For a secret organisation hunted by the intelligence services of the most powerful nations on Earth, al-Qaida has a remarkably public face — on a website run by the Centre for Islamic Studies and Research.
Since the start of the war on terrorism, the site has been producing hundreds of pages of material to rally support among radical Muslims, scare the West and enable al-Qaida cells to operate independently of Osama bin Laden and other leaders now in hiding.
The site is entirely in Arabic, meaning tens of millions of people who hate American policies on the Middle East can read it, but almost nobody in either the governments or the media of the West can understand a word.
The website is central to al-Qaida’s strategy to ensure that its war with the United States will continue even if many of its cells across the world are broken up and its current leaders are killed or captured. The site’s function is to deepen and broaden worldwide Muslim support, allowing al-Qaida or successor organisations to attract recruits, money and political backing.
The site carries videos celebrating the September 11 attacks, Islamic legal arguments justifying the killing of civilians in certain circumstances and jihad poetry. It argues that, for decades, the US has been waging a war to destroy Islam and that Muslims must fight back.
“America is the cause of every injustice, every wrong, every tyranny that afflicts Muslims… It is steeped in the blood of Muslims,” wrote Sulaiman Bu Ghaith, an al-Qaida spokesperson, in a series of articles published on the site last month entitled Under the Shadow of Spears. “America does not understand dialogue. Nor peaceful coexistence. Nor appeals, nor condemnation, nor criticism. America will only be stopped by blood.”
In a letter to “brother mujahedin everywhere” in late May, Bu Ghaith warned: “My dear brothers: the path of principles and prayers is surrounded by calamities and obstacles, full of dangers and misfortunes, prison, death, banishment and exile. One day the believers are victorious over the infidels, the next day the infidels are victorious over the believers. Victory will never be the ally of either side, although definitely in the end the believers will triumph.”
He repeated the message in an audio recording on the site late last month. He also warned of new attacks on the US and promised a television appearance soon by Bin Laden.
The story topped world headlines when the satellite TV channel al-Jazeera broadcast the recording, although it did not mention the website as the original source. Al-Qaida has also been using the site to attack Muslims who question its strategy of total war with the US.
Although there is deep, broad anger in the Muslim world against US policies, there has been a surprising amount of criticism of al-Qaida from radicals who were once its allies and even its religious mentors. Shaykh Salman al-Oadah, for instance, who was admired by Bin Laden as one of the two religious leaders of Saudi Arabia’s opposition movement in the mid-1990s, condemned the September 11 attacks for killing civilians.
The Centre for Islamic Studies and Research website, which has 11 sections, is a substantial undertaking. It has been hosted by legitimate Internet service providers (ISPs) in Malaysia and, more recently, the US, at addresses such as www.alneda.com and www.drasat.com. The site has been shut down three times, each time because CNN was researching a story and e-mailed the ISP for comment. The site is now offline, but will more likely than not surface again.