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How The West Was Won The rapid and unexpected decline of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was officially recognized this week, when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commanding the Marine Expeditionary Force, turned operational control of Anbar Province over to the Iraqi army and police. Anbar, a vast expanse of desert the size of North Carolina, had been the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. For years, foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaida had sneaked across Iraq's northwestern border with Syria, into Anbar and down a "rat line" of safe houses in Haditha, Ramadi and Hit. From Fallujah, the arch terrorist Zarqawi...

Cambridge University has been given £8 million by a Saudi Arabian prince to establish an Islamic studies centre. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, ranked in the top 20 richest men in the world, with a fortune of about £10 billion, has donated the cash to the university to fund a centre in his name for the study of the role of Islam in the Middle East and globally. The gift has been recommended by the university's general board and is expected to be announced in June. advertisement The grandson of King Ibn Saud and nephew of King Abudllah, the prince counts...

The world's Muslim countries warned Wednesday that an "alarming" rise in anti-Islamic insults and attacks in the West has become a threat to international security. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) called on Europe and America to take stronger measures against 'Islamophobia' in a report prepared for a summit of the group's 57 members in Dakar on Thursday and Friday. The report by a special OIC monitoring group said the organisation was struggling to get the West to understand that Islamophobia "has dangerous implications on global peace and security" and to convince western powers to do more. Islamic leaders...

Islamist Forum Posts Instructions for Conducting 'Media Jihad' In a message posted March 2, 2008 on the Islamist forum Al-Ikhlas (hosted by Piradius.net in Malaysia), a member calling himself "abumuslim22" urged his fellow forum members to engage in "media jihad," and provided advice and safety tips. The following are excerpts from the posting: [1] "… 1. Exercise patience, because each of the following stages takes time… "2. Become a 'media mujahid'… Next to jihad on the battlefield, this is the most dangerous [type of] jihad, because you are new [to it] and inexperienced… "A. Be careful, and do not trust...

Petraeus: Al Qaida Trying to 'Come Back In' U.S. military officials said there will be no significant reduction in coalition troops in the Baghdad area as part of an effort to stop the Al Qaida offensive in northern Iraq. They said Al Qaida was trying to reenter Baghdad and reverse its losses in 2007. "Al Qaida is trying to come back in," U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus said. "We can feel it and see it, and what we're trying to do is rip out any roots before they can get deeply into the ground." Read More Militants Assert...

CAIRO, Egypt — Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader wrote a book published Sunday on militant Islamic Web sites in which he slams radical militants who have disavowed armed struggle and turned their backs on violence. The 215-page book by Aymen Al Zawahiri is the latest salvo in an intellectual war between the founders of the terror group and the other Islamic militants, many of whom have become disillusioned with homicide bombings and attacks on civilians. "This message that I present to the reader today is the most difficult, if not the hardest I have written in my life," al-Zawahri wrote...

In War against Islamism, We Must Listen to the Words of Our Enemies M. Zuhdi Jasser President George Bush delivered his last State of the Union address this week over a backdrop of the 2008 Presidential primary season. Eight years of the Bush doctrine in the misnamed “War on Terror” is being ushered out. Yet, neither the President nor any of his potential successors have been effectively challenged by the media, Congress, or the voters on the contest of ideas in this global “War on Terror.” A review of the Presidential candidate websites demonstrates how little depth most candidates exhibit...

THE Protect America Act, enacted in August, has lived up to its name and objective: making the country safer while protecting the civil liberties of Americans. Under this new law, we now have the speed and agility necessary to detect terrorist and other evolving national security threats. Information obtained under this law has helped us develop a greater understanding of international Qaeda networks, and the law has allowed us to obtain significant insight into terrorist planning. Congress needs to act again. The Protect America Act expires in less than two months, on Feb. 1. We must be able to continue...

At Univ of Arizona, "The Dark Web project aims to scour Web sites, forums and chat rooms to find the Internet's most prolific and influential jihadists and learn how they reel in adherents. Lab director Hsinchun Chen hopes Dark Web will crimp what he calls "al-Qaida University on the Web," the mass of Web sites where potential terrorists learn their trade, from making explosives to planning attacks. Experts said they are not aware of any comparable effort, though some said the project may have only limited applications." more at [href]"Yahoo"[url]http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071111/ap_on_hi_te/dark_web;_ylt=Ag9H_IrfHRhz5S5Q_a_Hro9U.3QA[/url][/href]

The Gaza Strip's isolated and cash-strapped Hamas rulers plan to build a $200 million (€140 million) media city and movie production house that will be part tourist attraction and part effort to cement control of the territory it seized by force in June. Hamas envisions a glittering facility with production and graphics studios, satellite technology, gardens, water ponds, a children's entertainment area and an array of cafes and restaurants, It will even feature mock towns and villages similar to those that Palestinians fled or were forced out after Israel's creation in 1948. Talal Okal, a Palestinian political writer close to...

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida's No. 2 figure harshly criticized Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in a new audio tape Saturday, accusing him of being an enemy of Islam and threatening a wave of attacks against the North African country because it improved relations with the U.S. ADVERTISEMENT In the 28-minute audio tape called "Unity of the Ranks," Ayman al-Zawahri also announced that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was joining ranks with al-Qaida. "The Islamic nation is witnessing a blessed step ... The brothers are escalating the confrontation against the enemies of Islam: Gadhafi and his masters, the Washington crusaders," al-Zawahri said...

'Bin Laden call' to Iraq fighters Osama Bin Laden's last message was an attack on Pakistan's leader A new audio recording purportedly by al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has urged insurgent groups in Iraq to unify their ranks. "The interest of the Islamic nation surpasses that of a group - it is more important than that of a state," says the message broadcast on al-Jazeera TV. The call comes amid moves by some Sunni groups in Iraq to side with the Iraqi government against al-Qaeda. The identity of the voice on the tape could not be independently confirmed. 'Mistakes' And...

Recently, the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) announced a new comprehensive media campaign titled "The Battar Media Raid to Defend the Islamic State [of Iraq] (ISI)," [1] whose declared purpose is to repel the intensive campaign against the ISI by Arab and Western media agencies and to stop the increasing military campaign against the ISI by Sunni organizations in Iraq. In a message titled "The Battar Media Raid: How to Participate? How to Help? What Is My Role?" the GIMF announces the beginning of the campaign and provides a detailed description of the campaign's goals and ways of accomplishing them,...

We were in a small house in Zarqa, Jordan, trying to interview two heavily bearded Islamic militants about their distribution of recruitment videos when one of us asked one too many questions. The room fell silent. But before anyone could act on this impulse, the rules of jihadi etiquette kicked in. You can’t just slaughter a visitor, militants are taught by sympathetic Islamic scholars. You need permission from whoever arranges the meeting. And in this case, the arranger who helped us to meet this pair declined to sign off. “He’s my guest,” Marwan Shehadeh, a Jordanian researcher, told the bearded...

June 7: A new online propaganda effort by jihadists focuses on stirring anti-war sentiment among Americans. NBC's Lisa Myers reports.

On May 14, jihadi forum users Abu Kandahar and Roslan al-Shami posted a five-point scenario for the collapse of the United States and the rise of the Islamic ummah, entitled, "The Next Strikes in the Heart of America, When and How." The first stage in the scenario involves multiple terrorist attacks on three major U.S. cities, preferably with nuclear weapons, using an unspecified number of trucks. While [New York, Miami, LA] are the three primary cities for attack, the writers of the document suggest that if the mujahideen wish to expedite the collapse of the United States, they should also...

Al-Qaeda also has developed what can only be judged as a spectacularly successful online university of strategy, tactics and training for guerrilla warfare and terrorist operations (http://www.alsakifah.org). In journals such as those mentioned above and others, al-Qaeda's analysts and strategists have developed a worldview that neatly fits the Islamists' struggle into the context of contemporary international relations, explaining why there are solid geopolitical reasons—such as status quo U.S. foreign policies in the Muslim world, and the West's dependence on Muslim oil and need to defend its access thereto—that make al-Qaeda's war aims of "bleeding America to bankruptcy" and "spreading out...

An American member of al-Qaida warned President Bush on Tuesday to end U.S. involvement in all Muslim lands or face an attack worse than the Sept. 11 suicide assault, according to a new videotape. Wearing a white robe and a turban, Adam Yehiye Gadahn, who also goes by the name Azzam al-Amriki, said al-Qaida would not negotiate on its demands. "Your failure to heed our demands ... means that you and your people will ... experience things which will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11th, Afghanistan and Iraq and Virginia Tech," he said in the seven-minute...

Al-Qaida is aggressively recruiting black Americans for suicide operations against the homeland, say FBI analysts who have reviewed recent videotaped messages from the terror group's leaders. A speech released May 5 by Osama bin Laden's deputy confirms earlier fears that African-Americans are the No. 1 recruiting target for the next generation of attacks. Al-Qaida has been trying to lower its Arab profile to reduce the odds that its terror cells will be subjected to security scrutiny. "Federal and local law enforcement authorities should be aware that al-Qaida terrorists may not appear Arab," warns a recent Homeland Security intelligence report obtained...

SOMETIMES WHAT WE DON'T KNOW can indeed hurt us. This was the case in 2006, when reporters noticed significant fighting between Iraqi insurgent factions. This confused journalists and government analysts, but the prevailing attitude was that if the insurgents were fighting each other, at least they weren't fighting us. It turned out that the group that bore the brunt of this violence would later develop into the Anbar Salvation Front, which has proved to be one of our most important local allies in Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), was trying to wipe...

Al-Sahab Expected To Release New Bin Ladin VideoTerrorism: Al-Sahab Reportedly To Release New Bin Ladin Video MessageOn 4 April, a jihadist website carried the following posting: "After a long absence by the shaykh of mujahidin, whom we have missed as well as his speeches, some news is being leaked indicating that Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin, God protect and preserve him and make him a thorn in the throat of the enemies, will make an appearance. The news indicates that Al-Sahab Media Establishment, which specializes in publishing Al-Qa'ida leaders' speeches, has recently finished producing a video featuring Bin Ladin's speech to...

CAIRO, Egypt — Iran's state-run Arabic-language TV channel reported Monday that all 15 captured British sailors had confessed to illegally entering Iranian waters. The claim was carried by the news channel Al-Alam, a state-run channel that is broadcast across the Arab world but not in Iran. Iran's military chief had said on Saturday, March 24 that the sailors had confessed after interrogations to illegally entering Iranian waters. There was no source given for Al-Alam's new claim. The station has so far broadcast video footage of four of the 15 saying they were in Iranian waters at the time of their...

NVM: Modules     Volume 5, Issue 6 (March 29, 2007) | Download PDF Version The New Issue of Technical Mujahid, a Training Manual for Jihadis By Abdul Hameed Bakier The Cover from Technical Mujahid, Issue #2 The al-Fajr Information Center, a jihadi organization, recently published the February 2007 issue of Technical Mujahid, a magazine released once every two months that is available online. The release marks the second issue of the publication. The various jihadi websites have posted links to different locations to download the publication, that way stifling any attempts by outside forces to remove the document...

Islamic terrorists are engaged in a "media jihad" in which they encourage jihadists to pose online as Americans to foster anti-war sentiment in the U.S. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, a posting on the Al-Mohajroon Islamist website with the username Al-Wathig Billah provides instructions on how to infiltrate popular American Internet forums and use them to distribute jihad films and spread anti-war sentiments. "Our experience shows that such instructions often yield compliance," Eli Alshech, director of the Jihad and Terrorism Project at MEMRI, told WND. The instructions direct jihadists to "raid non-political forums and trivia...

Click here to see video clipJerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Hamas television broadcast a video dramatization on Wednesday in which the four-year-old daughter of female suicide bomber vows to do what her mother has done. The child is an actress, but the point was clear. According to Palestinian Media Watch, the child actress, playing the part of a real child named Duha, finds her mother preparing explosives in her bedroom and sings, "Mommy, what are you carrying in your arms instead of me?" The mother tries to hide the bomb. Later, Duha sees a television news story about her mother's suicide bomb...

Even as the leadership of the Democrats sets timetables for withdrawal from Iraq, the sands have shifted and leaders of the Global Islamic Jihad Movement are displaying signs that their own alliance has fractured. Some pundits have described the Democrat leadership's position over the war on terror as "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory"; a cynicism that perhaps never sounded as plausible as it does this week. But to understand how this Islamic jihad movement has splintered, we must understand how it fits together. Reports from Southwest Asia tell us that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has distanced himself from the Taliban...

Bomber wounds three in Casablanca A suicide bomber has wounded three people in an internet cafe in the Moroccan city of Casablanca.The attack, which took place on Sunday evening in the Sidi Moumen district of the city, left the bomber dead. The blast happened after the man began a dispute with the cafe's owner, who refused him access to jihadist sites. Another man, with the bomber at the time of the blast, fled after the explosion but has now been arrested by police, reports say. "The man used to come to view jihadist websites and the dispute was prompted...

Video first announced as a Zawahiri tape; rumor now spreading that Usama will make a guest appearance

Let's hope this is not for real. They claim that an audiotape will be released soon.

(CBS) America's top intelligence officer overseeing Iraq and Afghanistan says terrorists have made the Internet their most important recruiting tool. Brig. Gen. John Custer tells Scott Pelley that terrorist groups like al Qaeda are influencing Islamic youth to join their cause through Web sites devoted to jihad, or religious war. Pelley's report will be broadcast this Sunday, March 4, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. [this was just broadcast in the Eastern time zone] "I see 16-, 17-year-olds who have been indoctrinated on the Internet turn up on the battlefield. We capture them, we kill them every day in Iraq, in Afghanistan,"...

The three-minute video, posted on a Web site previously used by the Islamists, said the 18 kidnapped government security forces were slain in retaliation for the alleged rape of a Sunni woman by members of the Shiite-dominated police. The video's authenticity could not be immediately verified. The tape firsts depicts the 18 men, some in Iraqi military uniforms, blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs and lined up in three rows in front of a screen. The men in the front row are kneeling down. Armed masked men were seen pointing machine-guns at the captives. Male voices chant repeatedly in Arabic...

After more than a year's absence, the jihadi propaganda monthly "Voice of Jihad" (Sawt-al-Jihad), edited by the Saudi cell of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, has reappeared on the Internet. The new issue - the 30th - opens with an editorial threatening the Saudi regime and welcoming the birth of "an Islamic emirate" in Iraq by local al-Qaeda cells. "Voice of Jihad" was launched in 2003 covering mainly ideological and doctrinal issues concerning the mujahadeen in the Arabian Peninsula. "As for us, we have begun a new year and we ask Allah that it be a year of victory," reads the...

Tehran - A top Iranian cleric said on Friday the United States was within Iran's "firing range", a day after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to hit back at US interests worldwide if attacked. "Americans have surrounded us but it works to our advantage. They are within our firing range in the east, west and elsewhere," Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said in his Friday prayer sermon carried live on state radio. He was referring to the US military presence in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the Gulf waters off southern Iran. "Would you dare to violate Iranian...

The leader of an al-Qaeda-backed group has offered US forces safe withdrawal from Iraq within a month if they left their heavy weapons behind, according to an audio tape posted on the internet on Friday. The authenticity of the tape could not be verified, but it was posted on two main web sites used by al-Qaeda and other armed groups in Iraq. "We call on [President George] Bush not to waste this historic opportunity," said the speaker, identified as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, head of the so-called Islamic state in Iraq, which was announced in October by al-Qaeda and groups linked...

The Internet has become a favored propaganda tool for Islamists, terrorists and al-Qaeda types the world over. It is used to distribute their videos, release their fatwa’s, troll for recruits, shore up their base, coordinate their activities and influence the mainstream media. It has also given birth to a whole class of ‘anti-jihadists’ who now wage their own propaganda war of commentary, analysis, and occasional mockery using websites and blogs as their personal weapons in the Terror Wars. The internet jihadist has now been matched by the keyboard crusader. Some present themselves as scholarly, analytical, ‘think tank’ type websites. Others...

The BBC triggered outrage yesterday by calling for the views of extremists and fundamentalists to be given the same weight as those of mainstream politicians. The corporation's head of television news, Peter Horrocks, said groups such as the Taliban and the far-Right BNP need more airtime - at the expense of moderate opinion. He said all views need to be treated with the same respect, describing his proposals as 'radical impartiality'. But his comments prompted furious reaction, critics labelling them 'political correctness gone insane'. Mr Horrocks came under fire in his former role as BBC2' s Newsnight editor - for...

Full text of Supreme Leaders message to World of Islam Tehran, Aug 2, IRNA Iran-Leader-Message Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei Wednesday condemned the tragic disaster at the Lebanese village of Qana and the silence of UN and the so-called supporters of human rights on the Zionist regime's crimes in Lebanon. In his message to the World of Islam, the Supreme Leader said, "The events in Lebanon have exposed the true nature of American human rights, and have revealed the kind of Middle East the American government intends to have." The following is the full...

Al-Jazeera has launched a strong and effective media campaign for the Islamic terrorists against the self-loathing, self-destructive and naive Western media..

RUSH: We're going to keep going with this. I mentioned earlier in the previous hour that even last night in the media, that the template on this al-Qaeda attack in Jordan is, "It's Bush's fault. Bush caused this. Bush is responsible!" So we played connect the dots in the first hour of the program. Just to review that, when you connect the dots, what do you get? You have Jordan. You have three suicide bombers. You've got 57 people dead so far; over 300 people wounded. You have terrorists. You have the culture of death, the expressed desire to end...

Isn't it clear by now that the U.S. and its allies are not likely to be able to wipe out Al-Qaeda or ensure that the Americans are not attacked again domestically? As the British acknowledged in July, the London attacks were just a matter of when, not if. To be sure, the terrorists can't win this war, but neither can the Americans. The most serious risk is that Al-Qaeda will sooner or later be able to attack the U.S. with a biological or nuclear weapon, not merely the conventional bombs used in London and Madrid or the suicide car bombs...

As the role of the media becomes increasingly important in the overall strategy of al-Qaeda, the network has decided to issue an appeal for help to all Muslims working in news and information. With a video broadcast on Monday on Islamist forums on the Internet, the "Emir of the Global Islamic Media Front" said: "We invite you to join the Islamic Media Front so that you can help us, through your ideas and your experience." "We need your help and your technical knowledge. The Front is present in Islamic forums on the Internet and will be boosting its messages in...

Al Qaeda Dupes Liberal Left Into Fighting Jihad By Frank Salvato October 14, 2005 The recently released letter from Ayman al Zawahiri to Abu Musab al Zarqawi is now being painted as a forgery by al Qaeda in Iraq, Zarqawi's faction of the radical Islamist terror movement. This is understandable as it does expose many of their goals and strategies in their quest for global domination. But perhaps the most immediate reason to discredit the intercepted correspondence is that it spells out in the most simplistic of terms that they have been using the anti-war movement here in the United...

Al Qaeda in Iraq says Zawahri letter is fake: Web DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq on Thursday rejected as a fabrication a letter by top group leader Ayman al-Zawahri which was issued by U.S. officials this week, according to an Internet posting. "We in Al Qaeda Organization announce that there is no truth to these claims, which are only based on the imagination of the politicians of the Black (White) House and their slaves," the group said in a statement posted on an Islamist Web site. According to the letter, released this week by U.S. intelligence officials,...

A posting on an Islamic Web site Thursday accused the United States of fabricating a letter in which al-Qaida's No. 2 leader asked for money and laid out the terrorist group's plans for expanding the insurgency in the Middle East. "We in al-Qaida declare that there is no truth to these claims, and they are baseless, except in the imagination of the politicians of the Black (White) House," according to the statement on a Web site known as a clearing house for al-Qaida material. The statement was signed Abu Maysara, who claims to be spokesman for al-Qaida in Iraq. It...

From the Sept.11 terrorist attacks in 2001 to the Iraq war and the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the image of the United States as the invincible superpower has been weakening over the past few years, European analysts said.