Together, the sites provide Muslims around the world with a comfortable meeting point and arena for debates, rivalries, and exchange of ideas far beyond what the political systems in many Muslim states offer their citizens in the real, non-virtual world. And they ensure that Muslims everywhere are at least exposed to notions of global confrontation and the clash of Western and Islamic civilizations.

The “Muslim” Internet has jumped quite easily over a serious hurdle: objections by traditional, orthodox clerics, who until roughly ten years ago warned against the “diseases and moral risks” of online media. Even hard-line clerics, primarily of the Sunni Wahhabi and Salafi schools, found out quite rapidly that the advantages of indoctrinating huge segments of society through the Internet are far greater than the social and moral risks.

Most of the important Sunni and Shia clerics now have their own personal sites, where they or their followers upload their writings and teachings as part of the Islamic indoctrination. A good example is the site of Sheik Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual mentor of the Lebanese Shia movement of Hezbollah. On the site -- whose English version is at http://english.bayynat.org.lb -- one can find the entire mindset of Sheikh Fadlallah, his messages, teachings, doctrines, and his religio-political support and justification for the Shia movement and its struggle, both within Lebanon and against Israel.

Other Shia leaders in Lebanon -- including Hezbollah's chief, Hasan Nasrallah, also have sites, as does the leadership of the Islamic revolution in Iran and a number of leading Sunnis. Most have been developed in the past decade in what amounts to an attempt to create a huge virtual open "university," whose purpose is to indoctrinate future generations of Muslims, each trend or school according to its particular doctrines.

An important characteristic of the Muslim Internet is the dominance of Arabic and the Arab world. This reflects the central position that Arab scholars and clerics have occupied in interpreting Islam in modern times and fostering its revival as a political ideology. The more radical and militant sites are, in particular, overwhelmingly in Arabic.

But Muslim sites are ultimately defined less by the language they use than the enemies they choose to confront. They share a belief that Islam in modern times faces a war of ideas and a clash of cultures, if not civilizations, and must respond through Jihad – but they differ in their interpretation of how and against whom this Jihad should be fought.

The largest part of the Muslim Internet represents traditional, non-militant Islam. It is devoted to fighting “enemies” such as secularism, nationalism, socialism, and other ideologies imported to the Muslim world. The Jihadi indoctrination they offer is designed to thrive in the modern national Muslim state, which is not ruled by Sharia (Islamic law), but by man-made laws. They promote the “greater Jihad” -- the Jihad of the heart and mind in order to preserve and promote Islamic values, until the time comes to establish the true Islamic state. An example for such a website in English is Islamicity.

This is a general site intended to disperse Islam in non-political ways, and to teach secular Muslims about religion through Da’wah – a socio-cultural indoctrination, and revival of religious life. It deals with the whole spectrum of life. The site has been active since November, 1998, and is sponsored by the Human Assistance and Development International based in Calver, California.

The second largest group of sites represents a variety of religio-political groups, the largest of which is the Muslim Brotherhood. These are fighting one main “enemy” -- Arab and Muslim governments, primarily those that oppress or outlaw Islamist movements. Their Internet Jihad focuses on creating a growing awareness of the notion of Da’wah and building an alternative society within the existing states through a “compromised Jihad,” which amounts to a revolution from below in order to seize power through the mechanism of the modern Muslim state.
An example for such sites is the main website of the Muslim Brotherhood – Ikhwanonline.

This site was created in February, 2003, produced and sponsored from Egypt, and registered in the United States, in Yarmouth, California. It presents the entire spectrum of doctrines and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is in its own words “a social doctrine that seeks to cure the Islamic society, by dealing with every possible aspect of Muslim life.” It contains anti-Western and severe anti-Jewish/Zionist messages.

The smallest group of sites, often produced by Jihadi-Salafi elements such as al-Qaeda and affiliated groups and scholars, is waging a militant, non-compromised Jihad against a dynamic and loosely defined enemy that includes most if not all of the world’s Arab and Muslim governments, the alliance of the “Jews and the Crusaders,” the “occupiers of the Muslim lands and mind,” sometimes Iran and the Shia in general, and at times any Muslim who supports the “enemy,” i.e., every Muslim who does not accept their doctrines. This entire spectrum of “enemies,” as part of the infidel camp, and is to be subjected to a brutal, violent Jihad. Particularly since the September 11th attacks, the Jihad of these sites includes and promotes a sense of the apocalypse, the final victory of Islam that is close and waiting behind the door.

“The Podium of Tawhid and Jihad” was an example of such sites, until it was recently removed from its U.S. server. The site included a large virtual library of Jihadi literature of different kinds -- radical Jihadi interpretations, indoctrination, ideology and fatwas to support the spectrum of Jihadi activity and incitement. Its sponsor was the Jordanian/Palestinian Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the primary mentor of Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, who led the Jihadi insurgency in Iraq (the site was also Al-Maqdisi’s personal website). It was created in November, 2001 in Saudi Arabia.

The militant Jihadi sites have an influence beyond their numbers and are gradually becoming the most influential, and perhaps the most popular, sites among the younger generations of Islamic youth. After intensive daily research of these sites, I can relate that there are only about 200 to 250 of them. But, since they represent the most radical elements of Jihadi groups, which support global Jihadi terrorism and armed struggle, they are often cited and receive very wide exposure in Western and global media, which effectively assists in disseminating their message.

For global media, as well as intelligence and security services, academics, and government officials, these sites are becoming a significant source of information and analysis. Their importance is therefore steadily growing not only because of their use by their webmasters and sympathizers, but also because of the actions of the Western “enemy.” Their broad exposure allows them to cast a shadow over the other Muslim sites, which represent the majority of the Muslim world.

About two years ago, the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) -- the propaganda machinery of al-Qaeda -- published a special article about “Al-Qaeda: the University for Jihad Studies,", available online at http://www.alquma.net/vb/archive/index.php/t-179668.html.

GIMF is the umbrella group of several “news agencies” (see for example the “World News Network”) and virtual “publishing houses”, including Al-Sahab, Al-Fajr, Al-Furqan, that use the Jihadi sites to post a variety of Jihadi video and audiotapes, books, articles, military declarations, indoctrination documents, training manuals, Jihadi magazines, etc. Its operatives are anonymous, and publish on a frequently changing roster of websites dispersed all over the world.

They view their activity as legitimate part of Jihad," and their department of the virtual “university” explicitly seeks to provide Islamists who cannot take active part in the violent Jihad with a sense of belonging to the Jihadi elements, a sense of identity that some desire and lack in the Arab and Muslim world, or in Muslim communities in the West.

“Al-Qaeda is an organization, a state, and a university," states the GIMF article. "This is a university with no geographic borders. It is found everywhere, and whoever loves his religion and nation can join it… The university is open and calls you to study the profession of Jihad. Today you are students of Jihad, and tomorrow you’ll be Mujahidin in the way of Allah, defenders of religion and honor, assisting in establishing the Caliphate.”

Most Muslims have not “enrolled” in the university, and do not support its “curriculum”.
But many, if not most, are aware it exists. It therefore has the potential to hotwire a growing number of “students” to believe that global confrontation between the cultures of Islam and the West is unavoidable.