Studies in Conflict & Terrorism

ISSN: 1057-610X (Print) 1521-0731 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uter20

Tweeting the Jihad: Social Media Networks of

Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq

Jytte Klausen

To cite this article: Jytte Klausen (2015) Tweeting the Jihad: Social Media Networks of
Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 38:1, 1-22, DOI:
10.1080/1057610X.2014.974948

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2014.974948

© 2015 Jytte Klausen. Published with license

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Klausen

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Oct 2014.
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Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 38:1–22, 2015
Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1057-610X print / 1521-0731 online
DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2014.974948

Tweeting the Jihad: Social Media Networks

of Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq

JYTTE KLAUSEN
Politics
Brandeis University
Waltham, MA, USA

Social media have played an essential role in the jihadists’ operational strategy in Syria
and Iraq, and beyond. Twitter in particular has been used to drive communications over
other social media platforms. Twitter streams from the insurgency may give the illusion
of authenticity, as a spontaneous activity of a generation accustomed to using their
cell phones for self-publication, but to what extent is access and content controlled?
Over a period of three months, from January through March 2014, information was
collected from the Twitter accounts of 59 Western-origin fighters known to be in Syria.
Using a snowball method, the 59 starter accounts were used to collect data about the
most popular accounts in the network-at-large. Social network analysis on the data
collated about Twitter users in the Western Syria-based fighters points to the controlling
role played by feeder accounts belonging to terrorist organizations in the insurgency
zone, and by Europe-based organizational accounts associated with the banned British
organization, Al Muhajiroun, and in particular the London-based preacher, Anjem
Choudary.

The jihadist insurgents in Syria and Iraq use all manner of social media apps and file-sharing
platforms, most prominently Ask.fm, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, PalTalk, kik, viper,
JustPaste.it, and Tumblr. Encryption software like TOR is used in communications with
journalists to obscure locational information. But circumstances conspire to make Twitter
the most popular application. Specifically engineered for cellphones, it is easy and inex-
pensive to use. Posts (tweets) may contain images or text, links to other platforms can be
embedded, and an incoming tweet can effortlessly be forwarded to everyone in an address
list. Some types of social media require either 3G or wi-fi access but Twitter can be used in
the absence of either.
Website managers in back offices integrate the twitter feeds of frontline fighters with
YouTube uploads and disseminate them to wider audiences. These back-office managers

© Jytte Klausen
This is an Open Access article. Non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any
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Received 5 September 2014; accepted 16 September 2014.
Address correspondence to Jytte Klausen, Department of Politics, Mailstop 058, Waltham, MA
02451-9110, USA. E-mail: Klausen@brandeis.edu
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at
www.tandfonline.com/uter.

1
2 J. Klausen

are often wives and young female supporters. It makes little difference if they are working
from Raqqa or from Nice. It may be that as phone and Internet access deteriorate on the
ground, the insurgents are relying on disseminators outside the war zone to spread their
messages.
Journalists, scholars, and militants communicate and follow each other on Twitter. Slow
media—TV, newspapers, and radio—routinely quote Twitter as an authoritative source of
information about the progress of the insurgency. Yet while Twitter may give the illusion of
authenticity, as a spontaneous activity of a generation accustomed to using cell phones for
self-publication, the online streaming of images and information is managed more tightly
than is generally recognized. Evidence exists that the communications of the fighters are
restricted and only trusted militants maintain high volume social media activities. A few
militants compulsively update their Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds from the battlefield
but many more do not communicate at all. New recruits turn over their cell phones upon
arrival to training camps. Unauthorized contact with family members is punished, allegedly
even with execution. Clearly, unmonitored communications by the foreign fighters may
inadvertently disclose information that could be exploited by law enforcement and rival
combatants. Our working hypothesis, therefore, was that what appears to be a spontaneous
stream of self-publication using social media is, in fact, controlled communications.

The Staging and Communication of Terror—Past and Present

The literature on terrorist communication has focused on what Gabriel Weimann has called
the “theater of terror.”1 Terrorism aims to intimidate a particular audience—or sometimes
multiple audiences. Victims are chosen not because they are the enemy but because of
their symbolic importance. Alex Schmid quotes a Chinese proverb: “Kill one—frighten ten
thousands.”2 To achieve their objectives terrorists need to reach broad publics. However, as
clandestine organizations, they have—in the past at least—had to rely on mainstream media
to broadcast their message. This essential dilemma drives terrorist behavior. The solution
is to stage dramatic violent incidents against symbolic targets compelling the media to
broadcast the message. By attacking the Pentagon on 9/11, Al Qaeda strove to drive home
the vulnerability of the American state to the muhajideen. The orange jumpsuits worn
by two American journalists beheaded by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in
August and September 2014 alluded to the jumpsuits worn by the inmates in Guantanamo
Bay, making the executions appear as acts of retribution against the American treatment of
Muslims.
The focus in the terrorism literature on the theater of terrorist spectaculars overshadows
the reality that terrorists also use the Internet for the same reasons everybody else does; for
organization and planning, proselytizing and entertainment, and to educate the believers.
In fact, most of the online communication of terrorists is mundane to the point of appearing
innocuous.
A multi-year study of the content of jihadist Internet forums found that the forums
were dominated by discussions of doctrine, the dissemination of information about “good”
versus “bad” Koranic interpretation, and the distribution of Al Qaeda–approved tracts.
Rarely do they discuss operational matters or provide playbooks for attacks.3 An analysis
of a desk top computer and a thumb drive belonging to the cell responsible for the 2004
Madrid train bombing similarly revealed the material to be dominated by religious exegesis
rather than operational information—the ratio of bomb manuals to doctrinal entreaties to
jihad was about 1:3.4
 Tweeting the Jihad 3

Communication is therefore critical to terrorist strategy as well as organization. The

Internet was a gift to terrorists on both scores. Al Qaeda early on understood the potential
of the Internet for building a global movement. In a letter from 2002 to Taliban leader
Mullah Muhammad Omar, Osama bin Laden wrote: “It is obvious that the media war in
this century is one of the strongest methods; in fact, its ratio may reach 90 percent of
the total preparation for the battles.”5 During the first jihadist insurgency in Iraq, Ayman
al-Zawahiri reiterated the lesson and wrote to the now deceased leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: “We are in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place
in the battlefield of the media. And that we are in a media battle in a race for the hearts
and minds of our Ummah.”6 Documents found at the Abbottabad compound in May 2011
revealed bin Laden’s insistence upon the primacy and significance of online media. In a
letter to an associate, he wrote: “media occupies the greater portion of the battle today.”7
The need to reach the intended audience—governments, publics near and far—puts
terrorists in an oddly dependent relationship to the media. After the 2001 expulsion from
Afghanistan, Al Qaeda had to find a new way to connect with the masses. The chosen
medium was tapes sent by messengers to Al-Jazeera. Two months after the 2005 London
Underground attacks, Al-Jazeera broadcast an Internet posting from Ayman al-Zawahiri
taking responsibility, together with Mohammad Sidique Khan’s suicide video. A year later,
on the anniversary of the London attacks, Al-Jazeera released a second video featuring a
second 7/7 bomber, Shehzad Tanweer. The novelty value of the Britons’ delivery of the
message guaranteed airtime for a while.
After 2006, Al-Jazeera became wary of acting as the publicity arm of Al Qaeda and
could no longer be relied on to air Al Qaeda’s videos. Fears of infiltration also pushed
Al Qaeda–related groups and individuals onto closed Internet forums and chat rooms.
The forums acted as online classrooms and kept the militants busy with translation work
and administrative chores but proved constraining in key respects. The requirement that
participants be “vetted” by administrators limited the ability of Al Qaeda to spread its
message beyond the circle of those who were already motivated to seek out contact with
jihadist extremists. Participants needed to know where to go as well as have connections
to someone who can recommend them to gain access with a password. The forums were
preoccupied with discussions of scripture and details of proper doctrine, which endlessly
occupied the believers but limited the value of the forums as bullhorns for the cause. A
third vulnerability is that the forums are subject to take-downs and cyberattacks.
Social media freed Al Qaeda from the dependency on mainstream media. Starting in
2011, many jihadi groups, media outlets, and individuals moved on to mainstream social
media platforms and created new accounts on Twitter and Facebook. Most groups’ media
outlets still post their content to jihadi forums but will simultaneously create sponsored
Twitter accounts where they release new statements or videos.
In the new lateral social media environment control over content is decentralized. Any-
one can participate. Distribution is decentralized via “hubs” and volunteers use mainstream
interactive and inter-connected social media platforms, blogs, and file sharing platforms.
Cross-posting and re-tweeting content on social media by volunteers is a low-cost means
of dissemination to wide audiences.
The new media environment is also resistant to policing. Control practices that worked
in the framework of vertically controlled Internet environment do not work in the new envi-
ronment of social networking and micro-blogging. The widespread use of lateral integration
across multiple file sharing platforms builds redundancy through the manifold postings of
the same document and resilience against disruption and suppression by governments and
Internet service providers. The question arises how the Web 2.0 media environment has
4 J. Klausen

altered not only the theatricality of violent incidents but also, more broadly, how media
usages affects terrorist organization.
In 2001, the authors of a RAND Corporation report anticipated that the Internet would
significantly alter how terrorists organize. Arquilla and Ronfeldt8 coined the term “netwar”
to describe what they saw as an emerging mode of conflict in which the protagonists are
small, dispersed groups who communicate, coordinate, and conduct their campaigns in an
“Internetted” manner and without a precise central command. In retrospect the prediction
may have been premature at the time but accurate in the social media environment. Twitter
now connects terrorist groups operating in multiple theaters of warfare and connects them
with tactical support groups outside the combat zone, eliminating geographical constraints.
To sum up, propaganda has always been central to terrorism. Terrorists prefer tight
control of the message but lacking directly control of mass media—print or television—have
in the past relied on compelling mainstream media into doing the communication by means
of the staging of attacks. Social media has changed the dynamic fundamentally. It has
eliminated the terrorists’ dependency on mainstream media, reversing the relationship by
making mainstream media dependent on the jihadist-run social media. But has media self-
sufficiency come at the cost of message control? And what changes have new media brought
to the theater of terror?

The Use of Twitter in ISIL’s Spring 2014 Offensive

Once in the combat zone, the fighters assume aliases. Many take names incorporating
muhajir (emigrant) or in reference to their national origin (e.g., al-Amriki). On video, men
going by the names of “Abu Muhajir” (“the immigrant”) or Al-Britani (“the Briton”), read
their wills in European languages, and declare their burning desire to die.
After the insurgents moved into Iraq, the content became increasingly gruesome. In
April “Abu Daighum al-Britani,” a British fighter with ISIL, used Twitter to circulate a
screenshot made using Instagram of himself holding a severed head. By August, Twitter
had served up stills from videos of ongoing beheadings, severed heads on fence posts, rows
of crucified men hung on crosses on a platform in a dusty town like an image from a bad
movie, and even a picture of a seven-year-old Australian boy holding a severed head offered
to him by his father. The execution of James W. Foley provoked the American public and
brought the United States into the conflict. The pictures of violence starkly highlighted the
role played by social media in contemporary terrorist tactics. But it is not all brutal horror
on Twitter. Tweets of cats and images of camaraderie bridge the real-life gap between
Strasbourg, Cardiff, or suburban Denver, and being in a war zone. They may even make it
seem more desirable to be in war-torn Raqqa and Aleppo than comfortably, and boringly,
in the family home: “It’s actually quite fun. It’s really really fun. It’s better than that game
Call of Duty. It’s like that but it’s in 3D where everything is happening in front of you,”
tweeted Abu Sumayyah Al-Britani, a British foreign fighter with ISIL.
Prior to the civil war, the Syrian telecommunications system was among the most
poorly developed in the area. Only about one-fifth of the population was estimated to
have access to the Internet but about 60 percent of the population had cell coverage. In
November 2012, the Syrian government shut down Internet and cell phone communication
cartels under its control. Repeated black-outs have occurred in 2014, generally shutting
down close to all Internet traffic.9 Iraq ordered a shutdown of the Internet in June after
ISIL’s takeover of several cities in the north and the declaration of the “Islamic State.” More
specific orders were later added to shut down access to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter,
and other apps.10 Complaints over poor Internet access emerged on jihadist social media
 Tweeting the Jihad 5

Figure 1. Life-style Tweet from “Abu Fulan al-Muhajir” showing “Band of Brothers” spirit.
Source: https://twitter.com/Fulan2weet/status/374579796858404865.

but generally the jihadists appear to have been able to overcome the practical impediments
to Internet access.
The insurgents may be providing their own satellite-linked networks. Satellite modems
are used to create hotspots and temporary pop-up wi-fi networks in areas where state
networks are disabled. A number of private companies advertise bundled telephone and
Internet VSAT (satellite) services from Syria.11 The Islamic State moved fast to secure
electricity and communication infrastructures in Raqqa and its other strongholds. Electricity
is also a prerequisite for useable phones and pop-up satellite networks. A tweet from “Abu
Fulan” from September 2013 shows how much the fighters rely on this basic utility (see
Figure 1).

Methodology and Data Collection

Over a period of three months, from January through March 2014, we collected information
from the Twitter accounts of 59 Westerner fighters known to be in Syria. Members of our
research team used their own Twitter accounts to identify potential foreign fighters in Syria.
Many of the leads came from news stories, blogs, and reports released by law enforcement
agencies and think tanks. A total of 60 accounts were initially identified but one was inactive
at the time, and therefore excluded from analysis. (Accounts that had no outgoing activity
were excluded from the dataset on the assumption that they were “listening-in” accounts
created to keep track of activity). The 59 accounts produced a total of 154,119 tweets (with
6 J. Klausen

an average of 2,612). They had 892 followers and followed 184 accounts. On average, each
account had posted 85 pictures and 91 videos.
The national origin of account holders was usually identified on the basis of the
dominant languages (e.g., English or Dutch) used in the Twitter feeds. When available, other
relevant information was drawn from the accounts. In some cases, additional information
about the account holders was available from postings on other types of social media (e.g.,
Facebook or YouTube). It is often difficult to determine the national origin of account
holders, and we could specify the specific country of origin for just 27 accounts (44
percent). Over half of these originated in France and the United Kingdom. We identified
three American account-holders in the starter set but a number of other Americans appear
to be influential in the broader network.
We sometimes found ourselves second-guessing already available classifications. Abu
Fulan al-Muhajir, who tweets under the handle @fulan2weet, has been identified as a
Dane, because he started tweeting from Denmark before going to Syria. He never tweets
in Danish, however, and his use of colloquial English is so fluent that we do not think he is
Danish. “Abu Fulan” did not respond to our question about his origin.
Using a snowball method we treated the original accounts as starter nodes in a network
of followers and those being followed by others, and created a larger data set that covers the
entire network. The larger dataset, consisting of about 29,000 Twitter accounts, comprised
all the accounts following or being followed by the 59 starter accounts in the network.
The purpose of collating the expanded data set was to analyze the at-large network that
Western fighters in Syria follow and to which they direct their tweets. It was dominated
by accounts that were clearly far more important than any of the original starter nodes.
Notably, a number of home-country organizations and proselytizers play dominant roles in
the network. The official accounts of designated terrorist organizations inside and outside
the war zone were also represented. For example, we identified 12 accounts that belonged
to known terrorist organizations and entities.
The average Western foreign fighter in our data set has tweeted 2,612 times. A number
communicate many times every day, and some update their accounts every five to ten min-
utes. By and large, posts are used to communicate quickly, and text-only tweets comprised
93 percent of the total. However, struck by the feeds containing touristy snapshots of cats
and hanging out with friends from back home interspersed with pictures of severed heads
and grisly executions, we also collected a sample of picture files and subjected them to
content analysis.
The results of our analysis of the 59 starter nodes in the network, along with the content
of the most recent tweets in their feeds, are outlined first. The at-large network is described
next. Using social network analysis (SNA) tools we were able to identify the most important
disseminators of content that drive the traffic on Twitter. Unfortunately the scope of the
at-large data set for the Twitter network exceeds the capacity of our analytical platforms,
and so more sophisticated analytical description was not possible. Further, the particular
network captured by our snowballing methodology comprises only a slice of the global
network unfolding on Twitter. A researcher tunneling into the network through a different
set of starter accounts (e.g., a collection of accounts belonging to sympathizers based in
Qatar) might identify a different set of network leaders.

Twitter Usage by Western Foreign Fighters

Over 70 percent of the time, Western foreign fighters active on Twitter retweet content
from other individuals rather than posting original content. They generally use their native
 Tweeting the Jihad 7

Table 1
Popularity ranking of accounts in Twitter network—Degree centrality

Twitter account name # of followers # of tweets Degree score

abudurahman50 7,508 811 8,749
ITSLJinny 5,566 5,670 5,682
Fulan2weet 3,716 2,272 3,805
I Jaman 3,006 9,792 3,231
khorasani 2,232 1,381 2,322
Hamidur1988 1,833 2,037 1,989
ISILTWEEP 1,697 2,168 1,893
Abu Qaqa 1,680 286 1,845
Khalid Maghrebi 1,620 7,775 1,850
Taimiyyah 1,559 16,600 1,914
AbuMamadou 1527 144 1,833
AbuYehya AlShami 1,508 840 1,852
AbuHarith5 1,379 9 4,311
A1Ghurabaa 1,339 8,825 2,408
un serviteur 1,296 11,000 145
Al Brittani 1,287 1,102 113
abu muhajir1 1,233 498 1,310
Salafi Jihadi 1,116 968 179
nadjmu 884 7,799 887
MrJaman 846 1,571 20
N = 59.

language when tweeting, even when the content is related to doctrine or religious instruction.
A native Western language was used in 85 percent of all the feeds belonging to the 59 starter
nodes. Arabic was used in 9.4 percent and 5.7 percent used a mix of Arabic and the fighters’
native Western language.
On average, each account has many more followers than people they follow on Twitter:
892 followers versus 184 being followed. Some tweeters are celebrities, among them Abu
Talha al-Almani, a rapper previously known as Deso Dogg who has become a foreign fighter
and is based in Syria. Forty-four or 73 percent of the 59 accounts had more followers than
accounts they were following. It would appear that approximately three out of every four
Western-origin foreign fighters using Twitter have a significant impact as proselytizers
for violent jihad. In comparison, say, with a mainstream celebrity like Justin Bieber, the
jihadists are not very popular, but compared to the average Twitter user, who reportedly
has 61 followers, they are minor celebrities. Three-quarters of all Twitter users follow more
accounts than they are followed by. So in terms of influence, with on average, 892 followers
and 184 following accounts, the jihadists are not doing badly. In sum, they are the producers
rather than the consumers of impact.12
The top twenty most prolific Westerners have been identified by ranking the accounts
by their number of followers and activity, as indicated by the number of tweets. The result
is displayed in Table 1. together with the degree centrality scores, a social network analysis
metric that indicates popularity in the network.
8 J. Klausen

Table 2
Official Twitter accounts in the foreign fighters’ Twitter network

Twitter name Account name Country of origin # following # followers

Anjem Choudary anjemchoudary UK 0 7,316
Jabhat Al-Nusra AlNusra SYRIA 723 2,984
Millatu Ibrahim RadicalIslamist UK 612 2,564
Doula News English Doula news2 ISIL/SYRIA 158 1,509
SalafiMediaUK SALAFIMEDIAUK UK 131 1,385
ISIL Media Hub ISIL Media Hub ISIL/SYRIA 9 889
De Ware Religie DeWareReligie HOLLAND 96 529

Establishing the identity of the account holders is often tricky. Some of the accounts
belong to individuals but at least two were managed on behalf of organizations. In some
cases, different accounts belonging to the same individual were created in their name
after they had died. @I Jaman belonged to Iftikhar Jaman, a.k.a. Abu Abdur Rahman
Al-Britani, a 23-year old man from Portsmouth, England, who died fighting in Syria in
December 2013 for ISIL—before we collected the data. He was a prominent figure in the
British Al-Muhajiroun network and an associate of Anjem Choudary. The other accounts
are described in Figure 2.
ISILTWEEP, A1Ghurabaa, and Salafi Jihadi are accounts that appear to be semi-
official mouthpieces for different organizations, all under the ISIL umbrella. ISILTWEEP
is managed by Abu Dujana AlMuhajir, who also uses the alias @AbuDujanaBritani. Abu
Dujana acts as “Dear Abby” for anxious Westerners who want to join the fight. He is a
favorite of journalists and occasionally engages in online interviews. His pictures suggest
he is based in Raqqa.
Abu Usama @A1Ghurabaa is in the British Al-Muhajiroun network. He sponsors
several of Anjem Choudary’s pet projects, and the account also supports the American
preacher, Ahmad Musa Jibril. It primarily gives instructions in the duties and objectives of
the faithful. Nothing suggests that it is based outside the United Kingdom. Salafi Media ap-
pears to be a press bureau for a division of foreigners fighting with ISIL. It supports some of
the same particular English-speaking preachers in the Al-Muhajiroun mold—Ahmad Musa
Jibril and Musa Cerantonio, an Australian preacher—and the same causes as the previous
account but it appears to be based in Raqqa. Pictures and news about units comprised of
foreigners and led by al-Shishani dominate the feed. By August 2014, A1Ghurabaa is still
active but has adopted a policy of protected view, meaning that only approved viewers can
access the feed. ISILTWEEP is disabled. Salafi Jihadi is still active, and AbuDujanaBritani
maintains his parallel account on ask.fm. Detailed information about these accounts is
provided in Table 2.
A number of organizations are deeply embedded in the network of Twitter streams
attributable to the Western fighters in our data collection. Top was Anjem Choudary’s
U.K.-based account. Two other accounts managed by Britons—and in both cases apparently
also U.K.-based—are Millatu Ibrahim and SalafiMediaUK. The brand “Millatu Ibrahim”
started out as a designation for the Germany-based faction led by Mohamed Mahmoud,
an Austrian who formerly ran the Al Qaeda portal, the Global Islamic Media Front. Since
the latest round of proscription of Choudary’s organization, the name has migrated to the
 Tweeting the Jihad 9

Figure 2. Who are they?

10 J. Klausen

United Kingdom. Three of the most important English-language organization-sponsored

Twitter accounts belonged to affiliates of Al-Muhajiroun.
Three more accounts were the English-language or mixed English-Arabic accounts
associated with the core terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq: ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra.
“De Wahre Religie” is the Dutch branch of the Germany-based mother organization but
may now have become a shell company in Choudary’s corporation. The use of English is
clearly important to the popularity of the accounts. The Dutch account has only a small
following in comparison to the others. The organizational accounts generally do not follow
other accounts and primarily disseminate information to followers. SalafiMediaUK was the
only one that emphasized the distribution of videos.

What Do They Tweet About?

For the analysis of content posted on these individuals’ accounts, we analyzed their most
recent ten posts. Not all accounts had ten tweets in them, so the selection method yielded a
total of 563 tweets. Many of these posts were made on the same day and therefore reflect a
narrow time period around mid-March 2014. This was before ISIL established a foothold in
Iraq and the content is far less graphic than the image stream of beheadings and crucifixions
that followed the declaration of the Islamic State in June.
Interestingly, four out of every five tweets reported from the war zone made references
to jihadist dogma. We assumed that Twitter would lend itself to more practical communi-
cations and personal contacts to friends back home. As it turned out, this was largely not
the case. The Twitter feeds also contain a great deal of content that distills jihadist dogma
in very simple terms, sometimes by means of a picture of the account holder pointing his
index finger to the sky, alone or in the company of fellow fighters.
Their Twitter usage is surprisingly comparable to the way jihadists used online forums
in the Web 1.0 environment. Proselytizing and instruction in the proper understanding of
the jihadist belief system are priority themes. The continuity of the messaging is striking,
even as the technology has changed dramatically.
The content of tweets was reviewed and coded based on a classification scheme derived
from previous analyses of the content of jihadist online forums. These have generally been
found to emphasize religious instruction and discussions of jihadist dogma.14 The primary
content of the messaging was the focus. Coders were told to summarize the primary
meaning of a specific tweet—whether a picture or a text—and were allowed to code only
one category. A trial test was held to assess how consistently the team assessed content
following coding instructions. In this case, in more than four out of five times coders made
the same coding decision.
The categories used were:
• Religious Instruction—includes references to fatwas, religious edicts, scholars,
prominent religious figures, Osama bin Laden or other prominent jihadists, or quotes
from scripture. This category also included religious advice.
• Reporting from Battle—includes pictures of dead martyrs, pictures or discussion of
battles, reporting current locations and/or activities related to battle and references to
incidents in Syria or to specific battle-related incidents outside of Syria. Also includes
providing information about how make it to the field of battle (i.e., recruitment).
• Interpersonal Communication—includes regular conversation, discussion of prior
communication between the account holder and other participants in the Twitter
chain, or references to anticipated future communications.
 Tweeting the Jihad 11

Table 3
Primary content of Twitter postings

Twitter usage # of tweets % of total

Religious Instruction 217 38.54
Reporting from Battle 227 40.32
Interpersonal Communication 101 17.94
Threats against the West 3 0.53
Basic Tourism 15 2.66
Total 563 100.00
N = 563 tweets from 59 accounts. Eighty-three percent reliability between coders.

• Tourism—encompasses topics related to the everyday life of the jihadist, for example
reporting what they ate for dinner, or posts with tourist-like pictures (not related to
battle).
• Threats Against the West—any specific and direct threats made against Western
countries.

The analysis of the content of the accounts provides suggestive evidence of significant
ideological conformity in the content of the communications (see Table 3). There are
thousands of Western foreign fighters in the conflict zone. Why have these particular
fighters been trusted to maintain online activity? Their ability to stay on message may be
assumed to be an essential qualification. We infer that it is a select group of fighters who
engage in this particular type of social media jihad.

Table 4
Content in pictures and videos

Number of Percent of
Image content type videos/photos all(%)
Prominent Jihadist figures (e.g., Bin Laden or 286 12
Awlaki)
Denigrating the Assad regime and other 142 6
enemy pictures
Innocent victims (e.g., dead children and 171 7
women killed by the enemy)
Glorifying martyrdom 164 7
Graphic pictures of retribution 93 4
Territorial control and combat 380 16
Lifestyle and brotherhood among the fighters 321 13
Other 834 35
Total 2,391 100
N = 13 Twitter account; 2,391 individual tweets containing picture images.
12 J. Klausen

Figure 3. “Abu Muthanna” holding a jar of Nutella pictured in a store in Syria (from @GuyVan-
Vlierden).

Pictures as Propaganda
Social media is pictorial—images are sent and received containing messages that are
supportive but that often contain deeper meanings or that respond to fears or aspirations
that cannot be openly stated. Out of over 150,000 posts, pictures were used to convey a
message in nearly 5,000 posts, and videos were used in over 5,000 posts. Table 4 summarizes
the results of our content analysis.
Images convey information but they are also symbols. The widespread use of pictures
featuring the senders—“selfies”—or showing the dead bodies of the vanquished enemy tell
a different story. The inanity of the pictures from the Syrian war zone is often jarring. A
French kid stands in a store with his gun in one hand and a jar of his favorite hazelnut
spread in the other (see Figure 3). Pictures of hanging out with the bro’s over pizza, guns at
 Tweeting the Jihad 13

hand, are common. At one point, pictures of cats were found all over Twitter. Eventually,
corpses became the dominant pictorial element. The pictures are often clearly staged. One
picture has the sender studying the Koran with a dead body laid out behind. Previously,
most Westerners wore baklavas to conceal their identities but in March 2014, and in the
following months, full-face pictures began to appear.
To better understand and assess the extraordinary use of images in the foreign fighter
communications, we developed a typology for images and trained students to code the
images contained in the captured tweets based on the meaning or message of the images.
The classification schemes allowed coders to attribute more than one meaning to a particular
image. This proved a difficult exercise. A trial showed that the coders could not agree on
the interpretation of a particular image in one out of every four cases. Of the image content,
35 percent was classified as other. This included reproductions of news broadcasts and
screenshots of blogs that were disseminated over Twitter.
Thirteen of the 59 accounts accounted for over half of the media content posted
by the Twitter account holders. (The concentration of pictorial content may be taken
as another indicator of a selective communications strategy.) The result of the content
analysis showed that, for the most part, the images—videos and photos—corroborated
the ideological messaging of the texts posted. Pictorial content for the most part
praised the leaders of the movement and provided verification of the victories of the
jihadists and the forward march of the movement, while the enemy was denigrated and
dehumanized.
The most graphic pictures send a message of unconstrained power: the power of the
fighters is supreme and the enemy is worthless. Particularly, Osama bin Laden’s old jingle
about “we love death more than you love life” is reformulated for Twitter. Dead jihadists are
often touched up and presented in softened tones with a half-smile on their face and lovingly
buried. Enemy corpses are gruesomely depicted. Overall, these shockingly violent pictures
comprised only just over 10 percent of the content. (A reanalysis after the declaration of the
Islamic State in Iraq may produce a different ratio between lifestyle pictures and images of
the vanquished enemy).
Executions communicated via Twitter are a new medium of psychological warfare.
Pictures of crucified men started to circulate on extremist social media sites in mid-June.
One was hung out on a clothesline. Another man was put up on metal bars. And then, at
the end of the month, there followed a picture of eight men hung on crosses in a dusty
town square. Few news outlets reproduced the pictures but type “crucifixion” and “Syria” in
Google, and they are easily found. The crucifixions coincided with the start of Ramadan, the
declaration by ISIL of a new jihadist state in Iraq and Syria, and the promotion of its chief,
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to the position of “caliph” and “leader for Muslims everywhere.”
The auto-da-fé reportedly occurred in Deir Hafer, a town east of Aleppo, on Saturday
28 June 2014. An announcement from ISIL accompanied the horrific images. The victims
were Muslim rebels from the anti-Assad groups and were punished for having fought
against the jihadists. A ninth man was executed and crucified in another town on the same
day. A few months later there followed an image of a soccer field with the severed heads of
Syrian army soldiers strewn around as if emptied out of a bag. The picture stemmed from
an attack on attack on the “Division 17” army barracks used by the Assad-regime. That too
serves a tactical purpose, this time locally—the spreading of fear.
The medium has changed from the days of the Afghan Arabs and the mujahideen who
came to Afghanistan during the Soviet–Afghan War to help fellow Muslims fight against the
communist Afghan government and the Soviet Union. However, the core message remains
the same. It echoes the preaching of Abdullah Azzam (1941–1989), whose injunction that
14 J. Klausen

Table 5
Ten most popular accounts in the Western fighters’ lists of followings/followers

Degree
Twitter handle Twitter name Active/Not active centrality score
@RadicalIslamist Millatu Ibrahim Not Active 52
@Amaatullahearly Umm Handhallah Not Active 48
@Abubakr1924 Abu Bakr Active/Protected 46
Al-Kashmiri
@AbdulNassery Abdul Active/Protected 43
Nasser-Yassin
@ShamiWitness Shami Witness Active 43
@ IraqiWitness The Iraqi Witness Active 43
@Muddathir5 Muddathir Active 42

@Muwahhidah Active 42
https://twitter.com/
Muwahhidah
@UmmMuthannah Umm Muthannah Not Active 42
@Greenbird313 Umm Amatuallah Not Active 42

jihad was not fard kifaya (collective duty), which was the conventional wisdom among
the ulema at the time, but was fard ayn (individual duty) that all Muslims must perform.
The notion that all able-bodied Muslims must wage jihad anywhere Muslims were being
oppressed by an outside force is foundational to contemporary jihadism.15

The Network at Large

Beginning with the 59 starter accounts, the snowballing method allowed us to tunnel into the
network-at-large and determine who was the most popular among their lists of followers
and the accounts they were following. The ten most popular accounts in the secondary
network are listed in Table 5.
Our findings largely but not wholly corroborate the conclusion of a team of re-
searchers at King’s College London. Based on a study of 86 Facebook accounts and
35 Twitter accounts, Joseph A. Carter, Shiraz Maher, and Peter R. Neumann found that
“disseminators”—defined as unaffiliated individuals who are broadly sympathetic with the
jihadist insurgents in Syria—play a large role in providing information about the conflict.16
They pointed to two preachers in particular as important figures: Ahmad Musa Jibril, from
Dearborn, Michigan, and Musa Cerantonio, a Melbourne-based preacher. Both turned up
in our analysis but proved far less important than a handful of women and three English-
speaking Web activists known as “RadicalIslamist,” “ShamiWitness,” and “IraqiWitness,”
together with four other twitter account holders. See Figure 4 for more detailed information
about the most popular Twitter accounts.
Most if not all of the account holders appear to be based outside the con-
flict zone. Three accounts were managed by women: @Amaatullahearly, Umm-
Muthannah, and @Greenbird313. “Umm Handhallah” has several Twitter accounts (e.g.,
https://twitter.com/AmaatuLlah). She appears to also control “@greenbird313.” Probably
 Tweeting the Jihad 15

Figure 4. Ten most popular Twitter accounts in the Western foreign fighters’ Twitter network.

based in the United Kingdom, she disseminates very violent material on behalf of ISIL.
She appears also to be a fan of Abu Qatada, a Jordanian cleric, based in London for many
years who was known as bin Laden’s European emir. She is probably the most popular
female disseminator. We could not settle the identity of UmmMuthannah who sometimes
tweeted in Swahili.

The “Umm” Factor

The prominence of women and accounts belonging to individuals based outside the conflict
zone was a striking feature of the at-large network. Some of the women are known to be or
to have been in Raqqa or in other locations held by the insurgents in Syria and, presumably,
Iraq.
16 J. Klausen

Figure 5. Twitter network of female supporters and wives of Western foreign fighters. Foreign fighter
accounts in red. “Umm” accounts indicated by Twitter’s blue bird.

“Umm” is an honorific name, used to address women as the mother of certain

persons—usually the oldest son. Among the jihadists it is a female kunya, an alias. We are
assuming that the use of the female kunya generally accurately describes the gender of the
person but occasionally accounts appear to pass between male and female posters, meaning
that, at least occasionally, men may be posting under a female alias, and perhaps vice
versa. About a dozen women in our data set are social media propagandists for the jihadist
insurgents. Our data set captured mostly English-speakers but a number of Belgian and
French women are also prominent micro-bloggers. Graphing the network of the “umms”
showed a high degree of integration between the female posters and the top network ac-
counts belonging to the foreign fighters (Figure 5). The accounts marked in red belong to
accounts belonging to the Western foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq.
“Umm” accounts (130) were found in the lists of followers and accounts being followed
among 55 Western fighters’ Twitter accounts, representing 1,027 links in the network above
(Table 6). Online, women are mobilized as partisans and in tactical support roles to an extent
far surpassing their involvement in any previous jihadist insurgency.
The “umms” generally work as disseminators, passing on content from other accounts.
“Umm Handhallaah” tweeted to critics of the new “khalifah’s” appointment process: “Q:
Jus curious those who reject #IS restoration of #Khilafah, how did the think it will be
done?! Whole Ummah coming together & naming a leader?”
Blending jihadist rhetoric and the Internet speak of millennials, her argument is that
since democracy is disallowed, holding an election is the wrong answer.
Talking back to the U.S. government’s “Think Again Turn Away” campaign is a favorite
activity among the “umms.” One posting by the U.S. State Department was subject to a
sarcastic reply:
 Tweeting the Jihad 17

Table 6
Most popular “umm” accounts among Western foreign fighters on Twitter

Rank Top ten accounts Raw Scaled

1 Umm Handhallaah amaatullahearly 48 0.70149254
2 Umm Muthannah UmmMuthannah 42 0.6119403
3 Umm Yasin amatur rahman 39 0.56716418
4 Umm Musab the ukht 31 0.44776119
5 umm haritha Ayaalwan 29 0.41791045
6 Umm Imaarah UmmatAlQuraan 28 0.40298507
7 Umm Salsabil Aseerahfildunya 27 0.3880597
8 Umm Shaheed Umm shaheed1 26 0.37313433
9 umm usamah ummusamah 25 0.35820896
10 Umm Umara Khorasani UmmUmarah 24 0.34328358
Of the accounts, 130 were identified that contained “Umm” in the Twitter handle among the
Western foreign fighter’s lists of followers. These ten represent the accounts that came up most
frequently.

Umm Handhallaah  @AmaatuLlah Jun 25 @ThinkAgain DOS

“U the one to talk Pfft! After killing us in millions & continuing to do so. Stop
pretendin u give a hoot about muslim blood.” (Spelling as in the original).

The content of the umm’s accounts strains to make extremism appear like a normal
life-style decision. An example is a posting of pictures with their children dressed in ISIL
fan gear, similarly to how a Manchester United fan might dress up her kids for fun. The
use of children as advertisements for the extremist movement’s life-style has become an
increasingly common element of the social media propaganda. We have obscured the faces
of the children, which are not obscured on the original post (Figure 6).

Interpretation of Findings and Conclusion

Our previous research on social media usage by jihadists in Western Europe highlighted
their preference for YouTube, a decentralized and low cost file sharing program that nonethe-
less is sensitive to controlled dissemination of content.20 What appeared to be a bottom-up
movement to share jihadist videos was, it turned out, the product of a tightly controlled
outreach effort by jihadist organizers. Based on an analysis of over thirty jihadist YouTube
accounts and their subscribers, we also concluded that an architecture of reposting has
been constructed to build redundancy. Providing protection against government efforts to
suppress content, this is a critical feature of the online networks. Such a high degree of
coordination existed that it was improbable that it could have occurred by chance. A similar
architecture of control and deliberate redundancy can be detected in the Twitter networks
of the Western foreign fighters, but on a far larger scale.
Twitter is used for purposes of recruitment and indoctrination, as well as to build a
transnational community of violent extremism. It is also a means of psychological warfare
directed at distant foes as well as local enemies—Kurds, competing rebel fighters, and
regime forces.
18 J. Klausen

Figure 6. Children dressed in ISIL fan gear featured in Twitter feed posted on jihadist women’s
network. Source: https://twitter.com/Doula News/status/460333862438977536/photo/1.

Twitter is also used to drive traffic to other social media platforms. Supporters back
home follow the fighters who post original content and retweet content from organizational
accounts. Information flows from organization accounts in Arabic and English via accounts
of foreign fighters to a broader network of disseminators (Figure 7). The different layers of
microbloggers add localized content. The dissemination of pictures of brutalization ranging
 Tweeting the Jihad 19

Figure 7. Schematic model of information flow in Western foreign fighters’ Twitter network.

from hangings to beheadings to mutilated corpses is mixed with pictures of happy children
in a seamless stream of terrorist messaging intended to intimidate the public in the near
war zone as well as among “the far enemy,” the Western publics.
A number of tentative conclusions may be inferred from the evidence. First, the
individual accounts managed by Western fighters in Syria are ideologically conformist.
Twitter is used to propagandize for core jihadist tenets that are translated into symbolic
images for a generation of social media users who prefer pictures to text. Second, a high
degree of content control is exercised throughout the micro-blogging networks. Individual
and official accounts work in parallel and are tightly integrated.
Third, we are able to partially confirm the findings of the King’s College London re-
garding the importance for the network-at-large of individuals and groups who based outside
the combat zone, but we differ as to who figure as the most important disseminators. The
King’s College team identified what they described as clerical authorities, specifically, two
preachers—one Australian and the other United States–based—as playing an independent
and critical role in driving the information network of Western foreign fighters. Conversely,
we find that authority derives primarily from organizations in the Al-Muhajiroun network
and from media accounts belonging primarily to ISIL and secondarily to Jabhat al-Nusra.
With over 7,000 followers in the network, Anjem Choudary stands out as one of the most
influential figures.
The discrepancies may in part be explained by differences in methodology. We started
with a large set of initial nodes—56 account holders—and consequently obtained a different
“slice” of the Twitter-based networks. The time of the data collection may also influence
the results. The King’s College team collected their data over a period of 12 months ending
in February 2014. Our data collection was done January through March 2014. Who exactly
emerges as the central players in a network is highly contingent on the initial framing of the
network determined by the data collection procedures. An important substantive difference,
however, has to do with the role of sponsored jihadist accounts in driving the content and
distribution of the information flow. We found that official accounts belonging to ISIL
and Jahbat al-Nusra are tightly integrated with other types of accounts. Disseminators,
understood as individuals who are based outside the conflict zone and act as volunteer
“witnesses,” help build redundancy by spreading the material, often posting and reposting
material provided by the feeder accounts belonging to organizations and fighters based in
Syria.
The purpose of the seemingly innocuous tweeting of cat pictures and hanging around
with friends, blended with staggering depictions of brutality, is to drill home one message:
You belong with us because jihad is an individual obligation for every Muslim. The content
conveys that fighting—and dying—will give your life meaning, and is just plain fun and
20 J. Klausen

similarly exciting, but “better,” than playing video games like “Call of Duty” on the couch
at home. The secondary messages piggy-backing on the Twitter streams range from the
dehumanization of other Muslims (Shi’a in particular) and the bravery of the righteous
fighters.
Twitter serves the same essential purposes for terrorist organization that bookstore and
Internet forums played in the past: the proselytizing and recruitment of followers, firming
up the resolve of believers by engaging them in the distribution of propaganda and educating
them in dogma. But social media have also added new capabilities that dramatically expand
the organizations’ reach and efficiency.
Recruiters can use social media to outsource recruitment to hubs of militants located
outside the war zone. Broad audiences can be reached directly and amplified by the echo
chamber of lateral duplication across multiple platforms at low cost. A handful of hyper-
active online activists can quickly and at low cost distribute massive amounts of material.
Recruiters can use the networked platforms to reach new audiences and then take the
communications to take networked communications private, directing potential recruits to
encrypted contact points.
Social media also eliminated dependency on the mainstream media, turning journalists
into ideal victims rather than useful conduits for spreading the message. The Foley execution
footage, for example, is available on news sites and far-right sites, downloaded and re-
uploaded by online shock jocks. Terrorist-controlled social media now drive the “slow
media” coverage. Captives of the social media streams, mainstream media have become
more vulnerable to misinformation campaigns and tactics of deception and misinformation.
Social media easily amplifies false images of strength.
The transformation of social media into an offensive strategy of psychological warfare
is ISIL’s particular innovation of terrorist strategy. Across the Middle East, phones have
become the most commonly used instrument for obtaining reliable news. In this context,
ISIL’s broadcast of Twitter feeds of executions and crucifixions carried out in Aleppo and
Deir Hafer turned social media into a tool of offensive psychological warfare and battlefield
tactics.
The pictures of staggering brutality that accompanied Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s decla-
ration of the formation of “the Islamic State” at the end of June 2014 showed up toward the
late part of our data collections. Had the collection been extended through the subsequent
months, it may be assumed that we would have detected a shift from recruitment and
ideological messaging to the instrumental use of social media for direct terrorist purposes.
Social media have proven highly effective as a messaging tool and also as a terrorist medium
for intimidating local populations, the “near enemy,” in the insurgency zone and provoking
outsized fear far away from the war zone.

Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Nathaniel Barr, Wouter van der Eng, Katherine Dowling, Aileen Finnin,
Zachary Herman, Nathan Needle, Adrienne Roach, Ula Rutkowska, Ryan Yuffe, and Aaron
Y. Zelin who assisted on the project.

Funding
The research for this article was supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice,
Office of Justice Program, the National Institute of Justice (Award 2012 ZA-BX-0006).
Jytte Klausen (PI), “The Role of Social Networks in the Evolution of Al Qaeda-Inspired
 Tweeting the Jihad 21

Violent Extremism, 1993–2013.” Opinions or points of view expressed in this article are
those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of policies of the U.S.
Department of Justice.
Additional funding was provided by Brandeis University, the Theodore and Jane Nor-
man Fund for Faculty Research and Creative Projects in Arts and Sciences, and the Research
Circle on Democracy and Cultural Pluralism. Support from Palantir Technologies is also
gratefully acknowledged.

Notes
1. Gabriel Weimann, Terror on the Internet: The New Arena, the New Challenges (Washington,
DC: USIP, 2006), p. 38.
2. Brian Michael Jenkins, International Terrorism: A New Kind of Warfare (Santa Monica,
CA: RAND Corporation, 1974). Available at http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P5261.html (accessed
6 October 2014); Alex Schmid, “Terrorism as Psychological Warfare,” Democracy and Security 1(2)
(2005), p. 138.
3. Edna Erez, Gabriel Weimann, and A. Aaron Weisburd, “Jihad, Crime, and the Internet:
Content Analysis of Jihadist Discussion Forums” (Washington, DC: USDOJ, 2011). Available at
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/236867.pdf (accessed 6 October 2014).
4. Jordàn Javier and Manuel R. Torres, “Internet y actividades terroristas: el caso del 11-M”
(Spanish), El Profesional De La Información 16(2) (2007), p. 125.
5. Combating Terrorism Center, “Letter to Mullah Mohammed ‘Omar from Usama bin
Laden,” (5 June 2002). Available at http://www.ctc.usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/AFGP-
2002-600321-Trans.pdf (accessed 6 October 2014).
6. Combating Terrorism Center, “Letter to Abu Musab al-Zaraqawi from Ayman al-Zawahiri”
(9 July 2005). Available at https://www.ctc.usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/CTC-Zawahiri-
Letter-10-05.pdf (accessed 6 October 2014).
7. Combating Terrorism Center, “Unknown (probably Usama bin Laden or Atiyyatullah Abu
‘Abd ar-Rahman) Letter to Nasir al-Wihayshi,” (N.d.). Available at https://www.ctc.usma.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2012/05/SOCOM-2012-0000016-Trans.pdf (accessed 6 October 2014).
8. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars. The Future of Terror, Crime,
and Militancy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001).
9. James Bamford, “The Most Wanted Man in the World,” WIRED (August 2014). Available at
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/#ch-7 (accessed 6 October 2014). In an interview
with Wired Magazine Edward Snowden asserted that the 2012 Syrian shut-down was the result of a
botched U.S. intelligence operation attempting to put intercepts on one of the main Syrian Internet
providers. Akamai, an Internet traffic analysis company based in Cambridge, MA, routinely releases
assessments on Twitter, see https://twitter.com/akamai soti/status/491225130316472320.
10. Doug Madory, “Amid Raging Violence, Iraq Orders Internet Shutdowns,” Dyn Research (13
June 2014). Available at http://research.dyn.com/2014/06/amid-raging-violence-iraq-orders-Internet-
shutdowns/#update01 (accessed 6 October 2014).
11. GlobalTT, “Coverage: Syria.” (N.d). Available at http://www.globaltt.com/coverage
countries/Syria (accessed 6 October 2014).
12. Nina Zipkin, “Have 1,000 Followers? You’re in the 96th Percentile of Twitter Users,” En-
trepreneur (19 December 2014). Available at http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230487 (accessed
6 October 2014).
13. Erez et al., “Jihad, Crime, and the Internet”; Edna Reid, “Analysis of Jihadi Extremist
Groups’ Videos,” Forensic Science Communications (Washington, DC: FBI, July 2009).
14. Abdullah Azzam, “Join the Caravan,” in Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli, eds., Al Qaeda
in its Own Words (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 115.
22 J. Klausen

15. Joseph Carter, Shiraz Maher, and Peter Neumann, #Greenbirds: Measuring Importance and
Influence in Syrian Foreign Fighter Networks (London: The International Centre for the Study of
Radicalisation and Political Violence, King’s College, 2014).
16. Jytte Klausen, Eliane Barbieri, Aaron Y. Zelin, and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, “The YouTube
Jihadists: A Social Network Analysis of Al-Muhajiroun’s YouTube Propaganda Campaign,” Perspec-
tives on Terrorism 6(1) (2012).
17. The Daily Mail, “The Scum Stole Our Cash: ‘Hip Hop Jihadist’ Who Left £1m London
Home to Fight in Syria Complains on Twitter of Being Kidnapped, Tortured and Robbed by FELLOW
Islamists” (9 March 2014). Available at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576695/Hip-hop-
jihadist-claims-kidnapped-tortured-robbed-fellow-Islamists.html (accessed 6 October 2014).
18. “RadicalIslamist” is no longer active but the tweet is available on qaster.com, a South
Korean–based website that aggregates question-and-answer threads from Twitter and makes them
available in a searchable Internet archive. For more information see www.qaster.com (accessed 6
October 2014).
19. Michael B. Kelley, “One of the Most Popular Sources on Syria Happens to be an Extremist
Supporter,” Business Insider (20 January 2014).
20. To view the full discussion on the split between Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIL,
see http://forums.islamicawakening.com/f18/ISIL-division-salafi-jihadis-vs-takfeeri-jihadis-70873-
print/