(Note: that I will probably be editing this post over the next day or two. All edits will be in green.)
Aaron linked to my original jarchive.info post, here. (Thanks, man). I agree with his conclusion. It’s important to recognize that if it isn’t the product of an intel agency somewhere then it is what you see. Jarchive.com is not the product of a lone fanatic or even a group of bearded Neanderthals, but as Aaron notes:
That small group is the most basic component of the global Salafist-jihadist movement. It’s also the component where Western law enforcement and intel services pass into gray areas that they are still struggling to understand, let alone counter and neutralize.
However, the site also piqued the interest of the professional librarian in me. Some of you may notice that it is organized by jihadi group with additional material dedicated to historical videos (they’re the source of the Muhammad Qutb video I linked to here) and various khutbas.
Salafist-jihadist forums generally aren’t organized like this. Could they be? Sure. Have they been? Sure. But in general my experience has been that most Salafist-jihadist blogs, forums, and websites are dedicated to dawah, and take on the character of a site dedicated to persuasion and conversion, not just the distribution of jihadi media.
Operating in the background of many Salafist-Jihadist sites is the assumption that it reflects a real-world community, albeit small and geographically dispersed one (the dedicated small groups Aaron mentions), and that the site becomes a means of facilitating a conversation: the essential component of the kind of conversion Salafist-Jihadists are looking for, particularly in fellow Muslims. For this reason, an average site will be organized around some if not all of these components:
- A section containing the full-text of the Qur’an, ahadith, Sunnah
- Another section dedicated to Shari’ah and fiqh (including fatawa)
- There are also sections on “deen,” including guidance on how to practice Islam
- Current news discussion, used to contextualize current events
- One or two sections dedicated to things violent-jihad related, like video announcements, pictures of dead soldiers, personal accounts, etc.
- A “sisters-only” section
This is where the Salafist-Jihadist rubber hits the road. If adherents aren’t good at dawah, they will never gain legitimacy or survive in a new generation. Since most of these sites aren’t created for Westerners or non-Muslims, they become a mode of communication within the community of fellow Muslims. As a result, there’s a great deal of effort identifying and responding to “enemies” like Islamists (distinguished for their willingness to accept non-Shari’ah based political paradigms) and Salafi (willing to argue against offensive jihad), other Muslims (Sufis and Shiites), and only then other “enemies,” like the West. It’s this milieu that informs most of the Salafist-Jihadist sites I’ve frequented in the past, and probably the reason why they’re often organized the way they are. It's also in this milieu that the greater Salafist-Jihadist movement becomes easier to understand, but that is the topic of a future post.
Jarchive.info is organized in a manner closer to how a Western librarian would organize a collection of jihadi materials, by locality or group attribution. This is a utilitarian taxonomy designed for information access, rather than the kind of community-creating forums and sites that organize for persuasion, instruction and communication.
And so it makes me wonder who put jarchive.info together, and why.
