Al Qaeda reaches out to youth with flashy websites

NEW YORK: Over 100 English Internet sites, packed with flashy videos of car bombings and other terror strikes, are helping spread the message of the so called jihad by Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups among Muslims in the US and Europe, taking advantage of their anger over Iraq war.

While their reach is difficult to assess, it is clear from a review of extremist material and interviews that militants are seeking to appeal to young American and European Muslims by playing on their anger over the war in Iraq and the image of Islam under attack, The New York Times reported quoting terrorism experts.

Tedious Arabic screeds, it reports, are reworked into flashy English productions. Recruitment tracts are issued in multiple languages, like a 39-page, electronic, Englishversion of a booklet urging women to join the fight against the West.

There are even online novellas like 'Rakan bin Williams,' about a band of Christian European converts who embraced Al Qaeda and "promised God that they will carry the flag of their distant brothers and seek vengeance on the evil doers," it adds.
   
Militant Islamists are turning grainy car-bombing tapes into slick hip-hop videos and montage movies, all readily available on Western sites like YouTube, the online video smorgasbord.

"It is as if you would watch a Hollywood movie," Abu Saleh, a 21-year-old German fan of Al Qaeda videos, was quoted as saying. He visits Internet cafes in Berlin twice a week to get the latest releases.

The Internet has totally changed. Al Qaeda and its followers, the Times says, have used the Internet to communicate and rally support for years, but in the past several months the Western tilt of the message and the sophistication of the media have accelerated.

So has the output. Since the beginning of the year, Al Qaeda's media operation, Al Sahab, has issued new videotapes as often as every three days. Even more come from Iraq, where insurgents are pumping them out daily, the Times adds.
   
That production line is the legacy of one man Abu Musab 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. "Americais known to be a people of arrogance."
   
Unlike bin Laden, the Times notes, 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, it adds.
     
Khan's neatly organized site, the report says, 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 Khan, "You can even see an American soldier hiding during the ambush like a baby!! AllahuAkbar! AllahuAkbar!"

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," the report says, adding that he has grown up in middle-class America and wrestles with his worried parents about his religious fervor.
    
"I will do my best to speak the truth, and even if it annoys the disbelievers, the truth must be preached," Khan told the paper in an interview.
     
While there is nothing to suggest that Khan is operating in concert with militant leaders, or breaking any laws, the Times says, he is part of a growing constellation of apparently independent media operators who are broadcasting the message of Al Qaeda and other groups, a message that is increasingly devised, translated and aimed for a Western audience.