Jihadist Virtual Culture

by Daniel Kimmage
February 20th, 2007

JIHADIST VIRTUAL CULTURE

With jihadists able to operate openly only in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, the internet has become their natural refuge. Fully aware of the medium's accessibility and openness, they use it less a place to hatch plans and discuss operational details than as a web of virtual ties that bind together an imagined community of the likeminded. Yet their ultimate designs are real, not virtual, and the network of loosely linked websites that is for now the clearest expression of what might be called jihadist virtual culture speaks volumes about the current state of this global movement, its evolving ideology, emerging tendencies, and, finally, the vision of the future its adherents would like to impose on those around them.

While there is no watertight definition of a "jihadist website," they can be identified by their adherence to the jihadist movement's core beliefs, which its leading thinkers and practitioners have articulated in numerous texts and addresses. The three basic tenets are the belief that the Qur'an, transmitted utterances of the Prophet, and recorded actions of the first three generations of Muslims ("al-salaf al-salih," or "the righteous ancestors") provide a self-contained blueprint for the construction of a perfect society; a willingness to denounce as apostates, and even kill, Muslims who fail to profess Islam as jihadist feel it should be professed (takfir); and a commitment to jihad, understood as warfare, not only as the only legitimate and effective means of "making God's word supreme," but also as the crux and apex of Islam itself.

The Arabic-language websites that fall under the jihadist rubric come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, including forums, blogs, organizational and individual pages, and online libraries. Forums are the most popular genre by virtue of their versatility and interactivity, as they allow visitors not only to disseminate jihadist materials but also to engage in public debates and, in password-protected sections, in private discussions.

The websites themselves are merely a medium. The materials they make available comprise a jihadist virtual culture that consists of the following basic elements:

Books and articles by major jihadist thinkers and practitioners lay out the movement's ideology and positions on specific issues, from the need to combat "apostate" Arab regimes to the ongoing effort to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq. Works by a small number of medieval writers, such as Ibn Taymiyyah, and earlier 20th-century theorists, such as the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb, are staples, but the bulk of the jihadist canon was penned by contemporaries and veterans of the Afghan jihad, such as Abdallah Azzam, Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi, and Yusuf Al-Ayiri. The largest online jihadist library, Al-Maqdisi's intermittently available Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad (Pulpit of Monotheism and Jihad) contains hundreds of works totaling hundreds of thousands of pages.

Periodicals are perhaps the oldest and most established jihadist genre, dating back to the magazines Abdallah Azzam published during the Afghan jihad. The most popular periodicals now detail the progress of the jihad in Iraq, with many insurgent groups producing high-quality publications available for downloading in .pdf and/or .doc format. Al-Qaeda's Sawt al-Jihad (Voice of the Jihad) is a classic of the genre. Newer additions include Al-Mujahid al-Taqni (The Technical Holy Warrior). Its first issue, which is dated December 2006/January 2007, includes articles on the creation of hidden files, the use GPS systems, the protection of files from hacker infiltration, the production of video materials, and encryption.

Discussions on forums range from debates on current events (should Sunni jihadists support Shiite Hizbullah against Israel?) to inquiries into Islamic law (is it permitted to steal from an "infidel" company like Microsoft by using pirated software?), with the latter often taking the form of questions addressed to legal scholar who can provide a ruling (fatwa). Forums generally offer a variety of rubrics, such as "current events," "general," and "Islamic issues." The implied division of religion and politics, however, is not one that jihadist ideology recognizes in practice, and discussions reflect this, with debates nominally focused on religion frequently treating political themes and political debates often employing religious arguments in the form of Qur'anic verses and citations from the utterances of the Prophet.

Statements come from individual leaders (such as Usama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri), organizations (such as Al-Qaeda, Iraqi insurgent groups), and recognized religious scholars sympathetic to the jihadist movement (such as Kuwait's Hamid al-Ali). Formats vary from written texts to audio recordings to videotaped addresses. Production units such as Al-Sahab and Al-Buraq specialize in high-quality videos with background music, sophisticated graphics, English subtitles, and multiple file versions ranging from low to high quality to accommodate various internet connection speeds. Video files, which can run to hundreds of megabytes, are normally made available on free upload/download sites with the jihadist website merely providing a link.

Operational updates are issued by specific organizations, with Iraqi insurgent groups the most common source. Some insurgent groups issue several updates a day chronicling attacks. Like statements, a genre with which they overlap, operational updates come in a variety of formats, including video records of attacks. Some periodicals issued by Iraqi insurgent groups provide detailed records of "operations conducted," with statistical breakdowns by chronological period and type of attack. Video updates increasingly mimic the form of traditional news broadcasts by mainstream media outlets. For example, a recent "analysis" of the announcement of an Islamic state of Iraq produced by the Global Islamic Media Front featured a masked "anchor" in a mock newsroom speaking in Arabic with English subtitles against a backdrop of shifting video images from Iraq.

Finally, motivational materials include compilations of attack videos, songs, poetry, and biographies of martyrs. Poetry and songs are of particular interest as a little-studied conduit for jihadist ideology that can have far greater emotional resonance and motivational impact than dry treatises that require of readers a considerable intellectual investment to absorb and assimilate their message.

The components enumerated above overlap, and other breakdowns by form and content are possible. More important than taxonomy, however, is the whole of jihadist virtual culture, which greatly exceeds the sum of its parts. That culture is dynamic, and its development will form the subject matter for these columns, with particular focus on the evolution of jihadist ideology as reflected by the ever-shifting array of materials available on websites.

To set the stage for subsequent columns on specific issues, I would like to draw readers' attention to a number of recent trends and tendencies in jihadist virtual culture:

The increasing prominence of video materials reflects more than advances in technology and internet connectivity; it also betokens the maturation and stabilization of jihadist ideology. Significant internal debates marked the post-Afghanistan development of jihadist ideology, with contentious polemics over whether to target the "near enemy" of Arab regimes or the "far enemy" of their perceived Western backers, and a roiling controversy over the wisdom of the 9/11 attacks. The centrality of the conflict in Iraq has overshadowed, if not silenced, most of this internal debate, and the prevalence of video materials, which are better at reinforcing accepted beliefs than following the nuances of ideological polemics, reflects this.

In the shadow of Iraq, with its Sunni-Shiite divide, sectarianism has emerged as an increasingly central theme in jihadist ideology. Jihadists have always been hostile to Shiites, whom they view as heretics, but it was the signal achievement of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to foreground this theme. The consequences became clear during the conflict between Israel and Hizbullah, when many jihadists argued against supporting Hizbullah even against so hated an enemy as the "Zionist entity."

The virulent sectarianism that marked jihadist reactions to the Israel-Hizbullah conflict foreshadowed mainstream Arab media responses to the execution of Saddam Hussein, which focused on the perception that the former Iraqi dictator was lynched by a Shiite mob. While the sectarian aspects of the ongoing violence in Iraq have set off tremors throughout the Arab world, the tone and timing of the mainstream reactions to the execution suggested that jihadist political discourse, with its current sectarian obsession, is increasingly at the cutting edge of mainstream political discourse in the region. A related phenomenon is the veritable jihadist monopoly on the discourse of Iraqi insurgent groups, including those affiliated with former Baathists (like the Islamic Army in Iraq), a topic that was explored in significant detail in a February 15, 2006 International Crisis Group (ICG) report.

Finally, the jihadist media enterprise is showing signs of maturity in the form of self-awareness and self-criticism. For example, a September 21, 2006 study by the Al-Buraq media group entitled "Media Exuberance" presented a detailed case study of the distribution of Iraqi insurgent attack videos with a raft of specific recommendations on improving the credibility and coordination of the jihadist media enterprise. In a similar vein, an article in a late 2006 issue of Al-Furqan, the online magazine of the Islamic Army in Iraq (a Baathist-affiliated group that has adopted a jihadist discourse) bore the title "The Jihadist Media in Iraq: A New Victory," contained pointed observations on the jihadist media effort, and even referenced the above-noted ICG report in its conclusions.

This twice-monthly column will explore these issues in greater detail, presenting the latest developments in jihadist virtual culture as a reflection of the ongoing evolution of jihadist theory and practice. The aim is as much to provide a window on that culture for those who do not read Arabic as it is to suggest issues to specialists for more in-depth exploration. The first column examines jihadist reactions to the execution of Saddam Hussein.

Daniel Kimmage is a regional analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The views expressed here are his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer.

Copyright 2005 Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World