 In the ever-changing conflict between the West and Islamist radicals, one front – the Internet – has emerged as a major battlefield. And, while in many areas of this frontier the Islamists strut about unchecked, one man, code-name th3j35t3r ("The Jester"), has made it his point to strike back with (cyber) force. As first reported by the security blog ThreatChaos, "The Jester" made a different kind of New Year's resolution than most: to wage war on jihadist and pro-Islamist websites and forums by systematically disrupting their servers via denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Also unlike most, he has made good on his promise thus far – and there is no sign that he will let up. "The Jester has been documenting his attacks against www.alemarah.info, www.radicalislam.org, islamicpoint.net, www.almaghrib.org, www.as-ansar.com, www.islamicnetwork.com, www.islamicawakening.com, [and] www.ansarnet.info, since the beginning of 2010," according to the ThreatChaos report.
Research and reports by the Investigative Project on Terrorism have verified the radical nature of some of The Jester's targets. In one article posted on the Islamic Awakening website, author Abuz-Zubair drafts an introduction to a piece by Osama bin Laden spiritual mentor, Abdullah Azzam, in which he chastises those who assert that jihad can mean anything other than armed conflict. Zubair writes: "[O]ne cannot perform Jihad by giving lectures, feeding the family or serving the parents, rather Jihad can only be performed in the field of al-Qitaal (lit. fighting), as the sharee'ah dictates. Therefore when the word Jihad is used in the Qur'an and the Sunnah, in a general sense then it means Qitaal, and when it is mentioned in its linguistic sense (as in to strive with your parents and family etc.) then that is regarded to be Muqayyid (restricted) by the rules of Usoolul-Fiqh. […] Unfortunately, whenever Allah guides the Muslim youth to get up and fulfil [sic.] the obligation and the Sunnah of Qitaal in the way of Allah, we find some people amongst the Muslims hindering the youth away from the legal Jihaad to linguistic Jihaad, which is what lead me to translate this piece of work, so that it may be beneficial to the Muslims in general and a final blow to the obstacles in the path of the youths seeking martyrdom in the way of Allah..." [emphasis added] Similarly, the Al Maghrib Institute and its leadership have shown a long and radical history of support for violence. In one posting on islamicawakening.com, Al Maghrib Director Muhammad Ash-Shareef espoused attacks against those in the Russian army and their families: "O Allah! destroy the Russian army. O Allah! Make the ground shake in an earthquake from under them. O Allah, they do not glorify you, show them the blackest day of their lives, as you showed the People of Aad and Thamud. O Allah, destroy them all, not leaving anyone to escape. O Allah make their wives widows, their children orphans. O Allah! Grant victory to our brothers and sisters in Chechnya and everywhere in the world, Yaa Allah!" Al Maghrib officials are also on record making calls to dominate all others throughout the world. So, while The Jester's targets may indeed be troubling, should this cyber vigilante be given free rein to wage a one-man war against jihadists and extremists? Is he possibly doing more harm than good? One commenter (alias: danstermeister) on the popular social news website, Reddit, argues just that point: • "Using exploits means uncovering them. He's going to use up the ace-in-the-hole moves counter-intelligence already knows about these sites but were not using until those moments they felt they needed to be used (like interrupting comms [communications] about/during an impending attack). By using the exploits, the bad guys now have something to review about their systems and fix. Now counter-intel can't use that tool in the future when they need it. Bad guys:1, Counter-Intel:0. • Attacking sites drives bad guys back into the shadows. They already know they're being watched on these sites (at least, the guys that matter), but if they are now harassed, they won't even both on those sites, and they'll move to more inconspicuous locations on the web. • Attacking anything just creates more complexities for the actual people tasked to fight this. As has been mentioned already by others, this guy is making things more difficult for the officially tasked people that may be losing inside contacts, methods of access, and even their own identities (as things are reviewed post-attack by the bad guys). By stirring the hornet's nest, all he's done is wake up the hornets, not cause them one bit of actual anguish or real delay." On the other side of the argument, there are those who might make the case that such targets are not within the explicit domain of governments to monitor and disrupt. Moreover, governments often times are overwhelmed and, simply put, will fall short in the cyber-tug-of-war. The impact of such vigilante attacks in rendering radical Islamist websites impotent serves a purpose of its own in sending a message that not everyone will tolerate the hateful, and often times pro-violence, message. Wherever one may stand on the issue of cyber-vigilantism – independent citizens taking matters into their own hands without the requisite knowledge of ongoing investigations utilizing that open-source data – it is clear that matters are shaping up just as Dorothy Denning predicted in an August 2008 article in Scientific American: "Soon, every interstate conflict, however minor, may be accompanied by some form of hacker war that is beyond the control of ruling governments." IPT
 by Lt.Col.Ralph Peters
Our terrorist enemies are out-thinking us. It’s not only embarrassing, but deadly. The Taliban’s latest innovation was on display again last week, when a suicide bomber, reportedly garbed in an Afghan army uniform, killed seven Americans, including a CIA mission chief. The terrorists are “inside the wire.” Everywhere. From eastern Afghanistan to Texas. And we’re stalled. For all of our wealth, technology and power, our enemies have the strategic and psychological initiative. The low-tech nature of most reported combat in our recent conflicts obscures the advent of four powerful innovations in warfare. Unfortunately, three of those revolutionary techniques belong to our enemies. The single breakthrough we’ve exploited has been Unmanned Aerial Vehicles — UAVs, commonly known as “drones.” They’re a terrific stand-off targeting tool. Our enemies, though, have mastered new forms of the tactical fight — with strategic effects. They still lose every classic firefight, but they are pioneering the means to win without directly confronting our combat troops. The first terrorist and insurgent innovation of this conflict era was the bulk employment of suicide bombers, dirt-cheap weapons with a high probability of success — the poor man’s precision arsenal. Their second innovation was another cheap-but-powerful tool, the Improvised Explosive Device, the IED or roadside bomb. We still can’t beat it. Then, over the last year or so, we’ve seen the ever more frequent use of their most insidious psychological weapon: the suicide assassin disguised as “one of ours.” This is an anti-morale nuke. Our linchpin effort in Afghanistan is the development of Afghan security forces. (The Obama Doctrine: “When they stand up, we’ll run like hell.”) And building up the Afghan army and police relies on trust between our trainers and advisers and “their” Afghans — as well as between Afghans themselves. Last year, we saw incident after incident in which a Taliban cadre within the Afghan security forces gunned down our officers at meetings (the Brits took a really bad hit), turned their weapons on our combat troops or, most devastatingly, blew themselves up when we embraced them as comrades. Don’t let this weapon’s low-tech nature fool you. This is the big one. President Obama’s desperate “strategy” for Afghanistan relies on building trust — between Afghans and their government, but above all on the security front. Our enemies have done what we refuse to do. They’ve analyzed the problem objectively and engineered ruthless solutions. And we won’t even block their Internet sites. We make up fairy tales about the power of development projects to deter religious fanatics. We impose rules of engagement on our troops that protect our enemies. We ground our air power. We grant terrorists “legal” rights with no basis in existing law. And our enemies do whatever it takes to win. I want to see every one of those enemies dead. But I have to acknowledge their commitment, their maddened courage and their genius at waging war for peanuts. Our troops in the field know all too well what a self-imposed mess we’re in. But the gulf between our grunts and their generals is immense and growing wider. It’s a (literally) bloody disgrace that our ragtag enemies innovate faster and more effectively than our armed forces and the legion of overpaid contractors behind them. They ask themselves, “What works?” We ask ourselves what the lawyers will say. The crucial difference? Our enemies believe in victory, even if we don’t. Exile Street
 by Anna Mahjar-Barducci Do you believe that during World War II, Americans would have tolerated a Nazi radio station broadcasting from the middle of the US? “We need to wage war against extremist websites,” comes a call from Abdul Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, the Saudi director-general of Al-Arabiya TV, and former editor-in-chief of the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. "After years of violent war,” continues Al-Rashed, “the image has become clear to everybody today; that Al Qaeda is more of an ideological problem than an organizational one. While there is a lot to do on the ground to eradicate this malignant disease, the first priority should be to confront extremist ideology, its theorists, and its scholars before its students and its soldiers.
They are the secret to the organization and the reason for its continuation and its ability to recruit people and raise money, despite the great losses it has suffered all over the world.” It is hard not to share such a view. In fact, after the attempted attack on Northwest Flight 253, by young Nigerian terrorist Umar Farooq Abdulmutallab, attention turned towards the American born Sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki, presently hiding in Yemen, and the same Sheikh who instructed Major Nidal Hasan, to commit the Fort Hood killings. On November 9, Al-Awlaki published an article on his website, Anwar-alawlaki.com, in which he called Hasan a "hero" and "a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people." Al-Awlaki hit the headlines again last week, when authorities announced that he had influenced Abdulmutallab, who had repeatedly visited Anwar Al-Awlaki's website for inspiration, as it was indicated by his computer records that showed a high traffic to that site. A connection has also been shown between Al-Awlaki's online presence and the five Fort Dix would-be bombers, as well as the 7 July 2005 London bombings, when a series of coordinated suicide attacks on London’s public transport system killed 56 people including the bombers, and injured around 700 people. But it is not just Al-Awlaki. The jihadi magazine Talae' Khorasan ("Pioneers of Khorasan"), which deals with jihad and the mujahideen in Afghanistan, published a few days ago an interview with "Abu Dajana Al-Khorsani" - who last week carried out the bombing of the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan. In the interview, Al-Khorsani praised those who write on the jihad forums to wage jihad for Allah, and to fight the tyrannical rulers who harm Islam. Al-Khorsani praised the Al-Hesbah forum in poarticular, calling it his spiritual home and "the school that trained the writers to be experts." He added that the forum writers who influenced him include Louis Attiya Allah and Muhhib Al-Rasoul. Examples could continue endlessly. The point, however, is that Islamic forums on the Internet have become an essential tool for global jihadists. Through the web, not only do they make threats, but also exchange information, impart orders and delineate strategies.
Last September, the Emir of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasir Al-Wahishi, wrote about bombing U.S. airplanes, suggesting the use of small quantities of explosives than can pass through checkpoints: "It requires no great effort on your part, nor large sums, to manufacture 10 grams, more or less, of explosives. Do not search long for the materials, since they are in your mother's kitchen and are ready at hand, in whatever city you are.” Exactly what Abdulmutallab did on Northwest flight 253. Most of these forums are hosted in the US. American authorities close down jihadist sites only when there is a proven link with some terrorist attack, but otherwise they tolerate such forums even when they are calling people to jihad, expressing support for martyrdom attacks, and encouraging the killing of American soldiers. This is utter nonsense. The war on terrorism is a global war, involving each of us wherever we are, not just confined to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. The enemy can hit us anywhere, whether we are at work, or in a subway or on an airplane. We are under attack. So why then don’t we shut down their means of communication? Because, in so doing, we would probably imperil somebody’s right to free expression. We are facing a global movement wholly uninterested in anything resembling dialogue, and that will use any means necessary to kill as many of us as possible. Still it seems as though our main preoccupation is to preserve its rights. Voltaire said, “I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This is clearly one of the founding values of our civilization -- but what should one do when extending this right to people who are trying to destroy us means transforming freedom of expression into a suicide pact? Hudson New York 
 By Diana Mukkaled Al Qaeda has grown weak. It is nothing more than a pursued leadership, a disintegrated entity and an ideology struggling to survive on the internet. This has been repeated over the past few years. However, a couple of incidents that took place recently have opened the world’s eyes to an alarming resurrection of Al Qaeda in several places around the world including Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan and the US.
Perhaps the most absurd attack of all was the suicide bombing that targeted a volleyball court in Pakistan. What awakened Al Qaeda in such a vicious manner? Was Al Qaeda dormant in the first place? Specialists, politicians and media figures are now trying to answer these unnerving questions.
What concerns us in this article is the renewed interest in the internet as a means for spreading terrorism, especially after unearthing a link between Omar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, the young Nigerian who almost blew up an American airliner bound for Detroit, and Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al Awlaqi, who is suspected of having links to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to Malik Nadal Hassan, the US army Major who killed 13 of his fellow troops at a US military base a few weeks ago. At one point when Al Qaeda’s activities on the ground dwindled for logistic, financial and operational reasons, the internet remained its only stage for vital interaction.
Furthermore, a lot of material that did not find its way to- or was blocked by-traditional media managed to find plenty of space on the internet and so Al Qaeda’s online collection increased dramatically. Any web user would come across books, journals, poems, detailed events and video clips of terrorist operations all posted on the net. On Jihadist sites, people can read a complete body of works compiled over the years of operations carried out by Al Qaeda in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and other places. These works have built up a large and extensive archive that is being circulated and downloaded using interactive technology.
The archive is being presented as eye-catching, cross-border material or a collection of heroic deeds spearheaded by faithful believers. Samples of such terrorist operations are being narrated in a beckoning style that appeals to certain segments that are impressed by such stories. It is true that Al Qaeda has become part of the divisions and score-settling bloodbaths in Yemen and Iraq. However, this does not absolve the international community of its responsibility [not to allow] the rampant spread of Al Qaeda's ideology through the internet, all the way from Indonesia to the United States. Some might say that if it weren’t for the internet, Al Qaeda would not exist. This statement, though it requires some scrutiny, is correct in a way. The internet enabled Al Qaeda to survive despite its fall. While Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al Zawaheri were lying low and were completely unable to administer anything, Al Qaeda forums were busy providing those wandering aimlessly with what the leadership of the organization had failed to supply in terms of ideas, plans, methods of operation, and training, particularly where the making of explosives was concerned. Today Al Qaeda is back, thanks to the unlimited time and space the internet has provided.
It is not enough to search through cyber space to try and understand how Al Qaeda operates. It is imperative that we first recognize the enormity of our divisions and internal rifts that continue to aggravate and nourish Al Qaeda. Asharq Alawsat
 Just kidding regarding the "shock." We've been studying this for quite some time. Having originally learned about efforts to monitor, expose, and shut down sites primarily in the Web 1.0 environment from our friends at sites like Jawa Report and Internet Haganah, we saw a new frontier of problems in the Web 2.0 environment. Whereas many groups were just focusing on jihadist content, we saw just as many concerns with antisemitic content.
Besides the people already interested in these dangerous developments, very few even paid attention when we found and shut down the Mumbai terrorists on Facebook
Since going public with our activities in May 2008, the JIDF has been responsible for finding, exposing and shutting down thousands of antisemitic and jihadist Facebook groups and pages, impacting hundreds of thousands of antisemitic and jihadist Facebook members.
We have also found, exposed, and shut down thousands of jihadist and antisemitic channels and videos on YouTube. The evidence of our effort can be found all over our website.
Are we bragging? No. Our work is just a drop in the bucket of what must be done. Our work needs funding in order to continue and to expand, or else we will continue to see antisemitism grow stronger and more problems of young Americans being recruited for jihad, as we see now:
Washington Post:
Five Northern Virginia men who were arrested in Pakistan last week as part of a terrorism probe appeared in court for the first time Tuesday and were ordered held for up to 10 days of interrogation, Pakistani officials said.
The men, ages 18 to 24, traveled overseas just after Thanksgiving without telling their families, triggering an international missing-persons case. Police and intelligence officials have said the men were in contact for months with a Taliban recruiter and were trying to join up with al-Qaeda.
They were hoping to work with jihadist groups and battle U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials have said. U.S. law enforcement officials are considering criminal charges against the men but have said nothing is imminent.
The five -- Ramy Zamzam, 22; Ahmad A. Minni, 20; Umar Chaudhry, 24; Waqar Khan, 22; and Aman Hassan Yemer, 18 -- are all Muslims from the Alexandria area. They were transferred Saturday from Sargodha to Lahore, where they were being questioned by the FBI. Pakistani officials had said they wanted more time to interrogate the men about their possible radical ties in Pakistan.
The detainees are accused of using Facebook and YouTube Web sites to try and connect with extremist groups in Pakistan and are said to have established contact with a Taliban recruiter. They have not been charged with any crime.
Please note, content which promotes hatred and violence is against the TOS of companies like Facebook and YouTube, which we have found, for the most part, to be extremely negligent in dealing with these serious concerns.
Facebook especially seems more concerned about targeting Jewish, pro-Israel advocates than they are about removing antisemites, Holocaust deniers, and terrorists from their platform.
 The popular microblogging site Twitter was briefly shut down after a group apparently calling themselves the Iranian Cyber Army launched attack on the site.
Visitors to the site found that Twitter's homepage had been replaced by a page showing a green flag under red text reading "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army." The website's official blog acknowledged the disruption on Friday, but gave no details as to how the site had been been hacked and who had carried out the attack.
Biz Stone, the site’s co-founder, wrote on the blog: "As we tweeted a bit ago, Twitter's DNS [Domain Name Service] records were temporarily compromised tonight but have now been fixed." "We will update with more information and details once we've investigated more fully," he said. Technology blogs including TechCrunch said Twitter went down around 06:00 GMT for about an hour.
Screengrabs posted on the Flickr photosharing site showed text on the Iranian Cyber Army's replacement page which seemed to criticise reported efforts by the US state department to influence Twitter to postpone maintenance work during recent protests against the Tehran government.
"USA think they controlling and managing internet by their access [sic], but they don't, we control and manage internet by our power," the text said. "Now which country in embargo list? Iran? USA? We push them in embargo list. Take care," it read.
Iranian demonstrators protesting against the results of June presidential elections used Twitter extensively, both to organise marches and to release information about their movement. Their use of the microblogging site led some to dub the action against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the re-elected Iranian president, a "Twitter revolution" and made the Iranian election one of the top "trends" on the site this year.
TechCrunch reported that the disruption also affected Google searches for Twitter.
It posted a screengrab showing that searches for a time returned a result reading "This website has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army," it said. TechCrunch translated the text as saying that it was a reaction to Twitter's interference in the internal affairs of "my country", which it said the US authorities had ordered.
The Iranian authorities repeatedly criticised the US and its allies for "interfering" in the country's internal affairs as the mass protests took place following the disputed election. Al Jazeera
 Thomas L. Friedman Let’s not fool ourselves. Whatever threat the real Afghanistan poses to U.S. national security, the “Virtual Afghanistan” now poses just as big a threat. The Virtual Afghanistan is the network of hundreds of jihadist Web sites that inspire, train, educate and recruit young Muslims to engage in jihad against America and the West. Whatever surge we do in the real Afghanistan has no chance of being a self-sustaining success, unless there is a parallel surge — by Arab and Muslim political and religious leaders — against those who promote violent jihadism on the ground in Muslim lands and online in the Virtual Afghanistan. Last week, five men from northern Virginia were arrested in Pakistan, where they went, they told Pakistani police, to join the jihad against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. They first made contact with two extremist organizations in Pakistan by e-mail in August.
As The Washington Post reported on Sunday: “ ‘Online recruiting has exponentially increased, with Facebook, YouTube and the increasing sophistication of people online,’ a high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official said. ... ‘Increasingly, recruiters are taking less prominent roles in mosques and community centers because places like that are under scrutiny. So what these guys are doing is turning to the Internet,’ said Evan Kohlmann, a senior analyst with the U.S.-based NEFA Foundation, a private group that monitors extremist Web sites.” The Obama team is fond of citing how many “allies” we have in the Afghan coalition. Sorry, but we don’t need more NATO allies to kill more Taliban and Al Qaeda. We need more Arab and Muslim allies to kill their extremist ideas, which, thanks to the Virtual Afghanistan, are now being spread farther than ever before. Only Arabs and Muslims can fight the war of ideas within Islam.
We had a civil war in America in the mid-19th century because we had a lot of people who believed bad things — namely that you could enslave people because of the color of their skin. We defeated those ideas and the individuals, leaders and institutions that propagated them, and we did it with such ferocity that five generations later some of their offspring still have not forgiven the North. Islam needs the same civil war. It has a violent minority that believes bad things: that it is O.K. to not only murder non-Muslims — “infidels,” who do not submit to Muslim authority — but to murder Muslims as well who will not accept the most rigid Muslim lifestyle and submit to rule by a Muslim caliphate. What is really scary is that this violent, jihadist minority seems to enjoy the most “legitimacy” in the Muslim world today. Few political and religious leaders dare to speak out against them in public. Secular Arab leaders wink at these groups, telling them: “We’ll arrest if you do it to us, but if you leave us alone and do it elsewhere, no problem.” How many fatwas — religious edicts — have been issued by the leading bodies of Islam against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda? Very few. Where was the outrage last week when, on the very day that Iraq’s Parliament agreed on a formula to hold free and fair multiparty elections — unprecedented in Iraq’s modern history — five explosions set off by suicide bombers hit ministries, a university and Baghdad’s Institute of Fine Arts, killing at least 127 people and wounding more than 400, many of them kids? Not only was there no meaningful condemnation emerging from the Muslim world — which was primarily focused on resisting Switzerland’s ban on new mosque minarets — there was barely a peep coming out of Washington. President Obama expressed no public outrage. It is time he did. “What Muslims were talking about last week were the minarets of Switzerland, not the killings of people in Iraq or Pakistan,” noted Mamoun Fandy, a Middle East expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. “People look for red herrings when they don’t want to look inward, when they don’t want to summon the moral courage to produce the counter-fatwa that would say: stabilizing Iraq is an Islamic duty and bringing peace to Afghanistan is part of the survival of the Islamic umma,” or community. So please tell me, how are we supposed to help build something decent and self-sustaining in Afghanistan and Pakistan when jihadists murder other Muslims by the dozens and no one really calls them out? A corrosive mind-set has taken hold since 9/11. It says that Arabs and Muslims are only objects, never responsible for anything in their world, and we are the only subjects, responsible for everything that happens in their world. We infantilize them. Arab and Muslims are not just objects. They are subjects. They aspire to, are able to and must be challenged to take responsibility for their world. If we want a peaceful, tolerant region more than they do, they will hold our coats while we fight, and they will hold their tongues against their worst extremists. They will lose, and we will lose — here and there, in the real Afghanistan and in the Virtual Afghanistan. NYT
 By Joseph Weber Muslim leaders said Friday the five American youths arrested in Pakistan for allegedly attempting to join the al Qaeda network were lured through the Internet into embracing terrorist ideology and that they will wage a cyber counterattack. "This is a wake-up call involving our youths — Muslims and Catholics," Imam Mahdi Bray said outside the Islamic Circle of North American Center, the Northern Virginia mosque in which the men worshipped and participated in youth-group activities. "They see great injustices, and their emotions and passions are stirred, as they should be. … But we are determined not to let religious extremists exploit the vulnerability of our youth through slick, seductive and destructive propaganda on the Internet. We will respond in kind on the Internet. Silence in cyberspace is not an option." Pakistani officials say the men allegedly asked an al Qaeda-linked group for training but were rejected because they lacked credentials. They reportedly attempted first to contact jihadist groups in August through e-mails, then Facebook and YouTube. The men, ages 19 to 25, then went to Pakistan to set up meetings. U.S. official: Pakistan to deport U.S. youths The men disappeared last month from the Washington, D.C., area. One left behind a militaristic video that prompted family members to contact the FBI. Pakistani residents became suspicious of the young men and told police, who arrested them Tuesday in a home belonging to an uncle of one of the suspects. The men, all U.S. citizens, have been identified as Eman Yasir, Waqar Hasan, Umer Farooq, Ahmed Mimi and Ramy Zamzam, a dental student at Howard University and the group's alleged ringleader. They allegedly told Pakistani authorities at first they were in the country to attend a wedding. Mr. Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, said the small Alexandria mosque where the young men met taught lawfulness and dignity, which he called the "core values of our faith." He and other religious leaders praised family members for taking swift action when their sons disappeared. "This could have been much worse," Mr. Bray said. Essam Tellawi, a spokesman for the Islamic center, said the mosque teaches the Koran and the teaching of the prophet Muhammad, including moderation, tolerance and peaceful interactions with neighbors. "Pray for the five families," said Mr. Tellawi, dressed warmly outside the mosque on a cold, gray afternoon. "They are going through severe hardship. Pray [the men] get back safely and for a speedy resolution to this matter." He declined to discuss specifics about the case, saying the matter remains under investigation. Mustafa Abu Maryem, the mosque's youth coordinator, said he never suspected the young men of "bad behavior" and that they are "fun-loving" and have a "bright future." "I hope all of this is not what it seems to be," he said. Mr. Maryem said group activities focused on community events and sports, which were meant to be "positive forces in the young men's lives." He also said discussions included ones on the positive aspects of marriage and the evils of gangs. "We never talked about politics or fighting — directly or indirectly," Mr. Maryem said. "Our focus was community, community, community." Washington Times H/T: ROP
 Fort Hood shows us that Internet jihad is not a myth. BY EVAN KOHLMANN Upon learning of the reported "missed" link between the alleged culprit responsible for the massacre at Ft. Hood -- Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan -- and Anwar al Awlaki, my heart sank for a multitude of reasons.
Al Awlaki is an infamous character in the halls of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and he has been for several years at least. The cleric's recurring presence again in the Ft. Hood case seems to be powerful and disturbing evidence of how fringe extremists -- who otherwise might remain in obscurity with no real means of living out their private jihadi fantasies -- are quite literally being equipped for battle by so-called "theological" advisors known only to them through the Internet. In short, it is a reminder of how real online terrorism networks have become. In mid-2008, I was invited by the FBI to look at the voluminous evidence they had gathered against a group of defendants who were caught plotting to attack various military installations on the East Coast, including Fort Dix in New Jersey. At first, I was a skeptic. Most of the men under scrutiny were Westernized Albanian Muslims who spoke little to no Arabic, were into hip-hop music, and were working as pizza delivery boys and taxi drivers.
They didn't have any obvious connection to al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, they had never visited a real terrorist training camp, and they cut a pretty kooky appearance. They certainly didn't seem to fit the classical terrorist stereotype. But to my surprise, this motley crew of would-be homegrown killers turned out to be much more sophisticated than I had initially given them credit for. Read more at Foreign Policy
Court wades into brewing battle over rights of Internet journalists July 04 | By Drew Zahn When Internet journalist Joe Kaufman wrote an article exposing terrorist connections in two American Muslim groups, he was sued by a swarm of Islamic organizations, none of which he had mentioned in his online article. The technique is called by some "legal jihad" or "Islamist lawfare," and the Thomas More Law Center, which is representing Kaufman in the lawsuit, claims Muslim advocates are using the strategy to bully online journalists into silence. "The lawsuit against Kaufman was funded by the Muslim Legal Fund for America. The head of that organization, Khalil Meek, admitted on a Muslim radio show that lawsuits were being filed against Kaufman and others to set an example," claims a Thomas More statement on the case. "Indeed, for the last several years, Muslim groups in the U.S. have engaged in the tactic of filing meritless lawsuits to silence any public discussion of Islamic terrorist threats." The organizations suing Kaufman also sought to legally deny him certain legal protections granted to traditional journalists, claiming that as an Internet writer, his right to seek a quick and inexpensive dismissal of the case didn't apply. The case set up a battle, not only between Islamic advocates and those that would question their political connections, but also between organizations that fly low under the mass media's radar, enjoying little public scrutiny, and the burgeoning field of Internet journalism that often investigates places the mainstream media ignores. In an unanimous decision from a three-judge panel of the Texas Second Court of Appeals, however, not only did the court rule that the Muslim organizations had no basis for claiming defamation – since Kaufman didn't name or point to them in his article – but the judges also declared that online journalists do merit the same status and legal protections that their more traditional media peers enjoy. Though the case against Kaufman is therefore dismissed for now, the Law Center reports the seven Muslim organizations have filed an appeal, continuing their quest for, according to court documents, "injunctive relief related to Kaufman's existing and future Internet publications." As WND reported, Kaufman's troubles began when he wrote an article for the online FrontPage Magazine in 2007, criticizing two Islamic groups for hosting a "Muslim Family Day" at Six Flags over Texas, a Dallas-area amusement park. The Islamic Circle of North America and the Islamic Association of North Texas, Kaufman revealed, had funneled money to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and al-Qaida. "While using images of cartoon characters and sponsoring events at amusement parks may seem innocuous, the danger that the Islamic Circle of North America poses to the United States, Canada and others is clear," Kaufman wrote. "As a faction of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization looks to impose Islam on Western society, and as a donor to a terrorist organization, the group is a willing participant in the act of violence." And while neither the ICNA nor the IANT claimed libel, seven other Muslim organizations – the Islamic Society of Arlington, Texas, Islamic Center of Irving, DFW Islamic Educational Center, Inc., Dar Elsalam Islamic Center, Al Hedayah Islamic Center, Islamic Association of Tarrant County and Muslim American Society of Dallas – cried foul, bringing the defamation suit against Kaufman. Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented, "This frivolous lawsuit is an example of the legal jihad being waged by radical Islamic organizations throughout our nation. These lawsuits are aimed at stifling the free speech rights of Americans who dare to expose their agenda. They intentionally file lawsuits to intimidate reporters who seek to expose their agenda. By making it costly to defend against their lawsuits, they hope journalists will refrain from writing about the threat to our nation." The opinion of the court, written by Justice Terrie Livingston, overturned a lower court's denial of Kaufmann's motion to dismiss the libel claim before a time-consuming and expensive trial. Listing seven different reasons for the court's decision, Justice Livingston wrote, "We conclude that an Internet author's status as a member of the electronic media should be adjudged by the same principles that courts should use to determine the author's status under more traditional media." The court did not, however, uphold that all Internet writers – such as bloggers – should be afforded the protections traditional journalists enjoy. Kaufman, the court noted, has written for a variety of national publications since 1995, has appeared on several television news networks and in writing for FrontPage Magazine, was writing for a separate online news source with the freedom to accept or reject his article. The court concluded, "We believe that these facts and circumstances, establishing Kaufman's journalistic background and his notoriety outside of the parameters of the article and graphic at issue and FrontPage Magazine's broad readership and its existence as a news/commentary medium that is independent from Kaufman's articles, are sufficient to qualify Kaufman as a member of the electronic or print media and to qualify FrontPage Magazine as an electronic or print medium." Furthermore, the court ruled, that the Muslim organizations' contention that an Internet author could "never" qualify as a member of the media "would make as little sense as an inverse rule that a print author (such as someone distributing their own photocopied musings) would always qualify as such." Source: WorldNetDaily
 By David A. Patten
“Powered by U.S. technology” could be the motto of scores of jihadist Web sites that rely on U.S.-based Web hosting companies to help them sow their seeds of terror around the globe.
Nobody knows how many Web sites that are promulgating extreme views rely on U.S. servers, but Rita Katz, co-founder of a firm that tracks Muslim extremist groups, tells the Washington Post it’s not uncommon.
“The relatively cheap expense and high quality of U.S. servers seems to attract jihadists,” Katz told the newspaper.
Texas Web hosting company ThePlanet recently learned from a blogger that it was inadvertently hosting a Taliban site that claimed to represent the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” the Post reports.
ThePlanet has since deactivated the Web site, which soon resurfaced under a slightly different name.
U.S. hosting companies say it is impossible to monitor all the sites they do business with.
Some security experts say allowing the sites to continue to operate, and monitoring them, is actually a better idea than blocking them altogether.
“You can learn a lot from the enemy by watching them chat online,” Martin Libicki, a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corp., tells the Post.
The newspaper’s report illustrates the growing problem of monitoring terrorist traffic as the Internet continues to grow. It now has over 1.6 billion users globally, according to InternetWorldStats.com. Source: Newsmax
 By Danny Brierley
AN internet recruitment drive by extremist preachers aimed at young Muslims in London is set to undermine the Government's aim to make it harder for radicals to enter the country.
The Home Office wants to introduce rules making it easier to bar preachers of hate from Britain.
But a Standard investigation has uncovered dozens of YouTube videos filmed by a radical Islamic sect and its exiled leader Omar Bakri Mohammed as part of its latest recruitment drive.
The clips by Islam for the UK include messages and interviews with Lebanon-based Omar Bakri, the former head of disbanded group al-Muhajiroun.
"This is the same network that was banned under anti-terrorism legislation in 2006 [al-Muhajiroun] in all but name," said Neil Doyle, a researcher who has tracked the internet activities of radicals on the internet for 15 years.
"The signs are that it has embarked on a major recruitment drive. Omar Bakri is reaching a wider audience on the internet than he would do if he was in the UK."
Some of the films were recorded at a youth conference in Walthamstow last month.
The Home Office said: "We cannot stop radical preachers reaching Britain through the internet." YouTube said it was investigating the videos. Source: The Evening StandardOmar Bakri Muhammed
Latest recipient of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award
 Thursday, September 11, 2008
YouTube has heeded the call to stop featuring radical Islamists' video clips.
"Google's community guidelines for YouTube will now bar videos that incite violence, in addition to videos that contain hate speech and gratuitous violence," Sen. Joe Lieberman said in Washington on Thursday.
"YouTube was being used by Islamist terrorist organizations to recruit and train followers via the Internet and to incite terrorist attacks around the world, including right here in the United States, and Google should be commended for recognizing that," he said. "I expect these stronger community guidelines to decrease the number of videos on YouTube produced by Al Qaeda and affiliated Islamist terrorist organizations."
Lieberman (I-Conn.), head of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent an open letter in May to Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google, which owns YouTube, asking him to yank "videos produced by Al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups" off the site.
At the time, Google said it had taken down about 80 clips that featured gratuitous violence and hate speech, but added that "there's nothing in our guidelines that says something produced by a certain group gets censored."
The "Community Guidelines" on the video-sharing site, updated Sept. 10 according to the official YouTube blog, now read in part:
"Things like predatory behavior, stalking, threats, harassment, intimidation, invading privacy, revealing other people’s personal information, and inciting others to commit violent acts or to violate the Terms of Use are taken very seriously. Anyone caught doing these things may be permanently banned from YouTube."
A brief search of YouTube found some radical Islamist preachings, including some from Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader Ayman al Zawahiri, but no violent clips.
However, clips of bombings, beheadings and other violence committed by radical Islamists are readily available elsewhere on the Web.
FOXNews' Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.
Source: FoxNews
RIYADH (AFP) - Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday it has arrested five people who used the Internet to propagate extremism and incite youths to go to troubled areas, a reference to supporters of Al-Qaeda. Each of the three Saudis and two foreign residents used various aliases to promote "misleading propaganda through the Internet and ... incite young generations and facilitate their departure to areas of sedition," the interior ministry said, apparently referring to places like Iraq. The terminology used in the statement, which was carried by the official SPA news agency, suggested that the five were supporters of Al-Qaeda, whom Riyadh has been battling since they launched a wave of attacks in 2003. Such Internet users are usually referred to as "jihadis" on Islamist militant websites. Read more ...Source: AFP
 Website dedicated to the late Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki and run by the PIJ. Source: Shariah Finance Watch
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In the ever-changing conflict between the West and Islamist radicals, one front – the Internet – has emerged as a major battlefield.
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