HOWZAT

The superb Islam Online (www.islamonline.net) offers a huge range of features discussing terrorism, tolerance and jihad from a doctrinal and historical perspective. The professional-looking Jihad Unspun (www.jihadunspun.com) claims to offer “news that lets you decide”; “devoid of the constraints of the mainstream media”, it says, it can provide “a clear view of the US war on ‘terrorism’”. The site is a relentless polemic against Bush and Blair, far removed from the more genuinely dis-passionate Al Jazeera.

Christian, conservative America is another unusual culture, and the thoughts of Hugh Hewitt, a moderate right-wing talk-show host, make a good introduction (www.hughhewitt.com). On the other wing, sites such as the UK’s Stop the War Coalition (www.stopwar.org.uk) and the continuing campaign in support of Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq (tinyurl.com/bxz94), show how 9/11 and the Iraq war also proved a catalyst for hundreds of thousands of people finally to exploit the web’s much-vaunted potential for protest.

CYBER-SABOTAGE: VIRTUAL GUERRILLA WARFARE

The British-based Saudi extremist Mohammad al-Masari might have taken down his hate-filled website, claiming to be a victim of the “murder of freedom of opinion and expression by the oppressive regime led by Tony Blair, the liar and well-known war criminal”, but the web is notoriously difficult to regulate. Post-9/11, frustrated hackers started to take matters into their own hands: in March 2003, after Al Jazeera displayed pictures of dead and captured American soldiers, its website was knocked out by a concerted online attack. Over the following week, some visitors were directed to a porn site, others to an American flag and the messages “Let Freedom Ring” and “God Bless Our Troops”, from the “Freedom Cyber Force Militia ”.

This kind of spoiling action is increasingly common, particularly between Israeli and Palestinian groups. The Internet Haganah (haganah.org.il) and Electronic Intifada (electronicintifada.net) monitor activity from either side of the digital “interfada”. Terrorism Questions & Answers discusses technology at cfrterrorism.org/terrorism, saying that the problem is minor compared with the remote but real possibility of phy- sical attacks on the foundations of the web — servers and the like — or attempts to crack the networks that run emer-gency services, power companies and the military.

HIGH-TECH BATTLEGROUNDS

With the vast resources ploughed into monitoring since 9/11, terrorists have found that e-mail is an increasingly dangerous method of communication.

Military-grade encryption software (see www.topix.net/com/pgp) helps terrorists as well as the rest of us, though Murky.org resoundingly defends its availability (see tinyurl.com/84o4z), quoting the security programmer Philip Zimmerman’s famous dictum that if we outlaw privacy, then only outlaws will have privacy.

Hundreds of sites offer potentially useful advice for terrorists, including how to make bombs, run military operations and, vitally, make money. John Pironti, a security expert at the technology consulting firm Unisys, fears that the internet will become a “new cash cow” for terrorists, while in a chapter of his autobiography entitled “Hacking, Why Not?”, the Bali bombings mastermind Imam Samudra directs readers to Indonesian-language sites for instructions on how to carry out online credit-card fraud and money-laundering. These instructions are simple to follow: Evan F Kohlmann, a consultant on international terrorism (www.globalterroralert.com), calls it “hacking for dummies”, and adds that “in this day and age, you don’t have to be an expert hacker to have a tremendous impact”.

THE MARCH OF PROPAGANDA

The Twin Towers were symbolic targets and their propaganda value was vast. Less destructive acts will not receive 24-hour news coverage, but, as Peter Taylor’s chilling BBC documentary recently showed, terrorists adopted the web as a place to post brutal films of beheadings and other outrages in order to avoid “censorship”. Professor Michael Clarke of King’s College, London, notes a significant technological advance: the internet enables Al-Qaeda to “propagandise on a global scale in a way that no other terror group could just 30 years ago”.

Other factions, too, favour the web: tinyurl.com/c4v65 is an Israeli analysis of how Palestine’s Islamic Jihad “markets” its message online, while www.holywar.org  is a vile piece of “Christian” antisemitism claiming the Twin Towers were destroyed by a cabal of Americans and Jews. The prevalence of such claims (which are discussed at tinyurl.com/ cc7tu) in the wake of 9/11 shows how frighteningly credulous netizens can be.

It is all too easy to find these sites. Type “9/11 conspiracy” into Google and up come dozens of pages, all linking to each other. Take care, for you enter a bubble of delusion not easily pricked.

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