Terrorism And Its Effects On The Muslim World

These and other publications by Islamist extremists demonstrate their concern over the need to rationalize and defend their violent actions against criticism from learned scholars within the Muslim world. This is not a challenge unique to al-Qaeda: terrorists and insurgents throughout history have faced a significant challenge of convincing their audiences that the righteousness of their cause justifies their violent attacks. For al-Qaeda, nowhere has this rationalization effort become more prevalent than through Web sites, blogs, videos and other forms of communication on the Internet.
Al-Qaeda and the Modern Tools of Influence Warfare
To most analysts, al-Qaeda is a pioneer of online terrorist-oriented activity. For more than a decade, the organization has been disseminating propaganda, military instruction manuals, and videos online in multiple languages. According to a study by Gabriel Weimann, thousands of
Web sites?along with e-mail, chat rooms, and virtual message boards?are increasingly used by terrorists as virtual training camps, providing an online forum for indoctrination as well as the distribution of terrorist manuals and instructions. He also notes that terrorist organizations capture information about the users who browse their Web sites, which can be useful for the early stages of recruitment.13 Indeed, al-Qaeda leaders view those at the center of their information strategy?the Web site designers, bloggers, and video editors?as important mujahideen. As