The worrying case of the booming jihadi media

The media is viewed by terrorist organisations as one of the fronts of jihad against their enemies.

Activists and supporters of jihadis favour the media platform, both the print and the electronic media, as also the Internet.

According to the Daily Times, Jihadis disseminate their message via various websites, magazines and disks in different languages targeting diverse audiences worldwide.

While such organisations also utilise the media for military and operative purposes for services of jihadi fighters in the field, their primary use of this medium is for indoctrination and propaganda.

Most of these messages available online can be picked up cheaply from almost any newsstand throughout Pakistan despite there being a strict ban and monitoring system in place by various intelligence agencies on such literature.

...

Among the 80-odd publications that suspected terrorist organisations are putting out are 18 weeklies, 40 fortnightlies and 22 monthlies.

The publications are frequently published in Urdu with a heavy dose of Arabic and some English thrown in for good measure to cater to all social circles in Pakistan.

One Islamic magazine named Bazu-e-Mujahid has over 7,000 subscribers from Karachi to the New York, and is fighting to enforce Caliphate in Pakistan.

Another magazine is the Al-Jehad, Mujhaid printed from Karachi. A third is the Jihad Kashmir printed from Rawalpindi.

The literature is heavy on the virtues of dying for the cause of Islam. Emotionally wrought letters from the mothers and sisters of jihadi martyrs are meant to inspire.

Many of the publications feature coloured pictures of arms and immunisation and present a "no-holds-barred" absolutist view of the world.

Two jihadi magazines and a newsletter named Haq-e-Awaz and Allah Commandos -- both published from Karachi -- celebrated the recent killing of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and wrote in there editorial that "Qadri was the new hero of the ummah" and "anyone who betrays the ideology of Islam and Pakistan should be killed".

A senior Pakistani intelligence official, who wished not to be named, told the Daily Times, "There is a proper mechanism in place to monitor such hate-literature, but at times acting on it due to certain provisions in law that safeguard such hate literature makes them hard to actually be stopped."

"If we stop one, two by another name crop out from nowhere," confirmed the official.