| The new image of jihad |
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| Thursday, 16 November 2006 | ||||
 Jihadi propaganda is largely widespread on the Internet, as Zone-H and many other international organizations have been pointing out for long. Now, some changes are occurring in the approach used by websites supporting terrorism: they are becoming far more modern in design and they are dealing with topics studied to reach a younger and skilled public of potential sympathizers and recruits. According to the annual report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center released in June 2006, large amount of money have been invested into the creation of an extensive Internet infrastructure, including 20 websites in 8 different languages (Arabic, English, French, Russian, Persian, Malay, Urdu and Indonesian). According to the department who drew up the report, the coordinator of the whole operation is a member of Hamas, and the main purpose of the network is to spread out as many information as possible on the conflict with Israel and about Hamas.
The example of Hamas has been followed by several Jihadi groups that are using forums and web pages to find new members , however, when the purpose is to catch the attention of young people used to surf the web and to watch tv, a bare video or some simple pictures aren’t enough, the recruiters need something attractive to keep the attention at the highest level. As Bouchaib Slim, a researcher with the terrorism department at Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies declared in his intervention at the Digital Terrorism conference in Singapore on Tuesday, some websites have recently started publishing comedy clips and Top10 video lists of the most devastating terror attacks, the Associated Press reported . Using this juvenile approach, even the worst action looses its connotation and it can be presented as an entertaining element, not so different from a videogame, acquiring this way an extremely high impact on Islamic teens and young guys that are more and more attracted by the values that such web sites bring about.
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