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An Internet Jihad Aims at U.S. Viewers
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by Christopher Byrne | October 15, 2007 at 09:46 am
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It always amazes me that the Muslim extremists will use the very tools and freedoms they wish to crush in the west to wage psychological warfare. It is just one more example of the more potent enemy within that the United States must deal with.
You may need a username and password to read the full article on the NY Times Web Site,
By MICHAEL MOSS and SOUAD MEKHENNET
Published: October 15, 2007
When Osama bin Laden issued his videotaped message to the American people last month, a young jihad enthusiast went online to help spread the word.
“America needs to listen to Shaykh Usaamah very carefully and take his message with great seriousness,” he wrote on his blog. “America is known to be a people of arrogance.”
Unlike Mr. bin Laden, the blogger was not operating from a remote location. It turns out he is a 21-year-old American named Samir Khan who produces his blog from his parents’ home in North Carolina, where he serves as a kind of Western relay station for the multimedia productions of violent Islamic groups.
In recent days, he has featured “glad tidings” from a North African militant leader whose group killed 31 Algerian troops. He posted a scholarly treatise arguing for violent jihad, translated into English. He listed hundreds of links to secret sites from which his readers could obtain the latest blood-drenched insurgent videos from Iraq.
His neatly organized site also includes a file called “United States of Losers,” which showcased a recent news broadcast about a firefight in Afghanistan with this added commentary from Mr. Khan: “You can even see an American soldier hiding during the ambush like a baby!! AllahuAkbar! AllahuAkbar!”
Mr. Khan, who was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in Queens, is an unlikely foot soldier in what Al Qaeda calls the “Islamic jihadi media.” He has grown up in middle-class America and wrestles with his worried parents about his religious fervor. Yet he is stubborn. “I will do my best to speak the truth, and even if it annoys the disbelievers, the truth must be preached,” Mr. Khan said in an interview.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 22:26 on October 16th, 2007
i think it is a fantastic example extremist groups using others to do their work for them. Look at suicide bombings. These are people, many young people, who have been taken in by extremist groups and indoctrinated or coddled to support the seeds of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt they already have about how things are in their world (yes, i'm citing FUD intentionally ;-). i read a fantastic story about a 22(?) year old who was standing in the middle of a crowd, wearing her bomb, about to detonate it when she stopped for a moment and LOOKED at the people around her.
Mothers, fathers, children, grandparents... People. PEOPLE!
She was suddenly overcome with the reality of what she was there to do. She did not detonate her bomb. She returned to her handlers (the term used by the news publisher, not mine) who were furious with her. They eventually took her back home, while her companion bomber, an 8 year old boy, was exploding himself, sending shards of metal and glass into the bodies of the people around him.
An 8 year old.
This is the danger of controlling what information a human being has access to. This is why it is important to share all information so that people do not see only one side. So that people don't become poisoned with the beliefs of people who are unwilling to do their own (dirty) work. People who use, abuse and have no remourse for their actions. If this 8 year old child and 22 year old college student had not been taken in and fed more reasons to be upset, maybe they would never have become suicide bombers. The girl, the 22 year old, was enough of her own person, educated, thoughtful and independent enough to stop and to try to back up from the terminal point she had come to. The boy? At 8 years old? He had no chance to think for himself. He was used as a tool to kill strangers and was killed in the process.
The real war is about information.
at 22:45 on October 16th, 2007
can't find a link to it but the article was called "The humanity behind the hatred; A suicide bomber changes her mind.(OPED)" the link here goes to a news hog. you have to pay it to read it. If you have access to an academic library, maybe you can find it without the toll. There is a brief excerpt there, but it's not much.
oh the irony behind my statement about the real war being about information.............