violent extremism

Somalia’s Islamist militant group al-Shabaab has used a clip of Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump in its latest recruitment film. The group released a recruitment film in the form of a documentary about racial injustice in the United States featuring Trump’s recent call to ban all Muslims from the country.

December 24, 2015

Check out, as just one of many examples, the Twitter user “Bint Emergent”: an apparent ISIS fangirl and keen observer of the jihadist scene. (Bint Emergent has not disclosed her identity, or gender, but bint is an honorific Arabic word for girl or daughter; like umm—mother in Arabic—bint features prominently in theTwitter display names of female ISIS sympathizers.)

They look like scenes from a Hollywood movie. [...] Underneath the images, a track of soulful music enhances his emotional plea. But this video isn't from Hollywood. It's from ISIS. The Islamic State's online recruitment is so powerful that the U.S. government is having a difficult time counteracting it, according to experts who study efforts by both sides.

A selection of blogs and research.

The assignments arrive on slips of paper, each bearing the black flag of the Islamic State, the seal of the terrorist group's media emir, and the site of that day's shoot.His footage quickly found a global audience, released online in an Islamic State video that spread on social media and appeared in mainstream news coverage on Al Jazeera and other networks.

As I explore in a new Brookings paper, a major reason for this level of [ISIS's] recruiting success has been the group’s savvy use of propaganda and social media. Counter-messaging efforts, meanwhile, have been largely ineffective—in part because they are dwarfed by the sheer size of the ISIS communications footprint, but also because they have been too mono-dimensional and static.

Muslim leaders the world over are condemning the horrific terror attacks that struck Paris Friday night, expressing outrage and shock at an onslaught of shootings and bombings that left at least 120 dead and hundreds wounded. Muslim imams, scholars, commentators, and average Muslims expressed grief and horror using social media. 

The Iraqi army launched 24-hour radio broadcasts targeting the population of the western Iraqi province of Anbar under Islamic State jihadist group control, local media reported Saturday.

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