Terrorist groups like Al Qaeda (AQ) or the Islamic State (IS) have been pro-active in using the internet as well as traditional media formats to maintain a persistent media presence with the intention to influence their target audiences. For that purpose, they project influence based on a coherent – and thus for its target audience – credible framework. The coherent interpretation of the legacy of classical Islamic scholarship (theology, jurisprudence, and science of the Qur’an and hadith) draws on various contemporary Islamic scholars and laymen. Yet its most prominent feature is that it is embedded in medieval Salafi theology, by means of which contemporary political agenda is legitimized.
AQ has been a pioneer both in terms of bringing the fight into the field and mediatizing the fight as well as coherently explaining why to fight – and what for – to a global audience since the 1980s. AQ’s boots on the ground in Afghanistan in the 1980s meant not only an organized force to combat the occupying Red Army but also to establish – and maintain – a coherent and persistent media output.
Based on the evidence of materials collected within jihadi online networks, the Caliphate Library is a good sample of what type of writings matter to such Sunni extremist movements. The Caliphate Library is a text-only curated dataset that was set up by IS and shared within Telegram and is therefore the expression of the most modern means of communication.
The Library was curated for initiated sympathizers and an Arabic speaking audience who are aware of religious elements and who – not necessarily are first and foremost interested in IS-writings. Conveying a large dataset of theological writings electronically with the possibility of re-establishing the mechanisms to re-share this dataset in case of deletion or network disruption, is what lies at the heart of “Cyberia”.
By taking a closer look at the ISIS-Library, Ali Fisher, Nico Prucha and Pavel Ťupek meticulously examine how theological writings are appropriated and presented in modern communication networks of Salafi-Jihadi terrorist groups.
The authors of this article have studied the Arabic language materials of jihadi groups (Nico Prucha), as well as their referential frame of classical Islamic scholarship (Pavel Ťupek) and the network analysis thereof (Ali Fisher) for nearly two decades. We have decided to write this article as the here presented dataset, the “Caliphate Library.”
We have chosen the title Caliphate Library, as that is what it was called by IS on Telegram, who established this channel to offer a wide range of Arabic books and articles to their target audience. The Caliphate Library is the norm of what jihadi networks and their media output are made of. We encounter time and again the same non-terroris group affiliated authors and books, that matter gravely to AQ and IS, who, in their own, unique created writings and videos, cite, refer, and reference what can best be described as an ecosystem of Salafi writings. In other words, if one is to understand the jihadi ideology in its complexity, one must take into consideration various components of the Jihadi ecosystem as indicated above.
Read the full report:
Ali Fisher, Nico Prucha and Pavel Ťupek, THE SALAFI-JIHADI NEXUS: AN EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH OF THE CALIPHATE LIBRARY, EICTP Expert Paper, 2022