IS-related investigation in Minnesota

Star Tribune, Father, hacker and jujitsu instructor among Minnesotans under investigation for ISIS ties Interesting in its discussion on ongoing investigations, which have an online element.

Report: Roots of violent radicalisation

Home Affairs Committee - Nineteenth Report. Roots of violent radicalisation, 31 Jan 2012

Commons Select Committee, MPs urge internet providers to tackle on-line extremism  "The Committee concludes that the internet is one of the most significant vehicles for promoting violent radicalism - more so than prisons, universities or places of worship, although direct, personal contact with radicals is in many cases also a significant factor. Witnesses told the Committee that the internet played a part in most, if not all, cases of violent radicalisation."

smh.com.au, UK lawmakers: Most radicalism linked to Internet, 6 Feb 2012

Royal Canadian Mounted Police report - Youth Online and at Risk: Radicalization Facilitated by the Internet

The National, Extremists using web tools to recruit kids: RCMP, 6 Jun 2011 "A new RCMP report says extremist groups — from Muslim radicals to violent animal rights activists to white supremacists — are employing increasingly sophisticated multimedia tools to attract a young, computer-savvy generation of followers."

Here's the link page for the report:

Royal Canadian Mounted Police report - Youth Online and at Risk: Radicalization Facilitated by the Internet 

I have yet to read this report.

Al-Qaeda has sleeper cells across west Africa: experts

AFP: Al-Qaeda has sleeper cells across west Africa: experts, 26 May 2011 "Al-Qaeda makes use of sleeper cells in several West African countries, security experts said Thursday after a regional meeting on terrorism and trans-border crime in Gambia.

""In countries like Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, across the sub-region, we have Al-Qaeda sleeper cells," said a statement issued after the meeting organised by the African Centre of Terrorism Research, an African Union body, in collaboration with Spain."

See ACRST for basic information on the African Centre of Terrorism Research

'Of Madness and Muslim Martyrdom' opinion piece

opinion piece: Qanta Ahmed, huffingtonpost.com, Of Madness and Muslim Martyrdom: The Ideal Age of Indoctrination, 4 Jan 2011

"Explicit accounts, videotapes, cassettes, internet uploaded movie files all seek to ignite the collective guilt and repentance for being less worthy, less pure, less valiant than the martyr. Repeated recitation, canonization, rote ritualization, all are deployed to sear the martyrdom act into societal memory for maximal impact and manipulation. Modern day Islamist terrorists know this and apply it with an almost unparalleled mastery. They add scripture to support their evil rationale."

Indonesian Islam

The Jakarta Globe, The True Heart of Indonesia's Islam, 13 Dec 2010: "Four episodes will be shown during the exhibition, and Indonesian Muslim leaders and intellectuals have been invited to lead discussions of the episodes and how they apply to people’s lives.

“For decades, Islamist radicals have been propagating their virulent ideology of hatred, supremacy and violence throughout the Muslim world — fueled by a potent combination of petrodollars and missionary zeal,” [Holland] Taylor said.

“This flow of radical ideas includes a massive effort to translate and disseminate extremist texts and to produce extremist programming for television and the Internet.

"'This type of programming has started taking up a more and more significant chunk of the public discourse in many Islamic countries, as well as among Muslim communities in the West.”""

YouTube axes al-Awlaki videos

Duncan Gardham, Gordon Rayner and John Bingham, Telegraph, YouTube begins removing al-Qaeda videos, 3 Nov 2010 "A number of clips by Anwar al-Awlaki, believed to have been the mastermind of the cargo bomb plot, were deleted from the video sharing site last night. However scores more, including incendiary calls to wage war on non-Muslims, remain."

Expect to see them elsewhere...

There's plenty of material available at present.

Choudhry, al-Awlaki & YouTube

The Guardian, Roshonara Choudhry: I wanted to die … I wanted to be a martyr, 4 Nov 2010 transcript, with an indication of the role of al-Awlaki's sermons on Choudhry's stabbing of Stephen Timms. The transcript also refers to RevolutionMuslim.

"She began listening to his sermons in November 2009, and finished the last in the first week of May, days before she carried out the attack. "I downloaded the full set of Anwar al-Awlaki's lectures," Choudhry told police, saying that she listened to more than 100 hours of them."

I'll be writing about this in due course.

Book review: 'Talking to the Enemy'

Jason Burke, Observer, Talking to the Enemy by Scott Atran, 24 Oct 2010 "Rather than being brainwashed by militant recruiters, terrorists tend to be ordinary people driven by their peer group, argues anthropologist Scott Atran."

Useful review for those interested in the 'radicalization' process and related theories.

Details: Scott Atran, Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists, (London: Allen Lane)

Looks like it is in hardback only at present in the UK ...

op-ed on Yemen and the media

Jane Novak, weeklyblitz.net, Comparative Counterinsurgency in Yemen, 6 Oct 2010

"AQAP often references a hadith predicting 12,000 warriors will arise from Yemen in defense of Islam. Although the dozens of wild-eyed al-Qa'ida fanatics in Yemen claim this legacy as their own, the army is already here. It is Yemen's reformers and they are being slaughtered on the streets, tortured in jail, and starved of food and education. Nonetheless, this is the winning side. And they deserve U.S. recognition on both moral and tactical grounds. The key to the productive political engagement of Yemeni youth is the internet and print media. Media repression inhibits expression of the national consensus, splinters reformers, and short-circuits accountability. It is imperative that the United States robustly support the civil and human rights of Yemenis and especially the right of journalists to perform their jobs without retribution. The structural remedy to corruption, violence against civilians, and extremist thinking is a free press. The shortcut to a Yemen that performs in the best interests of its citizens is an unfettered independent media."

Radicalization

Reuters, Interview: UK Islamist says like-minded U.S. groups expanding, 2 Sep 2010 "U.S. officials are worried about the emergence of so-called homegrown militants in the United States who apparently radicalized themselves by visiting Internet sites that host strongly anti-Western Islamist commentary written in English."

Women and 'jihad'

Tuty Raihanah Mostarom and Nur Azlin Mohamed Yasin, RSIS/eurasiareview.com, The Internet: Avenue For Women Jihadi 'Participation', 10 Aug 2010 "Analysts of online extremist websites have noticed a recurrent trend of jihadist attempts to engage women in the cyberworld. There also appears to be more women supporters utilising the virtual domain to express their activism."

Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura

asiaone.com, Muis sounds alert on DIY radicals, 8 Jul 2010, "The Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (Muis) - the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore - has called on the Muslim community to be on the alert for individuals who develop radical religious views, especially those who may be swayed by online or video materials."

I did research on MUIS some years back, as part of my PhD.

Also see: Teo Xuanwei, TodayOnline, The virus that is Al Awlaki, 8 Jul 2010 "He was just a teenager pursuing a diploma at a local polytechnic, when he started listening to lectures of radical ideologues online. Soon, Muhammad Fadil Abdul Hamid was avidly surfing the Internet in search of jihadist propaganda and videos."

Singapore detention

AFP/mysinchew.com, Singapore detains 'radicalised' army trainee, 6 Jul 2010 "The MHA said Muhammad Fadil had "initiated online communication" with the radical cleric and "expressed his desire to fight alongside Anwar" in places like the Palestinian territories, Iraq and Afghanistan.

"He then "made online contact with a suspected Al-Qaeda recruiter who encouraged him to fight in Afghanistan," researched information on bomb-making and posted a video justifying suicide bombing, MHA said."

US arrests NJ update

Joe Ryan/The Star-Ledger, N.J. terror suspects to appear in court for bail hearing, 10 June 2010, "The men, both U.S. citizens, had been being monitored by the FBI since 2006 after they began watching lectures by radical Muslim clerics on the Internet. Authorities say Alessa, of North Bergen, and Almonte, of Elmwood Park, were caught on tape talking about killing, beheading and sending Americans home in body bags."

Research

Thomas Hegghammer points to some useful 'Homegrown Literature' from the Centre for Studies of Islamism and Radicalisation at Aarhus University in Denmark. This includes Jonathan Githens-Mazer, Robert Lambert, Adbul-Haqq Baker, Safiyah Cohen-Baker, Zacharias Pieri: Muslim Communities Perspectives on Radicalisation in Leicester, UK [pdf] which looks helpful.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

Telegraph, Revealed: the true extent of Islamic radical influence at UCL, 3 Jan 10 "The Sunday Telegraph can disclose new details of radical Muslim speakers who have been invited to events organised by University College London's Islamic society, the organisation headed by Abdulmutallab when he was an undergraduate at the institution in 2006-07."

op-ed on 'radicalisation'/'Islamophobia'

Reem Salahi, Huffington Post, Muslim Youth Radicalization or Politically Correct Islamophobia? 28 Dec 09 "More problematic than this open-ended definition of radicalization is the supposed source of radicalization: the World Wide Web. As someone who frequents the internet most of my waking hours, I do not deny that there are many bad websites and posts on the internet. But I refuse to believe that these websites could lead a normal, integrated Muslim teen to "radicalization." Yet according to the media and to governmental reports, the internet is that powerful. Without providing any contextual background or analysis, the media, the government, and now some Muslim organizations have simplified Muslim youth into a two-part cause and effect: since Muslim youth are intrinsically prone to radicalization, then the most simplistic of triggers such as the internet will change a law-abiding Muslim youth to Osama bin Laden's prodigy."

Report: Countering Online Radicalisation: A Strategy for Action

BBC News, Online extremism tactics 'crude', 10 Mar 09 "The study by radicalisation thinkers warns that governments miss the point if they just close down websites.

"The team based at Kings College London says "self-radicalisation... via the internet with little or no relation to the outside world rarely happens".

"It argues governments must see the internet not as a threat but as an opportunity to combat extremism."

Here's the report link, which takes you to the PDF and Exec Summary:

ICSR, King's College London, Countering Online Radicalisation: A Strategy for Action, 10 Mar 09

"Political extremists and terrorists are increasingly using the internet as an instrument for radicalisation and recruitment. What can be done to counter their activities? Countering Online Radicalisation examines the different technical options for making ‘radical’ internet content unavailable, concluding that they all are either crude, expensive or counter-productive.It sets out a new, innovative strategy which goes beyond ‘pulling the plug’, developing concrete proposals aimed at:

* Deterring the producers of extremist materials
* Empowering users to self-regulate their online communities
* Reducing the appeal of extremist messages through education
* Promoting positive messages"

I haven't read this report yet.

Medill Reports, Extremist Migration West: Iraq and the Internet, 1 Nov 07 Just picked this one up: "A new study of almost a dozen terrorist-related cases by the New York City Police Department analyzed the radicalization process of young Muslims and found four stages, starting with pre-radicalization and ending in jihadization. It also acknowledged that the extreme (jihadi-Salafi) view of solving global political grievances through violence is a very small minority of Muslim youth worldwide." This would link to NYT, New York City Police Report Explores Homegrown Terrorism, 16 Aug 07. A link to the report is here [pdf] via Seth Godin's blog