And I'm quite sure that number grows every day. (of extremist sites that is)
Currently, there are more than 10,000 extremist websites on the Internet compared to fewer than 100 anti-militant sites to counter them, a counterterrorism analyst told a conference in Singapore on Tuesday. He also stressed the importance of rebutting the pro-militant propaganda.
“In many ways, the terrorists are very successful in cyberspace,” said counter-terrorism analyst Rohan Gunaratna, who heads the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.
“It is very important for us to build in the next 10 years the capacities and capabilities to counter the increasing presence and the operation of these groups in cyberspace.”
General consensus at the *International Conference on Terrorist Rehabilitation and Community Resilience indicated it would take a much better effort made by moderate Islamic groups and governments around the world to counter extremist propaganda on the Internet.
(*Note: no link for this year's conference available yet)
Social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and others are being exploited to alarming levels in order to spread extremist views across the world.
In the keynote speech at the conference, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
told attendees...
... that self-radicalisation through constant exposure to radical views online was a “growing phenomenon”.
“Jihadist sites and sermons by charismatic ideologue firebrands are just a mouse click away,” said Lee, who also stressed the need for closer international cooperation against terrorism.
Over 500 security analysts, academics and moderate religious leaders attended the conference. One attendee, Islamic scholar Ali Mohamed of Singapore’s
Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG) said:
"Cyberspace is shaping up to be the new battleground for hearts and minds”.
I think most of us can relate to that statement. Although our political opponents here at home aren't considered "extremists" (although, for me personally, the jury's still out on some of them) many -- namely neocons and some factions of the tea party -- still espouse both intolerance at home and abroad, and imperialistic wars of choice abroad as accepted doctrine for foreign policy.
In fact, there's no doubt that if you add the ICPVTR's international findings of extremist websites to the domestic findings of the Southern Poverty Law Center's's for "hate" sites here in the U.S.; you can reach only one conclusion: both militancy and extremism in general are proliferating at a rapid pace all over the world.
Incidentally, the RRG regularly counsels and re-indoctrinates militants in prisons across the world, including, interesting enough, extremists taken into custody in late 2001 for allegedly planning to carry out terrorist attacks both inside the U.S. and U.S. interests abroad.
“Terrorists are increasingly exploiting the Internet as a tool for mass communication and radicalisation,” said Ali.
“RRG believes that this is one of our greatest challenges today — to deal (with) and counter the pervasive spread of terrorist ideologies and extremist views online.”
Our elected leaders should take a lesson from the RRG's playbook.
The article's at Raw Story.