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US “public diplomacy experts” warn: Government not doing enough to counter Islamic State’s online presence

Sep 23, 2014 12:10 pm By Robert Spencer

flamesofwarIslamicStatemovie“US public diplomacy experts have warned that the government may not be doing enough to counter the Islamic State’s growing online presence.” Do these “public diplomacy experts” ever stop and ask themselves why the Muslim organizations large and small that condemn the Islamic State aren’t doing anything to counter its growing online presence? Why is it so easy to find online Muslim expositions of the Qur’an that justify the activities of jihad groups, and so hard to find Muslim refutations of the Qur’anic exegesis of jihad groups? Why do mainstream analysts never ask themselves these questions?

“Efforts mount to oppose Islamic State in online propaganda war,” by Justin Jalil, Times of Israel, September 23, 2014:

US public diplomacy experts have warned that the government may not be doing enough to counter the Islamic State’s growing online presence.

The Islamic State is widely regarded as the most successful terrorist group of the social media age. Its presence on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter dwarf any of the group’s predecessors, as it actively recruits supporters with grisly propaganda videos.

The al-Qaeda offshoot made headlines this summer when it circulated three high-quality videos that showed the beheadings of three Western civilians: American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and British aid worker David Haines.

American officials are working to counter the Islamic State’s influence electronically with a number of initiatives designed to discredit the rogue caliphate online, the Guardian reported.

The most noticeable effort has been the US’s “Think Again, Turn Away” campaign, headed by a State Department office called the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications.

The campaign is a calculated offensive — meant to discourage potential recruits from joining the Islamic State — that produced videos casting the jihadists currently fighting in Iraq and Syria in a negative, anti-Muslim light.

One video uploaded to the account is titled “Welcome to the ‘Islamic State’ land (ISIS/ISIL)” and rapidly displays a series of graphic images of Islamic State fighters blowing up mosques and killing civilians with accompanying text and brooding music.

But not everyone thinks the official efforts are worthwhile.

The American government has been accused of “trolling” the social media accounts of Islamic State members and arguing with them on a variety of online forums.

“I honestly don’t think the government should be in the position of directly engaging jihadis on Twitter. It’s a silly game,” contended Shahed Amanullah, a former State Department employee who left to help to establish programs promoting anti-extremist Muslim voices abroad.

Amanullah is right. It is a silly game, because it proceeds from false assumptions about Islam and Muslims.

“[The] tragedy of the US government’s attempts to engage online,” Amanullah said, is that “there’s nothing these people like more than to see the US government specifically acknowledging and interacting with them online. They turn right around to their followers and say, ‘See? We’re every bit as powerful as we say we are, the US government is proof.’”

They are powerful enough to hold a territory larger than the U.K. It is doubtful that they think they’re important because the State Department is engaging them online.

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Filed Under: United States, Useful idiots, willful ignorance Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. TH says

    Sep 23, 2014 at 12:29 pm

    Can they not simply force Google, Twitter and Facebook to cancel any pro-jihad accounts?

    • Custos Custodum says

      Sep 23, 2014 at 3:38 pm

      Can they not simply force Google, Twitter and Facebook to cancel any pro-jihad accounts?

      LEGALLY, this is possible – the president’s war power would probably outweigh the First Amendment interests of these platform companies. In any event, the companies would probably not even challenge narrowly drafted prohibition orders.

      POLITICALLY, prohibition orders would be very difficult to implement because the government would need to SPECIFY the type of content that it is seeking to ban. This runs counter to the GREAT TABOO – naming ISLAM itself as the inspiration of America’s enemies.

      The government could try to sidestep this difficulty by prohibiting advocacy of “Islamic State” (again, they would have to name it to some extent), etc.

      Similar prohibitions of public advocacy of terrorist organizations were tried unsuccessfully during the IRA (“Irish Republican Army”) war against the UK government. The prohibitions were widely flouted (especially by the BBC) or sidestepped. The IRA’s war ended in the complete surrender of the UK government and establishment of IRA terrorists as de facto government of Northern Ireland.

  2. UneasyOne says

    Sep 23, 2014 at 12:43 pm

    They have their work cut out for them. How in hell are they going to convince a young muslim that IS is “unislamic and a perversion of islam” when they are strictly following the example of their prophet?

    Killing captives, enslaving women, raping girls and boys, stealing from unbelievers and so on. Mohammed did these things and commanded his followers to do likewise!

    • GP says

      Sep 24, 2014 at 12:29 am

      Right you are! They are just following in the prophets foot steps.

  3. Jay Boo says

    Sep 23, 2014 at 12:45 pm

    “Think Again, Turn Away” is based on the false assumption that the Islamic State and Islam are opposites.

    Muslims are vain but are not that stupid.
    Islam is ISIS and they know it.
    Obama is not listening to Brother Rashid’s message.

    Muslims are not just followers of a belief system; their self worth is dependent on Islamic vanity.
    The inherent value of being a human being is lost in their fantasy world where all that matters is winning.
    They are live ravenous sports fanatics on steroids only worst.

    They must learn that they have inherent value without Islam.
    Islam without its props is nothing.
    The government programs should eviscerate the foul ideology of Islam.

    • jihad3tracker says

      Sep 23, 2014 at 3:51 pm

      IMO : superbly stated, nailing the problem concisely, Jay Boo.

      Reminding our JW readers here that a couple of months ago, there was a post about Islam being a “gang religion”. If you use the search box, perhaps a result will pop up.

      The wonderful contributor Nikolai Sennels likely also has written about that — he might even be author of the item I am referring to.

  4. Jay Boo says

    Sep 23, 2014 at 12:58 pm

    The lowly swamp mosquito may possibly be the most deadly animal on earth.
    The stinky Koran infected Muslim must then be a (number two).

    • UneasyOne says

      Sep 23, 2014 at 1:18 pm

      They are after Pakistan’s nukes, trust me on this. They will cut through that unstable country like a hot knife through butter. When they do, they will make the mosquito look helpful.

  5. missizbeasley says

    Sep 23, 2014 at 1:59 pm

    Perhaps their being on line is key to gathering important intelligence on who/where/when/what (murderous hellishness, no doubt) and we already know ‘why’….
    How else did they catch the slime in Australia and are able to grab people before they head off to fight to bad fight with all their might ? It has to take more than wire tapping and profiling.

  6. jewdog says

    Sep 23, 2014 at 2:49 pm

    I agree that more needs to be done to counter the jihad online. One solution would be to donate a billion or so to this web site.

    • Kepha says

      Sep 23, 2014 at 9:08 pm

      Jewdog, I could not agree more! 🙂

      Knowing something about American public diplomacy, if it’s more “ISIS is bad Islam” of the John Hatchetface Kerry variety, I can only say it embarrasses the USA and makes us look pompous, ignorant, and pompous about our ignorance. Less public diplomacy is far better than half-baked and foolish public diplomacy–especially when our establishment is the blind leading the blind leading an occasional starry-eyed EmCeePeeCee idealist into a ditch.

  7. Paul says

    Sep 23, 2014 at 3:36 pm

    Topless Jihad!

    http://www.bing.com/search?q=topless+jihad&qs=n&form=QBLH&pq=topless+jihad&sc=0-7&sp=-1&sk=&cvid=4c98a1578173434cb1ba7f2f162506e8

    Maybe I’ll move to Europe after all. Europe is where the action is, no thanks to the usual suspects. For example, you can see one such fuddy duddy in action in picture #15 at

    http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/04/femen-stages-a-topless-jihad/100487/

    The fd’s name is Jay Boo.

    No, wait. That’s GP kicking the “topless Femen activist, as she raises her fist to protest against Islamists in front of the Great Mosque of Paris, on April 3, 2013”. Now, isn’t she hot with her fist raised like that? Makes me wonder if she knows how to apply a proper joint lock to the fuddy duddy. Well, no matter.

    She can be taught.

    She can be taught also how to take away a knife, too, just like they did at my kung fu studio, where some Krav Maga was taught from time to time. The fuddy duddy will learn the hard way about encouraging young Mohammedans to cut off the heads of Islam’s enemies.

    So hot.

    • Kepha says

      Sep 23, 2014 at 9:16 pm

      I’ve seen articles about Femen a couple of times and I’ve seen enough. This supposedly “feminist” outfit is in fact all about exploiting the female body. Put in 17th century terms:

      A young Quak’ress, with visions embued,
      Strode into a church in the nude.
      She ranted and shouted;
      The pastor, he pouted,
      But other men cheerfully viewed.

      Further, Femen is part of the general bullying on behalf of general sordidness and Western self-destruction which has turned our civilization into prey for utter barbarians.

    • GP says

      Sep 24, 2014 at 12:35 am

      Topless Jihad is good, hope to see that catch on in America and the West, because IS LAM is truly a War on Women!

  8. Fr. Basil says

    Sep 23, 2014 at 4:11 pm

    Are there not enough geeks and hackers working for the government–to say nothing about patriotic civilians–who can hack into these sites and infect them or take them down?

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