Countering Militant Islam's Narrative (Keep it Simple)

Radio Qur'an aids in Algeria's fight against terrorism

By Said Jameh for Magharebia in Algiers – 28/01/08



Eager to combat the forces of extremism and terrorism in their country, Algerian authorities have enlisted the aid of a radio station to broadcast religious messages condemning the violent practices. Islamic scholars from Algeria and Gulf countries have appeared on Radio Qur'an to undermine the doctrinal bases used by al-Qaeda to justify its suicide operations in North Africa.
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The government has used Radio Qur'an as a platform for scholars to present religious evidence against the beliefs and fatwas issued by local al-Qaeda emir Abdelmalek Droukdel. The terrorist leader is responsible for the escalation of violence among anti-government groups – including suicide operations and the targeting of civilians – since the April 11th, 2007 bombings in Algiers.
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On January 22nd the station aired a seminar entitled: "Warning against the two discords of takfir and bombings". The programme featured participation by Saudi scholar Ibrahim Ben Amer Rahili, Algeria's Nabil Mustapha Osmani, Abdelghani Aouissat and Saudi-Algerian Abdelmalek Ramdani.
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[...]
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Though the FM station is only on the air from 5:00 AM to 11:00 AM, it has already had some impact on the anti-terrorist effort. Citing local and French security findings, Algerian newspapers reported recently that Radio Qur'an has played a pivotal role in recent months in convincing scores of armed men to lay down their arms and benefit from pardons under the laws of national reconciliation, adopted in 2005.
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The Algerian government began the radio effort in an attempt to undermine the effect of al-Qaeda's online dissemination of audio and video propaganda and training information. The terrorist group has also begun videotaping all its suicide operations and attacks in Algeria, making the footage freely available to citizens browsing Islamist websites. Some sites even provide videos formatted for viewing and transmission on mobile phones.
(The Full Article)
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Snop's Commentary:
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Algeria's Radio Qur'an program is one example of how the authors of the "Militant Ideology Atlas" envision countering the jihadist ideological narrative. In theory, they may be right, but in practice it may be more effective to keep the message simple.
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The Atlas authors state that..."Governments combating Jihadism should support messages and messengers that will resonate with the various constituencies [they] have identified. Since Western governments lack credibility in the Muslim world, they should do this indirectly.”
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Addressing the credibility issue, the Algerians picked a number of influential scholars, both Algerian and Saudi, to undermine Al Qaeda's doctrinal basis for its violent actions.
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As for messages that resonate, look at the difference between messages put forward by Radio Qur'an verses those recommended by the Atlas authors.
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Actual Radio Qur'an messages:
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"The bombings and terrorist operations in Algeria are not jihad, but discord."
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"...the people resorting to bombing and assassination are guilty of sin and responsible for sowing the seeds of discord."
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"... one of Islam's gravest sins, which is the killing of a soul."

Suggested Atlas messages:
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"Jihadis want a totalitarian system of government in which no one is allowed to think for themselves. Not even the Saudi government is strict enough. Anyone who does not share their understanding of Islam will be declared an apostate and executed. If you want to know what a Jihadi state will look like, contemplate the Taliban—the only state in recent memory that Jihadis consider to have been legitimately Islamic."
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or
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"The Jihadi message is so weak and unappealing that they have to use violence to persuade people. They claim to be saving Islam, but they are giving it a bad reputation. They are hurting their own people and national resources."
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The Algerians made use of much simpler straight forward messages. This maybe just the difference between an academic solution vs. a practical solution or it might point to a greater issue of lack of cultural understanding and the political-religious context in which the messaging is taking place.
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Regardless of intended Muslim audience, be it, Islamist, Salafi, or Jihadist- the Radio Qur'an messages of (discord, sin, and killing of the soul) -are clear and unambiguous in the religous context in which they are transmitted and received.

When trying to construct the needed counter ideological narrative to exploit the power of Cognetics, it would be easier and more effective to weave the Radio Qur'an messages together rather than to use what the Atlas suggests.

"Ask Zawahiri" Web forum draws Qaeda-curious

The following article is a follow up to the 27 Dec 2007 posting entitled "Ask a Terrorist: (Al Qaeda's evolvng Cognetic Weapon)"


By Randall Mikkelsen
Sat Jan 26, 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A woman frustrated by the lack of opportunities in al Qaeda and a supporter wondering if Muslims should deal in gold instead of dollars are among hundreds who have submitted Internet questions to al Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"My question: What is the role of women in al Qaeda? ... We are the ones who sit with broken hearts and we sit here with nothing to do," one woman asked, according to the U.S. based terrorism monitoring service SITE Intelligence Group.

The questions were drawn by an offer last month by al Qaeda-linked Web sites that carried an interview with Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command.

The deadline was January 16, and Zawahiri's answers to selected questions are expected within the next several weeks, SITE said. It sampled about 500 questions of the more than 2,000 submitted. Most were in Arabic.

Although Zawahiri and other top al Qaeda leaders are believed to be holed up in remote Pakistan, analysts credit the group with being highly Web-savvy. The semi-interactive forum with Zawahiri lets him appear accessible, SITE senior analyst Adam Raisman said.

"It allows for a greater feeling of community on these al-Qaeda affiliated forums when members can voice their concerns to the leadership where there may be a possibility he can respond to them. It also allows them to achieve part of their propaganda goal," he said.


(The Full Article)

Snop's Commentary:

Here is an example of how Al Qaeda reaches across time and space to connect with its "virtual Ummah" in order to exert influence over the opinions and behaviors of the "Al Qaeda curious". This virtual Ummah is made up of Muslims either committed or uncommitted to Al Qaeda's cause.


In Dawn of the Cognetic Age, the curious are referred to as the uncommitted. This group represents a huge pool of potential recruits for Al Qaeda. The question is then.. How can this group be turned away from Al Qaeda and not fall victim to its ideological pull? In order to begin to answer this question, we must first identify the storyline or narrative being used to influence the uncommitted before a counter-narrative can be developed.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of "The Al Qaeda Reader" (see 13 Jan posting below) observes, ..."[M]ost of their writings and speeches neatly fit into two genres--religious exegesis, meant to motivate and instruct Muslims, and propagandist speeches, aimed at demoralizing the West and inciting Muslims to action." Ibrahim's two genres help delineate the two main narratives being used by Al Qaeda to attract the uncommitted.

Therefore, if Ibrahim's two genres (narratives) and the findings contained with in The Militant Ideology Atlas (see 2 Jan posting) are correct, a basis for creating a counter-narrative by target audience on a global scale may then exist.

More on that in the next post...

Al-Qaeda's White Army of Terror

Two and a half years on from the 7/7 attack on London, MI5 has identified a worrying new trend in Al-Qaeda recruits.

Picture: Phil Wilkinson
By Richard Elias
Monday, 13th January 2008

HUNDREDS of British non-Muslims have been recruited by al-Qaeda to wage war against the West, senior security sources warned last night.

As many as 1,500 white Britons are believed to have converted to Islam for the purpose of funding, planning and carrying out surprise terror attacks inside the UK, according to one MI5 source.

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Lord Carlile, the Government's independent reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, said many of the converts had been targeted by radical Muslims while serving prison terms.

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Security experts say the growing secret army of white terrorists poses a particularly serious threat as they are far less likely to be detected than members of the Asian community.

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Since the 7/7 and 21/7 London bombings, police and intelligence services have had considerable success in identifying, disrupting and stopping extremist plots. As a result, groups such as al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen have been forced to change tack. Converting white non-Muslims has been one response.

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(The Full Article)

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Snop's Commentary:

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This article speaks to the need to counter miltant Islam's growing success in leveraging its ideology to attract new harder to detect followers outside the South Asian community.

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Psychologically, a white English convert suicide bomber would expectantly have a greater Cognetic impact on the population rit large. The media amplification of fear would be intense as the story line would most likely be about " the unseen enemy from within".

The Al Qaeda Reader (Discovering the Ideological Fuel of Jihad)

"The Global War on Terror is not just a military conflict but a war of ideas. Indeed it is in some respects primarily an ideological struggle yet it is a war we cannot win without a broader understanding of al-Qaeda's goals and motives." (Raymond Ibrahim )

"What do our enemies believe? What motivates their war against the West? What is their vision of the ideal Islamic society?

Surprisingly, more than five years after 9/11, there is very little understanding of these questions. Despite our tendency to dismiss Islamic extremism as profoundly irrational, al-Qaeda is not without a coherent body of beliefs.

Like other totalitarian movements, the movement’s leaders have rationalized their brutality in a number of published treatises. Now, for the first time, The Al Qaeda Reader gathers together the essential texts and documents that trace the origin, history, and evolution of the ideas of al-Qaeda founders Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden.

This extraordinary collection of the key texts of the al-Qaeda movement—including incendiary materials never before translated into English—lays bare the minds, motives, messages, and ultimate goals of an enemy bent on total victory.

Al-Qaeda’s chilling ideology calls for a relentless jihad against non-Muslim "infidels," repudiates democracy in favor of Islamic law, stresses the importance of martyrdom, and mocks the notion of "moderate" Islam. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these works is how grounded they are in the traditional sources of Islamic theology: the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet.

The founders of al-Qaeda use these sources as powerful weapons of persuasion, reminding followers (and would-be recruits) that Muhammad and his warriors spread Islam through the power of the sword and that the Koran is not merely allegory or history but literal truth that commands all Muslims to action.

In addition to laying bare al-Qaeda’s ultimate motives, The Al Qaeda Reader includes the organization’s propagandist speeches, which are directed primarily at Americans, Europeans, and Iraqis.

Here, al-Qaeda’s many "official" accusations against the West are meticulously delineated, from standard complaints such as the Palestinian issue and Iraq to wholly unexpected ones concerning the U.S.’s exploitation of women and the environment.

Taken together, the Theology and Propaganda sections of this volume reveal the most comprehensive picture of al-Qaeda to date.

They also highlight the double-speak of bin Laden and Zawahiri, who often say one thing to Muslims in their religious treatises ("We must hate and fight the West because Islam commands it") and another in their propaganda directed at the West ("The West is the aggressor and we are fighting back merely in self-defense").

Westerners from across the political spectrum will be fascinated and enlightened by The Al Qaeda Reader’s insights into the nature of Islamic texts and the ways in which al-Qaeda has used these texts to manufacture hatred against our civilization and our way of life."

Snop's Commentary:

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The Al Qaeda Reader goes a long way toward unearthing and explaining the ideology that fuels militant Islam's assault on the West and the rest. It does so by using the very words of the primary ideological drivers of the Al Qaeda Movement --Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

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Again, I'll refer back to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' Kansas speech, given during his Landon Lecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas on 26 Nov 2007. During the speech, Secretary Gates emphasised the importance of “speed, agility and cultural relevance [...] when discussing U.S. strategic communications."

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Understanding the cultural relevance of Al Qaeda's animating ideas is basic to the struggle in which we are engaged. The problem with these animating ideas is that they are taken rightly or wrongly from the corpus of Islam itself, making it an extremely combustible subject to take on without getting burned.

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Stephen Coughlin, a recognized expert in Islamic law, was the first to feel the burn by exposing the animating ideas of Jihad that are incorporated in Islamic law. He does so in great detail with his 300 plus page thesis ("To Our Great Detriment": Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad.

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The opening comments in the Al Qaeda Reader and Coughlin's thesis both make parallel observations about the importance of reading and understanding the dark world vision of another megalomaniac in our not so distant history--Adolph Hitler--in view of contemporaries like Bin Laden and Zawahiri.

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I'll get off the stage now by repeating one of George Santayana's most famous quotes:

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“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”

AL-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq (Identifying Cognetic Attack Points)

Snop’s Commentary:

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point put out another paper as part of a series of excellent products relevant to employing Cognetics.

The Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records draws upon newly released information from captured Al-Qa’ida documents maintained in the Defense Department’s Harmony Database. These documents detail over 600 foreign fighters in Iraq revealing their nationalities and places of origin.

When meshed with The Militant Ideology Atlas, these two papers provide the basic components needed to identify Cognetic attack points against Al-Qa’ida in Iraq and beyond. The basic components are (target audiences, authoritative messengers, and messages that resonate with the target audience).

The Sinjar Records identify target Jihadist audiences by place of origin and The Militant Ideology Atlas identifies authoritative messengers and messages that resonate with the Jihadist target audiences.

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Take a look at both papers and let me know what you think.

The Militant Ideology Atlas

Researchers from the Counter Terrorism Center at West Point spent one year mining the most popular books and articles in al-Qaeda’s online library, profiling hundreds of figures in the Jihadi Movement, and cataloging over 11,000 citations. The empirically supported findings of the project are surprising: (Click to read Atlas)

"The most influential Jihadi intellectuals are clerics from Jordan and Saudi Arabia, two of the US’s closest allies in the Middle East.

Among them, the Jordanian cleric Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi has had the most impact on other Jihadi thinkers and has been the most consequential in shaping the worldview of the Jihadi Movement.

In contrast, the study finds that Osama Bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri have had little influence on other Jihadi theorists and strategists."

"Significantly, the report uses these empirical findings to identify powerful messages and influential messengers that can turn different constituencies against the Jihadis.

These constituencies range from benign mainstream Muslims to the most violent Jihadis. The recommendations of this report establish a baseline against which strategic communications campaigns can be calibrated and adjusted. "

Snop's commentary:

Sec Robert Gates, during his Landon Lecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas on 26 Nov 2007, emphasised the importance of “speed, agility and cultural relevance [...] when discussing U.S. strategic communications.”

This Atlas provides a wellspring of information needed to communicate with the needed "cultural relevance". The cultural aspect is a critical element of Cognetics and must be fully understood in order succesfully influence target audience behaviors.

From Dawn of the Cognetic Age:

"The physical weapons of the Industrial Age—plane, tank, and rifle—use a wide variety of ordnance, including bombs, shells, and bullets specially designed to create specific effects on specific targets.

Similarly, the virtual weapons of the Cognetic Age (the Internet and transnational television) have a wide variety of content (imagery, sounds, and words) specially designed to create specific psychological and behavioral effects on specific audiences."