Al-Qaeda Reaches Out To Youth With Flashy Websites

Over 100 English Internet sites, packed with flashy videos of car bombings and other terror strikes, are helping spread the message of the so called jihad by Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups among Muslims in the US and Europe, taking advantage of their anger over Iraq war.

While their reach is difficult to assess, it is clear from a review of extremist material and interviews that militants are seeking to appeal to young American and European Muslims by playing on their anger over the war in Iraq and the image of Islam under attack, The New York Times reported quoting terrorism experts.

Tedious Arabic screeds, it reports, are reworked into flashy English productions. Recruitment tracts are issued in multiple languages, like a 39-page, electronic, English version of a booklet urging women to join the fight against the West.

There are even online novellas like 'Rakan bin Williams,' about a band of Christian European converts who embraced Al-Qaeda and "promised God that they will carry the flag of their distant brothers and seek vengeance on the evil doers," it adds.

Militant Islamists are turning grainy car-bombing tapes into slick hip-hop videos and montage movies, all readily available on Western sites like YouTube, the online video smorgasbord. "It is as if you would watch a Hollywood movie," Abu Saleh, a 21-year-old German fan of Al-Qaeda videos, was quoted as saying. He visits Internet cafes in Berlin twice a week to get the latest releases.

The Internet has totally changed. Al-Qaeda and its followers, the Times says, have used the Internet to communicate and rally support for years, but in the past several months the Western tilt of the message and the sophistication of the media have accelerated.

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