Jihad Watch: Report: Al Qaida recruited from social networks, not mosques

May 8, 2007

Report: Al Qaida recruited from social networks, not mosques

See? There's no jihad. It's just a group of friends. Nothing to be concerned about.

Is Hegghammer's actual study as full of logical leaps and unwarranted assumptions as this news article about it? I don't know, as it doesn't appear to be online at Middle East Policy (although an unhelpful abstract is there), but from the looks of what is here I don't have high hopes.

From the World Tribune, with thanks to all who sent this in:

WASHINGTON — Al Qaida has recruited operatives mostly through family and friends rather than through Muslim groups, a study found.

Saying that they recruited "through family and friends rather than through Muslim groups" doesn't establish how they recruited, but only where they recruited. It does nothing to establish that they didn't appeal to the purity of their Islam and their responsibilities as Muslims, as we have seen them do again and again.

The report said Al Qaida operatives in Saudi Arabia were largely recruited through social networks rather than the mosque or Islamic institutions. Authored by Thomas Hegghammer and published in Middle East Policy, the study said most of the recruits did not express anti-American sentiments before they underwent training in Al Qaida camps in Afghanistan.

Was this the only indicator of radicalism that Hegghammer examined? Did he study their mosque attendance or other signs of being devout, whatever the location of their recruitment may have been?

"My analysis was based on a collection of 240 biographies, compiled from Arabic primary sources and extensive fieldwork in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia," Hegghammer said. "So I feel that this work provides a fairly accurate picture of these militants."

What would establish the accuracy or inaccuracy of Hegghammer's picture would not be how many biographies he analyzed, but some information on how exactly he analyzed them.

The study disputed the image of Al Qaida as an insurgency group sustained by religious Muslims. Hegghammer said most of the Saudi recruits had no intention of fighting the United States or other Western states.

The second sentence here does nothing to establish or illustrate the truth of the first. The location of recruitment does not outweigh the consistently religious foundation of Al-Qaeda's appeal.

"The most common motivations for going to Afghanistan were: a desire to fight in Chechnya; a desire to defend the Taliban from the Northern Alliance; and adventurism," the report said. "Anti-American sentiments were only developed after their time with Bin Laden's cohorts."

So a desire to fight in Chechnya and defend the Taliban doesn't stem from religious motives? And on what is this conclusion based?

Posted by Robert at May 8, 2007 4:35 AM
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WASHINGTON — Al Qaida has recruited operatives mostly through family and friends rather than through Muslim groups, a study found.

Wait a minute. Their family and friends ARE moslems.

Posted by: infidel!

at May 8, 2007 5:02 AM

infidel!
Shouldn't that be family and fiends

Posted by: Freedom

at May 8, 2007 5:26 AM

"Wait a minute. Their family and friends ARE moslems.

Posted by: infidel!"

....and they go to mosques!.....

Posted by: exsgtbrown

at May 8, 2007 5:51 AM

Delusion is alive nad well in the west, it seems...

Posted by: Witch-king of Angmar

at May 8, 2007 5:54 AM

These murderers are not connected by their religion or where they pray, but are connected by their bus routes. Inaccurate. Yellow journalism. Sensational. The news article is a game of the newspaper to get you to buy the paper.

Publish the opposite. The story is calculated to get you to buy a newspaper. Its like Bush is the killer, not the Islamist who you just saw with your own eyes cut off someone's head while they were screaming for their life.

Remember the Maine. Newspaper: "Send me the photos, and I will provide you the war."

Thank God that today with the internet we do not have to pay a muck raker to obtain news. Many of these vestige newspapers like the (new Duranty) Times which recently closed a major plant in New Jersey firing about 900 workers), are relics of a dying past. Information will not be monopolized and sold by stringers to the papers who repackage for a profit to readers of papers an industry which developed during the period when P T Barnum also a huckster of the period declared "there is a sucker born every minute."

These fiends are connected by the umbilical chord of Islam. As the truth is now available among the gibberish on the web, perhaps truth in news will again become fashionable. At least the truth is available.

Posted by: David England

at May 8, 2007 7:18 AM

Mosques are a source of inspiration. But mosque-going is, contrary to the beliefs of some law enforcement officials, not the only way to spread Islam, and secuirty services that put their entire emphasis on monitoring mosques, rather than understanding that reading the texts of Islam, and growing up in a family or society suffused with the attitudes and what may be called the "atmospherics" of Islam, can be just as important in convincing some to wage their Jihad through violence and especially terrorism directed at Infidels. Not all will be satisfied with conducting Jihad through other, less spectacular (but far more effective) instruments of Jihad-warfare, such as use of the money weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and inexorable demographic conquest in Western Europe.

By all means, monitor the mosques, as Ataturk did, and as Ben Ali in Tunisia does. Monitor the khutbas -- tape them secretly and then go over them. But understand that those khutbas, whether spoken by an imam of the softspoken interfaith-feelgood variety, well-versed in how to present himself to Infidels, or the Hamza Finsbury-Mosque sort, the foaming-at-the-mouth sort, the face contorted-in-hysterical-hate sort, are not the whole story.

Magdi Allam has written about the folly of Infidels thinking that if they can monitor and control the mosques -- not that this has been done -- then the problem is solved. The problem is everywhere that Islam exists in the minds of men, and when there is the possibility, which is more than a possibility but a certainty, that many will take the doctrines of Islam seriously. We have every evidence that hundreds of millions of Muslims do so, and it is these, the primitive masses, and not the handful of westernized, secularized, plausible and often charming unrepresentative "representatives" of Islam, whose unrepresentativeness should always be kept firmly in mind by those Americans whose duty it is to construct intelligent policies, foreign and domestic, for dealing with Islam. The confusing, by the Bush Adminstration, of those "westernized, sedcularized, plausible and often charming unrepresentatives" of Islam in Iraq (mostly Shi'a in this case), has led to disaster -- a disaster that those who were taken in, such as Paul Wolfowitz, and Bernard Lewis (back safely, one hopes, from his trip to Tripoli), and Cheney, and Bush.

Posted by: Hugh

at May 8, 2007 8:07 AM

The delusions of the West -- particularly in Canada, Hugh -- appear to be growing. In the past few days, I read columns from the normally intelligent "conservatives" (as opposed to Canada's moonbat leftists), that "extremists" consist in "one percent" of Muslims (it sounds like the comments one reads from the radical Imams). Today, I read another column about how "a million" "moderate" Muslims are "on the march." I despair when I read these columns. I really don't care whether or not x number of Muslims march against Sharia law in Turkey or Pakistan.

Another poster at this site has mentioned that this is really a two-front war. One front is being waged over-seas (Afghanistan, Iraq), but the other front is here at home. It is this latter front which concerns me the most (and the front which i believe we are rapidily losing -- thanks in no small measure to comments or editorial opinions made by columnists such as those I cite above). Ironically at the same time -- the very same time -- that we are losing ground (thanks to the elites blindness to the dangers of Islam), one of the commentators talks about the blindness of non-Muslims! O, the irony.

In the same edition of today's paper, one can also read "Canadians join Cairo anti-war protest: Largest delegation from country in event's history". The opening sentence reads: "Canadian activists (ah, yes, say "activists" and we all know what that means, don't we?) were out in force (note, this is an article about the "religion of peace" "activists") at a recent conference in Cairo that sought to forge closer links between the international anti-war movement and Islamic resistance groups...(yes, that's right "Islamic resistance groups" -- that's a Canadian code word for Hamas, Hezboollah, the PFLP, etc.) This event was sponsored by the "oficially banned" Muslim Brotherhood. Ah, yes, that's "moderate islam" in operation, I guess.

I detest ever "Canadian" who atteneded this event, and I despise their sympathsizers (the latter group comprises incaluculably large numbers -- including the "editorialists", the "journalists", the university "profs", the "religious" leaders, etc. -- their numbers are growing here, and all I can do is read yet more columns about how wonderful Islam is and despair.

Posted by: J.S.

at May 8, 2007 8:47 AM

That's it! No more "friends and family" cell phone plans for Muslims.

Posted by: BunrattyBill

at May 8, 2007 9:38 AM

So now there IS an Al-Qaida? That in and of itself is quite an admission.

Posted by: Balrog

at May 8, 2007 9:47 AM

This guys stuff should be in a banner headline
"Al-qaueda not Muslim" (enough)
Let Zawaraqwi(sp?) solve the problem.

Maybe we will see the fastest Fatwa in the ME.

Posted by: auntbea

at May 8, 2007 9:49 AM