Jihadists want to damage western interests by resorting to economic terrorism, says an Israeli scholar who has studied thousands of their websites.
In a new monograph titled Econo-Jihad: How the Terrorists See the Global Crisis, Gabriel Weimann, a University of Haifa professor of communications who has published books and papers on modern terrorism and the mass media, writes, “For the Jihadists, the present economic crisis signifies an ideal opportunity and platform to [carry out] an economic terrorist campaign.”
Weimann, who has monitored the jihadist world for years, compiled his study by surveying public and encoded websites, video clips and Internet forums.
He claims that the jihadi emphasis on targeting economic targets was set in motion by Al Qaeda’s destruction of the World Trade Center in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001.
In video tapes sent to the media, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden boasted that while the Sept. 11 operation cost $500,000 to implement, the attack caused $500 billion worth of damage to the U.S. economy.
Weimann said that jihadists, having concluded that western and U.S. power is a function of economic strength, have decided to hit international corporations, strike multinational companies in Iraq extracting oil, and assassinate key figures in the global economy, many of whom they believe are Jews.
Jihadists may also try to persuade the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims to pressure their respective governments to adjust their foreign policies, he added.
This Muslim constituency can become “an economic threat and a basis for pressure,” he said in an interview last week.
Jihadists hope that the current insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan will help drain U.S. financial resources and ultimately harm the American economy, said Weimann, a former visiting professor at Carleton University in Ottawa and co-author of a 1986 book on neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel, Hate on Trial: The Zundel Case, the Media and Public Opinion in Canada.
Weimann has surfed 7,500 terrorist websites, some of which are “very sophisticated,” and he said Jihadists use such Internet platforms as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and chatrooms.
Although he doesn’t know the size of their audience, he’s certain these websites are popular and effective.
Asked how he had penetrated protected encoded sites, he replied, “When you live in a bad neighbourhood long enough, you know the neighbours and their habits and learn the rules of the game.”
In conclusion, Weimann warned that governments that do not learn how to cope with “the growing threat of online terrorism” do so at their peril.