The Digital Seduction of Jihad

"I cannot overstate it -- at the heart of jihad worldwide, in Syria and Iraq, as well as what is happening now in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, are American social media companies."
"They are helping to drive it. If it were not for them, recruitment, fundraising and communication would not be what they are."
Every major designated terrorist organization is active on all of these accounts [YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.]"
"Now, tweeting from the battlefield gets your message out in a second everywhere throughout the Middle East and the West. It is absolutely effective."
Steve Stalinsky, executive director, Middle Est Media Research Institute, (MEMRI), Washington

Twitter/Abu Turaab

Mohammed Ali posted this photo of “Abu Dujana.” It was taken in Dier Ezzor, Syria’s sixth largest city. (Abu Turaab / Twitter) - See more at: http://news.nationalpost.com/canadian-isis-fighter-abu-turaab-identified-as-mohammed-ali/#sthash.XdUkaZQT.dpuf

This is the single common thread that connects the global narrative of communication between jihadists and their prospective recruits. With those who haven't made the leap from their faith in Islam to embrace violent jihad but who waver in indecision having their minds settle finally on a resolute and binding determination to adapt themselves to the radicalization of their faith in the belief that this is god's will, because the murmurings and on-line pressures are so persuasive.

The message that has been inexorably spread through the Internet finds itself inveigling the worm of honour-in-jihad and martyrdom-for-the-cause into the minds of the uncertain and the doubtful, imbuing them with the final certainty that they have chosen, with a little bit of help from the Ethernet doubling as god's whisper to them personally, scrubbing any doubt that they might not chose the right path, has become paramount in the march of new recruits to terrorism.

All the old platforms and the smaller, newer, and trendier ones like Ask.fm, Kik, WhatsAPP and SoundCloud, have become popular venues through which the message of jihad can be spread, the vulnerable exploited through the process of constant reinforcement. The messages can be found wherever those looking for affirmation search for them, landing neatly and appealingly in their iphone messages, never far from hand and eye.

Communication is immediate, compelling, satisfyingly solution-oriented. Audios, speeches, videos from the front lines, how-to guides to the perplexed, and personal encouragement along with hip jokes and camaraderie right directly, and instantly, to the smartphone. Mr. Stalinsky has the expertise to interpret all of this, and more, and he knows with the unerring clarity of an expert in online communications and security where all the assistance comes from.

The social media companies whose close-up-and-personal message-enabling has become a vital part of everyone's personal, social and business communication life expedites those darkly menacing aids to jihad as adeptly and swiftly as they do the loving messages from family and the supporting ones from friends and acquaintances, along with the business alerts that users are so attuned to. Twitter, he contends is the major jihadi platform today through its lack of proactive monitoring.

Let's not, while we're at it, overlook LinkedIn for its inestimable assistance in facilitating links to Islamist terrorists. Sending out suggestions to anyone who might wish to be 'linked' to terrorists like Chiheb Esseghaier, arrested by the RCMP and charged with plotting to commit a terrorist act in Canada but whose presence on LinkedIn has never been taken note of, with the site continuing, since his arrest to promote him as a "valuable contact who may help you in your career".

Chiheb Esseghaier phD student at INRS

Chris Young / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Chiheb Esseghaier, one of two men accused of plotting a terror attack on rail target, is led off a plane by an RCMP officer at Buttonville Airport just north of Toronto on Tuesday April 23, 2013.