Posts Tagged ‘internet issues’
 
April 25, 2013 3

Parallels Between Boston Bomber And Australian Preacher

The online activ­ity of Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, the dead Boston Marathon bomb­ing sus­pect, reveals a fas­ci­na­tion with mil­i­tancy and Islam, includ­ing an Aus­tralian preacher named Feiz Moham­mad whose life has some inter­est­ing par­al­lels to the bomber.tamerlan-tsarnaev-feiz-mohammad-youtube-boston-bomber

While it remains unclear to what degree Tsar­naev was influ­enced or rad­i­cal­ized by any of the mate­ri­als he was view­ing online, he appar­ently added at least two videos of Feiz Moham­mad, who is known for his extreme anti-West views, to his YouTube channel.

Moham­mad, who blames non-Muslims in the West for Mus­lim vic­tim­hood and has glo­ri­fied “mar­tyr­dom,” has a large col­lec­tion of English-language Islamic lec­tures avail­able online. In a video posted to YouTube in 2007, he claims that Mus­lims today are not suf­fi­ciently ded­i­cated to mar­tyr­dom and there­fore are “the most humil­i­ated nation on the face of this earth.” He adds, “It is not as appeal­ing as it was to those ances­tors — the great warriors.”

In a lec­ture posted on YouTube in Decem­ber 2010, he teaches his stu­dents that fol­low­ers of other sects of Islam, such as Sufi Mus­lims and Shite Mus­lims, are not true Mus­lims and accord­ing to Islamic law deserve execution.

In addi­tion to pro­mot­ing mil­i­tant themes, Moham­mad seeks to appeal to a younger gen­er­a­tion of Mus­lim immi­grants by shar­ing his per­sonal story as a lost young immi­grant who found an iden­tity by strictly adher­ing to Islam.

Sev­eral of his lec­tures focus on warn­ing Mus­lims liv­ing in the West of the dan­gers of adopt­ing the lifestyle of non-Muslim West­ern­ers. In a lec­ture posted on YouTube in April 2012, he warns Mus­lims against lov­ing non-Muslims or befriend­ing them: “Isn’t this why we are a slave by them [non-Muslims]? Because we are lov­ing their ways, we are mix­ing in their ways. We are being a Kafir [infi­del] our­selves by enjoy­ing their lifestyles.”

An inter­view with Tamer­lan Tsar­naev pub­lished while he was train­ing for the 2009 Golden Gloves box­ing com­pe­ti­tion revealed Tamerlan’s dif­fi­culty assim­i­lat­ing into Amer­i­can cul­ture. He is quoted in the inter­view say­ing, “I don’t have a sin­gle Amer­i­can friend, I don’t under­stand them.”

Like Tsar­naev, Mohammad’s fam­ily emi­grated from a war-torn coun­try. Mohammad’s fam­ily immi­grated to Aus­tralia from Tripoli in north­ern Lebanon. Also like Tsar­naev, Feiz Moham­mad spent his teenage years box­ing, which he later denounced. The names he acquired as a boxer included “Frank the Killer” and “The Beast.”

At the age of 19, Moham­mad report­edly decided to embrace a con­ser­v­a­tive form of reli­gious teach­ings known as Salafism and became pop­u­lar among the Salafist groups in Syd­ney. After pur­su­ing an Islamic edu­ca­tion in Med­ina, Saudi Ara­bia, he returned to Aus­tralia. He then founded the “Global Islamic Youth Cen­tre” (GIYC) and opened a Madras­sah, a tra­di­tional Islamic reli­gious school.

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March 4, 2013 2

New Inspire Magazine Hits Digital Newsstands

The tenth issue of Inspire mag­a­zine, released by Al Qaeda in the Ara­bian Penin­sula last Thurs­day, offers its read­ers an array of ideas and advice for sup­port­ing the global jihadist movement.

In the issue, lone wolf attacks are specif­i­cally encour­aged: “Praises [to] the Knights of Lone Jihad…You are Lethal! You are Dev­as­tat­ing!” Would-be lone wolves are advised to engage in attacks on the road by caus­ing traf­fic acci­dents and torch­ing parked vehi­cles, as well as assas­si­nat­ing polit­i­cal lead­ers and for­mer polit­i­cal lead­ers who may be less pro­tected (Amer­i­can, British and French for­mer polit­i­cal oper­a­tives and diplo­mats are men­tioned by name).

Fol­low­ing Thursday’s release of Inspire, AQAP also released a com­pi­la­tion of the advice it has pub­lished for car­ry­ing out attacks as the “Lone Mujahid Pocketbook.”

Inspire also con­tains an inter­view with the Amer­i­can spokesman for Al Qaeda, Adam Gadahn. If the inter­view proves to be authen­tic, it is the first English-language mes­sage from Gadahn since a June 2011 video in which he called on Amer­i­can Mus­lims to launch lone wolf attacks on U.S. soil.  He has, how­ever, more recently appeared in Arabic-language videos dis­cussing the Arab Spring and Al Qaeda’s role in it.

Gadahn, who was a pio­neer in the field of so-called “jihadi media,” reit­er­ates its pur­ported impor­tance in the inter­view, call­ing on his fel­low pro­pa­gan­dists to “make every effort to reach out to Mus­lims both through new media like Face­book and Twit­ter as well as the tra­di­tional broad­cast and print media.” 

In an appar­ent call for vio­lence, Gadahn instructs “mujahideen around the world” to focus their efforts on “direct engage­ment at home and abroad with Amer­ica and its NATO part­ners, par­tic­u­larly France and Britain.” 

Another arti­cle from the mag­a­zine, called “We Are All Usama,” which focuses on the need for Mus­lim unity in the face of insults by the West, was used by jihadist hack­ers to replace sev­eral uni­ver­sity web­sites on Fri­day and over the weekend. 

The mag­a­zine con­tin­ues to focus on the Sep­tem­ber 2011 deaths of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born rad­i­cal cleric who became a lead­ing ide­o­logue and com­man­der of AQAP; and Samir Khan, who was believed to be respon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing the first issues of Inspire. Al-Awlaki and Khan, as well as a third indi­vid­ual named Abu Yazeed al-Qatari, are fea­tured in a “let­ter to the edi­tor” that praises the men for their com­mit­ment to jihad.

This issue is the first major media effort by AQAP in Eng­lish since May 2012, when it released the last two issues of Inspire, a recruit­ing pam­phlet, and a col­lec­tion of Osama bin Laden state­ments. 

Although Inspire con­tin­ues to solicit con­tri­bu­tions from its read­ers, dig­i­tal copies of the mag­a­zine appear to be secured which doesn’t allow for the mag­a­zine to be printed. This may be an effort to pre­vent its use as evi­dence in ter­ror­ism cases; the mag­a­zine has often been found in the pos­ses­sion of ter­ror­ism sus­pects as both a source of rad­i­cal­iz­ing mate­r­ial and for its easy-to-follow instruc­tions for car­ry­ing out attacks. 

In a fur­ther move to raise the level of secu­rity, AQAP also issued a state­ment on jihadist forums over the week­end indi­cat­ing that it would no longer com­mu­ni­cate with indi­vid­ual sup­port­ers plan­ning attacks via email and urged those already in con­tact to stop immediately.

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January 17, 2013 1

Access ADL Blog: Our First Year

The Anti-Defamation League’s Access ADL blog was launched last Jan­u­ary to pro­vide inside access to the agency’s work and exper­tise on a vari­ety of top­ics, and to serve as a resource.

In our first year, we pub­lished nearly 250 blog posts, pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion and analy­sis on a range of issues, includ­ing online extrem­ism, anti-Semitism, extrem­ism and ter­ror­ism, the anti-immigration move­ment, anti-Israel activ­ity and much more.

In that time, Access ADL has become a trusted resource for news and infor­ma­tion. We thank the more than 100,000 unique vis­i­tors for their sup­port and inter­est in our work.

Below is the list of most viewed blog posts in Access ADL’s first year:

August 6, 2012 - ADL Con­nects Sus­pected Shooter at Wis­con­sin Sikh Tem­ple to White Suprema­cist Skin­head Group

Fol­low­ing the shoot­ing at a Wis­con­sin Sikh tem­ple, Access ADL pub­lished sev­eral exclu­sive images of the shooter, Wade Michael Page, and con­nected him to the white power music scene as well as to the to the Ham­mer­skins, a vio­lent racist skin­head group.

Wade Michael Page

Sep­tem­ber 14, 2012 - Anti-Muslim Chris­t­ian Activists Respon­si­ble For Inflam­ma­tory “Inno­cence of Mus­lims” Film

In response to the release of the anti-Islam film, Inno­cence of Mus­lims, which sparked con­sid­er­able out­rage and vio­lence across the Mid­dle East and Islamic world, Access ADL iden­ti­fied the key indi­vid­u­als involved in the film and their con­nec­tions to a net­work of anti-Muslim organizations.

Decem­ber 18, 2012 - Con­spir­acy The­o­rists Blame Jews For Sandy Hook Massacre

In the after­math of the Sandy Hook school shoot­ing in Con­necti­cut, Access ADL uncov­ered sev­eral con­spir­acy the­o­ries blam­ing Jews and Israel for the shoot­ing, and exposed the neo-Nazi ties of Mike Har­ris, who blamed Israel for the Sandy Hook shoot­ing dur­ing an inter­view on Iran’s Press TV.

Novem­ber 16, 2012 - Demon­stra­tors at Anti-Israel Ral­lies: “Gaza is the Real Holo­caust,” “Long live the Intifada!”

In response to Israel’s Oper­a­tion Pil­lar of Defense, Access ADL pub­lished daily updates on the anti-Israel ral­lies orga­nized in the U.S., expos­ing the extreme nar­ra­tives that marked the ral­lies, includ­ing the sup­port for ter­ror anti-Semitism.

May 21, 2012 - New Ara­bic Trans­la­tion of Tal­mud Pro­motes Anti-Semitic Narratives

Access ADL revealed the pres­ence of age-old anti-Semitic con­spir­a­cies in a newly released Ara­bic trans­la­tion of the Tal­mud – the first of its kind.

July 27, 2102 - Hezbol­lah on Your iPhone: There’s An App for ThatHezbollah's iTunes App

Access ADL broke the news about how Apple’s iTunes ser­vice was pro­vid­ing access to con­tent from Hezbollah’s satel­lite tele­vi­sion sta­tion, al-Manar, which sub­se­quently described ADL as being part of Israel’s war against Hezbollah.

August 17, 2012 - Pos­si­ble Extrem­ist Con­nec­tion to Louisiana Police Shootings

Access ADL pro­vided evi­dence sug­gest­ing that some of the peo­ple involved in the shoot­ing deaths of two Louisiana sheriff’s deputies in LaPlace were anti-government extremists.

Sep­tem­ber 5, 2012 - For­mer Youth for West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion Leader Pro­motes White Stu­dent Union at Towson

When a white suprema­cist tried to form a “White Stu­dent Union” at Tow­son Uni­ver­sity in Mary­land, Access ADL revealed the effort and exposed his affil­i­a­tions with far-right groups.

July 3, 2012 - Far­rakhan Leads Audi­ence in Anti-Semitic Tirade

Access ADL released a video of Nation of Islam leader Louis Far­rakhan lead­ing his audi­ence in Chicago in an anti-Semitic call and response.

March 26, 2012 - New Black Pan­ther Party Enflames Trayvon Mar­tin Incident

After an African-American teenager was shot and killed in Florida, Access ADL exposed efforts by the New Black Pan­ther Party (NBPP) to insert­ them­selves in one of the most high pro­file, racially charged issues of the year. The post also pro­vided back­ground on the NBPP, the largest orga­nized anti-Semitic and racist black mil­i­tant group in America.

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