websites and videos – have been widely available in English for over a decade. (Remember Azzam Publications?). Al-Sahab, the entity that disseminates statements from al-Qaida Central, has been subtitling videos and translating transcripts on a regular basis since at least 2005.

Third, the market for English-language propaganda is not quite as large as people think. Many Muslims living in the West speak the language of their country of origin, so they don’t need English-language material. In fact, many aspiring activists prefer ideological material in Arabic because they consider it more authentic. Those who don’t speak it themselves can rely on friends to convey the content for them, use translation software, or simply watch videos.

Fourth, the question of authenticity is neither soluble nor particularly important. Most commentators address the issue of authenticity in binary terms, as if documents are either fabricated by the CIA or manufactured by the inner core of al-Qaida. This is not how propaganda production works. Virtually no propaganda today is produced by the inner core of militant organizations. Propaganda production is usually outsourced to cells and individuals with varying degrees of contact with senior operatives. In fact, a considerable amount of jihadi media is produced by self-started entrepreneurs with no direct ties to militants whatsoever. Authenticity is therefore most often a matter of degrees, not a question of either-or. Inspire may well be the work of genuine religious activists, but not necessarily of the inner core of AQAP. Without signals intelligence it is extremely difficult to determine the precise nature of the link between the editors and the AQAP leadership.

Judging from the amount of recycled material in Inspire, I would be surprised if the AQAP connection is very strong. Remember that AQAP’s Arabic-language magazine Sada al-Malahim (published since 2008) usually contains much more original material, suggestive of much closer links between editors and operatives. Even if Inspire was produced by AQAP cadres, I am not sure it would tell us anything we didn’t already know. We already know that the group is alive and well, that it has ambitions to recruit in, and strike at, the West, and that it has a very active media apparatus.

Fifth, there is nothing particularly new or uniquely worrying about the content of Inspire, at least judging by the table of contents. The exact same types of articles have appeared in other magazines for years. The article on “make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” is hardly a game changer in the world of terrorism. Tactical instruction manuals abound online and have done so for a decade.

The bottom line is that Inspire is a drop in an ocean of jihadi propaganda. The recent media coverage suggests that otherwise educated observers don’t seem to realise 1) how large and 2) how old that ocean is. I find this both disappointing and disconcerting. For a decade, militants have been pumping out sophisticated propaganda and genuinely dangerous training manuals to a vast Arabic speaking audience. In comes a sloppy magazine in English, and suddenly people speak of a new al-Qaida media offensive. This ignorance and linguistic myopia is inexcusable, since blogs and translation services have made information about jihadi propaganda more available than ever.

In my view, the only interesting thing about the release of Inspire is the fact that the PDF file is corrupt and rumoured to carry a Trojan virus. This is somewhat unusual. However, before we can say what it means, we need to know for sure whether the file was simply corrupt or whether it actually contained a virus. Basically we need more input from people who know the technological side of things (Aaron, have you looked at this?) Personally I don’t see why either jihadis or intelligence services would deliberately disseminate viruses, given that a virus would hurt both friends and enemies. In any case, whoever created Inspire wanted attention, and they certainly got that - in spades.

What’s the point of editing a blog if you can’t use it for shameless self promotion?

My book Jihad in Saudi Arabia is finally out in the US. I am marking the occasion with a book launch at George Washington University today at 4pm, so if you are in the DC area, please come along.

Since the topic of homegrown militancy is very much in focus these days, I wanted to flag a very interesting series of reports on radicalization in various European countries produced by the Centre for Studies of Islamism and Radicalisation at Aarhus University in Denmark. The Centre’s mission is to bridge the gap between the fields of terrorism studies and Islamism studies, and their reports do that quite nicely.

My brilliant friend and countryman Jacob Høigilt has just written an absolutely fascinating report on Islamism and Education in the Palestinian Territories. It’s fieldwork-based, rich  and nuanced, and it undermines widespread assumptions about the link between Islamic education and militancy.

While I am at it, I might as well mention my own completely unrelated CTC paper on the Failure of Jihad in Saudi Arabia.

As regular readers of jihadi literature know, the RAND Corporation is no friend of al-Qa‘ida. Supporters of the latter have a tendency to blame RAND for trying to destroy them and the rest of the world’s Muslims into the bargain. Although RAND is not alone in being perceived by jihadis as an almost conspiratorial observer of every move the jihadis make (West Point’s Counter Terrorism Center, as long-time readers of Jihadica know all too well, is another), it is probably the one that gets criticised most. (If you were not aware of this, see Jarret Brachman’s excellent post on this subject.) Recently, however, one Nur al-Islam posed a question relating to RAND that I had not seen before: Is there a connection between the RAND Corporation and extremists of takfir?

Takfir and takfiris

Takfir, as many readers will know, is the practice of excommunication, i.e. of declaring another Muslim to be an infidel (kafir). Traditionally, Muslim scholars have generally been careful to apply this concept in their dealings with other believers because of the drastic consequences it could have; according to the shari‘a (Islamic law), a Muslim who consciously and willingly abandons Islam or converts to a different religion may be killed. In recent times, many jihadis have argued in favour of a greater application of takfir, applying it to rulers of Muslim countries for not (fully) legislating on the basis of Islamic law. Since many (but certainly not all) jihadis claim applying the shari‘a is part and parcel of being a Muslim, they contend that rulers who refrain from doing so cease to be believers and are, in fact, infidels. Because of this, they subsequently claim that waging jihad against these rulers is legitimate.

According to most Muslim scholars (as well as probably the overwhelming majority of Muslims), this is a rather extreme application of takfir that will only bring about chaos and civil strife. Jihadis who apply takfir this way are therefore often referred to as takfiris or even extremists of takfir (ghulat al-takfir). These labels are fiercely rejected by many jihadis, however, who associate the term ghulat or ghulat al-takfir with Muslims who not only excommunicate political rulers for their failure to apply the shari‘a but also ordinary Muslims who have nothing to do with legislation whatsoever. In some cases, these ghulat even excommunicate entire societies. This latter group of Muslims (i.e. the ones who are willing to apply takfir to large groups of people) is referred to as “the extremists of takfir” even among jihadis and this is also how Nur al-Islam uses the term.

Annihilating global Jihadi-Salafism

One can justifiably wonder what on earth such extremists have to do with RAND. When I first read the title of this piece, I was rather hoping to find a highly intricate and complex reasoning that starts from a ridiculous premise but is nevertheless so logically argued that one is tempted to believe it all as the only possible outcome. This is often the case with jihadi writings, which are sometimes mistakenly dismissed as the rantings of crazy radicals but are actually often cleverly reasoned, despite their horrific message. Although this piece disappointed me in this respect, it is interesting nevertheless.

The author first gives the reader some general information about RAND and continues by stating that the enemy (i.e. RAND) wants to understand its enemy (i.e. jihadis) in order to fight them better. He then goes on, however, to claim that RAND has actively sought the help of other Muslims, including the scholars of al-Azhar in Cairo and the popular Egyptian preacher ‘Amr Khalid, to “annihilate global Jihadi-Salafism”. These were only second choices, however, since the author states that RAND had first asked other, non-violent Salafis to help them with this task but this had failed. He then asks whether RAND’s next step may be to asks extremists in takfir for their help in destroying (the less extreme and supposedly pure) Jihadi-Salafism. The author continues by pointing out that these extremists in takfir not only adhere to extremist teachings but have also done tremendous damage to Jihadi-Salafism by criticising scholars and activists who do stick to the true and correct teachings, like Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Ayman al-Zawahiri and others, including a surprising number of Jordanian Jihadi-Salafis.

Smear campaign

At this point, it becomes clear what the author’s real intention is. He is not at all trying to criticise RAND, as so many jihadis have done before. His real aim is to attack the people he calls extreme takfiris for their criticism of the Jordanian Jihadi-Salafi community supportive of al-Maqdisi. This has been done before, as I have pointed out elsewhere, but Nur al-Islam takes the charge of extreme takfiris to a new level. He claims that, just like RAND tries to destroy Jihadi-Salafism worldwide, so do the extreme takfiris. The author states that these ghulat al-takfir may or may not be aware of RAND’s plans “but unfortunately the result is, in any case, the same”, namely that both of them try to “bring down” Jihadi-Salafism and its leaders.

The author’s seemingly critical piece about RAND thus turns out to be little more than what may be the start of a larger smear campaign against al-Maqdisi’s jihadi enemies. By even suggesting that these supposedly extreme takfiris may possibly be working with the widely-hated RAND, the author tries to undermine their credibility. To me personally, this charge seems a bit too far-fetched to be taken entirely seriously and I therefore doubt whether the accusation will be picked up by like-minded jihadis to frame their opponents as being in bed with RAND. Still, it would be interesting to see if the already impressive array of labels Islamists use to discredit each other is soon going to be joined by another one: Randis.

Many Jihadica readers probably follow the academic journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, but I still want to highlight a couple of new articles that I found especially interesting:

The Internet in Indonesia: Development and Impact of Radical Websites - Jennifer Yang Hui
Jihadi Operational Art: The Coming Wave of Jihadi Strategic Studies - Dima Adamsky

There is a new blog in town: On War and Words. It is produced by military historian Mark Stout, who is probably best known to our readers as the lead author of the Terrorism Perspectives Project (the most comprehensive treatment available of the genre “jihadi strategic studies”). I am very excited that he has decided to blog. Do not be fooled by his understated autobiography - this man really knows a lot about jihadism and an insane number of other subjects.

I’d like to draw our readers’ attention to several interesting new academic publications have come out in the past few weeks:

Nelly Lahoud - In Search of Philosopher-Jihadis: Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi’s Jihadi Philosophy
A Aaron Weisburd - Comparison of Visual Motifs in Jihadi and Cholo Videos on YouTube
Stig Jarle Hansen and Atle Mesøy - The Muslim Brotherhood in the Wider Horn of Africa

Although not central to the Jihadica portfolio, I also strongly recommend the following indispensable contributions to the AfPak debate.

Marc Sageman - Confronting al-Qaeda: Understanding the Threat in Afghanistan
Nir Rosen - Something from Nothing

Yours truly also has a new article out, entitled Jihad, Yes, But Not Revolution: Explaining the Extraversion of Islamist Violence in Saudi Arabia

I have some good news and some bad news for you. The bad news is that I will have to stop blogging for a while, due to a combination of personal and professional reasons. From the end of this month till some time next spring, I will be posting very infrequently, although I will be working behind the scenes as editor.

The good news is that I have recruited a very exciting team of guest bloggers who will be writing for Jihadica a month or two at the time throughout this coming academic year.  I won’t reveal the whole list, but I can say that they are all established and brilliant academics who have been working on jihadism and Islamism for many years. I chose them because I admire their work.

The first one out is Jean-Pierre Filiu (see also here) a professor at Sciences-Po Paris and a leading French expert on jihadism. The scholar-diplomat Filiu has written many books, notably Les Frontieres du Jihad (2006), L’Apocalypse dans l’Islam (2008) and Les neuf vies d’al-Qaida (forthcoming). Fun fact: Filiu is also the French biographer of Jimi Hendrix. Filiu’s many articles include a piece on Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in the latest issue of the Middle East Journal.  He will start blogging for us this week.

Just a quick note to say that there is a new article on the idelogy of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi in the latest issue of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. The author is of course Joas Wagemakers, the world’s leading Maqdisi expert and an occasional Jihadica commentator. While I am at it, I should mention that Wagemakers published two other excellent articles on related topics last year, one on al-Maqdisi’s Qur’an interpretation and another on al-wala wa’l-bara in Salafi discourse.

For more relevant academic articles, see the indispensible overview of current contents of periodicals on the Middle East by the GLORIA Center in Herzlia, Israel.

On the current affairs side of things, there are two new articles on the Bin Nayif operation. Greg Johnsen of Waq al-Waq has an excellent piece in the National which gives you the big picture of the operation. Then there is a great analysis by Saud al-Sarhan in the Saudi newspaper al-Watan. Al-Sarhan traces in detail the long history of Saudi al-Qaida’s targeting of government figures, and argues that the main novelty in the Bin Nayif attack was the tactics. The attack does not herald a new wave of violence, he concludes (and I agree). Al-Sarhan, for those of you who don’t know him, is a Saudi intellectual and PhD candidate at Exeter University in the UK. He writes frequently in Arab media and occasionally in the Western press (see e.g. this New York Times piece).