From Inspire to Rumiyah: does instructional content in online jihadist magazines lead to attacks?

ABSTRACT

Considerable time has been spent examining how groups like AQAP and ISIS used their online magazines to reach and radicalize individuals in Western democratic states. This paper continues this investigation but shifts its analysis to focus on the ‘how-to’ or instructional content of these publications, an understudied part of the literature. One of the stated goals of these magazines was to provide tactical know-how and assist supporters conducting terror plots in their home states. The question: did the tactics outlined in the magazines materialize in actual plots/attacks and how quickly were they put into practice? The paper examines this question by creating an overview of the tactics which appear in these publications and cross referencing them with a dataset of 166 Islamist-inspired homegrown terror plots/attacks in 14 Western democratic states to determine if, and when, they first appeared in relation to their publication date. It concluded that while some of the suggested strategies did appear following their publication, often it occurred after considerable time had elapsed. This suggests the instructional content did not resonate with readers in real time.

KEYWORDS:

• Homegrown terrorism
• online magazines
• ‘how-to’ instructions
• ISIS
• AQAP

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The literature on homegrown terrorism has attempted to sort out these distinctions. Currently, these are represented as ideal types although some cases may be difficult to accurately categorize. As the director of the National Counterterrorism Center says: ‘we describe an attack as inspired by a foreign terrorist organization when an individual or cell carries out the operation on a group’s behalf or name, but without direct support form that group. At the other end, we have directed attacks. A directed attack occurs when a terrorist group provides support to all or nearly all facets of an attack. Enabled is the ‘messy middle’, varying degrees of support.’ (Rasumussen, 2017; Also see Floris, 2017 for the FBI’s categorizations on these distinctions). Nesser, Stenersen, and Oftedal (2016, pp. 8–9) focus on the role that ISIS’ section for international operations played in a plot or attacks. Generally, it refers to how much support, instructions or directions are given by an actual terrorist group or affiliated members.

2 Additional information on the following categories was also collected for future projects, including: the number of participants in the attack or plot; a more specific account of the target (for example: within transportation [train, airplane]; military target [soldiers, recruiting center, military base]; public area [shopping center, street, restaurant/café]; tourist area [louvre, WTC]; government target [Pentagon, court house]; police [police center, police officers]); the number of casualties (excluding attackers) and the number of injuries

3 The individual was recently acquitted but the incident was included nonetheless because the plot was explicitly similar to the instructions laid out in the issue.