MEMRI – Al-Tajdeed Versus Al-Hesbah: Islamist Websites & the Conflict Between Rival Arab & Muslim Political Forces

Inquiry and Analysis Series – No. 275
Al-Tajdeed Versus Al-Hesbah: Islamist Websites & the Conflict Between Rival Arab & Muslim Political Forces

Introduction

Most of the media in the Arab world – newspapers, television, and radio – are affiliated with various political forces, whether governmental or opposition, operating from within the country or outside it. These media are an important tool in the power struggles among the rival political forces behind them.

With the development of the Internet in the Middle East, websites have become yet another tool in the struggle between rival Arab forces. One prominent example of Internet use as part of this struggle is the campaign by www.tajdeed.org.uk – which belongs to the Saudi Islamist opposition operating in London and is directed by Dr. Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mas’ari, who also heads the Al-Tajdeed Al-Islami organization – against www.alhesbah.org, a leading Islamist site that is a conduit for messages from Al-Qaeda and other jihad organizations. [1]

Al-Tajdeed accused Al-Hesbah of working for Arab and Western intelligence apparatuses to expose and arrest contributors to the jihad web forums. According to Al-Tajdeed, Al-Hesbah had brought about the arrest of all the founders of another Islamist website, www.al-ansar.org, including “bin Roma” and “Irhabi 007.” Al-Tajdeed also asserted that Al-Hesbah had brought about the arrest of all the members of the Global Information Media Front (GIMF) [2] directly after they posted an announcement, on behalf of Al-Qaeda, taking responsibility for the February 25, 2006 Abqiq operation (an attempt to strike at the Saudi oil fields), and that Al-Hesbah had brought about the killing of the perpetrators of the operation by Saudi security forces.

Al-Hesbah stopped operating on March 17, 2006, and restarted on April 13, 2006. It is common for Islamist websites to disappear from and return to the web, and this is part of the dynamic of Islamist Internet activity. However, Al-Tajdeed took advantage of Al-Hesbah’s temporary disappearance to step up its attacks on it. Al-Tajdeed recommended that jihad supporters visit alternative websites that, it claimed, were more reliable and on which there was no hostile intelligence activity. When Al-Hesbah returned, Al-Tajdeed warned visitors to the site to take precautions lest their identities be discovered, and gave detailed instructions for doing so.

Another jihad website, www.alburak.net, came to the aid of Al-Hesbah, posting an article accusing Arab opposition elements, including Al-Mas’ari as well as Dr. Hani Al-Siba’i and Dr. Sa’d Al-Faqih, also London residents, of attempting to destroy the jihad websites and to smear those active on them. (Two weeks previously, Al-Tajdeed had accused Al-Burak of “becoming a copy of Al-Hesbah.” [3] )

The sharp rivalry between Al-Tajdeed and Al-Hesbah reflects the struggle between the two rival political forces behind them. In the case of Al-Tajdeed, this force is Saudi Islamist opposition activists. Al-Hesbah claims to be an independent religious site, but in light of the platform it gives to slanderous postings about Saudi opposition activists such as Al-Mas’ari and Al-Faqih – even going so far as to accuse them of heresy and treason – it can be identified as a site affiliated with a religious or political rival of the Saudi opposition, such as the Saudi regime itself. (According to its own report, the Saudi regime is active on the Internet. One example of this activity is the Saudi Ministry of Religious Endowment’s Al-Sakinah campaign for on-line dialogue with extremists [4] ).

Al-Tajdeed, which as mentioned belongs to Saudi opposition elements, also features postings by oppositionists from other Arab countries. According to the Al-Burak website, “Omar bin Hanif,” a contributor to Al-Tajdeed (see below), is Egyptian Islamist opposition member Dr. Hani Al-Sib’ai, head of the Al-Maqrizi Institute in London. If Al-Sib’ai is indeed “Omar bin Hanif,” he joined Al-Tajdeed’s struggle against Al-Hesbah with a posting titled “A Series of Exposures of Spies,” which lay the groundwork for the accusations against Al-Hesbah.

In addition, Al-Burak identified several other Al-Tajdeed contributors, also posting under pseudonyms, as oppositionists from various Arab countries. For example, according to Al-Burak, “Al-Fikr Al-Rashid” is in fact Egyptian Islamist Yasser Al-Sirri, who heads the Al-Marsad Institute in London; Al-Ansar contributor “bin Roma” is Algerian sheikh Abdallah Al-Ghamdi; and “Sami 9000” is Mansour Al-Halabi, a Syrian residing in Libya.

The following report, from MEMRI’s Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project’s initiative on Monitoring Islamist and Jihad Websites, analyzes the conflicts between the Islamist and Jihad websites. These multi-faceted conflicts, which involve an array of individual postings, should not be looked at as a phenomenon of individual Islamist participants battling on the Internet (as has been done thus far by various media and research outlets). Rather they should be seen in a larger context, as a phenomenon reflecting the conflicts between rival Arab and Muslim political forces in whose service these websites operate.