"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...