U.S. Blogger Distributes Jihadist Propaganda
Islamic Network
Posted: February 6, 2008
Islamic Network (IN), an internet company that maintains various online forums and blogs, was launched in 2004 by Sarfaraz Jamal and his wife Fatima Hye, who lived in Houston, Texas, where IN is incorporated. They have since moved to Jordan, from where they continue to run IN.
While Samir Khan's Revival is one of the more extreme blogs hosted by IN, there are other forums maintained by IN that include support for terrorism and anti-Semitism. For example, an essay entitled Inciting Religious Hatred, which was posted to one of the forums in December 2007, says: "the ones who are cursed by Allah...They are the Jews, Christians, Hindus…Atheists." It also argues that "hating all false religions and gods other than Islam and Allah is the very first condition of becoming a Muslim."
IN forums, which encourage "open dialogue" and are open to registered members, are moderated by IN staff. One former IN moderator, Daniel Joseph Maldonado, was sentenced in Houston to 10 years in prison in July 2007, for training with a Somali Al Qaeda affiliated organization. Maldonado (a.k.a. Daniel Aljughaifi) started working with IN in August 2005.
Sarfaraz Jamal ran a similar internet enterprise, ClearGuidance, while living in Ohio prior to launching IN. Like IN, users of ClearGuidance forums and its moderators have posted extremist materials, including posts praising terrorism and attacks against Jews. For example, one forum discussion from 2002 about a video documenting a beheading, including a post saying: "I'm gonna try this on some jew right now…"
In addition, the forums were reportedly used by members of a suspected terrorist cell based in Canada with international links. Two members of the alleged cell, Zakaria Amara and Fahim Ahmad, reportedly made hundreds of posts to ClearGuidance forums between 2002 and 2004 when they were still in high school in Mississauga, Ontario. Ahmed's use of ClearGuidance to search for Jihadist materials reportedly alerted the police to the existence of the cell.
Shortly after users of ClearGuidance became aware of the investigation (Canadian law enforcement questioned one of the moderates of ClearGuidance), Jamal shut down the site, although he told a reporter his decision to shut it down was not related to these events or to threats he claims to have received.
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