This short clip of a khutba by Hazim al-'Araji, a prominent figure in the Sadrist movement and the Mehdi Army, calling for the Shia to kill and torture Sunnis, especially the 'Wahabbis' and 'Baathis', is circulating widely via SMS, email, and forums. The Araji clip as produced by Ansar al-Sunnah was only a few minutes long, and bracketed his speech with clips of heroic 'mujahedin' executing blindfolded Shia in revenge for Saddam's execution. Lovely.
While it's hard to know for sure, these short video clips seems to be having a pretty big impact on inflaming sectarian attitudes around the region - and to be having increasingly greater impact than long speeches or videos by al-Qaeda's leaders. A friend of mine told me that when he was recently in Saudi Arabia, everyone he met had seen and been engraged by another video clip featuring a shaykh's opinion on the relative merits of the Shia and Sunni. I had a similar experience in Egypt with the police abuse video, which everyone seemed to have seen and many were eager to share. This particular media form seems particularly well-suited to getting people worked up - easy to circulate because they are small files and requiring very little by way of attention span.
Since I cannot get ahold of the video, is there any reason to doubt whether the words attributed to Araji are actually his (e.g., the audio is mis-matched with the video)?
Are the videos frequently used to discredit opponents -- since Araji's alleged statements in the video contradict the statements he made to McClatchey's reporter?
Posted by: C. L. Ball | February 03, 2007 at 10:27 AM
The video looked pretty authentic to me, he looked like he was saying what I heard him saying, but I'm no expert on that technical authentication stuff.
This raises a good question and a tough one - I don't know how to make these videos available to interested people without actually hosting them, at which point I would actually be disseminating jihadi videos with all the attendant complications. Linking to the jihadi forums directly is not something I like to do anymore, for various reasons. Maybe I could upload them to YouTube or something, but then it's back to being a conduit for the videos. Any suggestions?
Posted by: aardvark | February 03, 2007 at 01:47 PM
Several years ago I was working in in a country with poor laboratory services and we often had to carry over patient samples (blood, sputum) to be analyzed in U.S. laboratories. At first we "smuggled" them in small icepacks, but after a while we got an NIH permit. After that it was a lot less stressful.
If someone wanted to host jihadi videos, he should probably set it up with DHS in advance, have a fairly strict registration protocol (permanent email addresses and affiliations), and note prominently that the IP addresses of people who use it are being monitored by the authorities etc. Sounds like a hassle to me, but someone might want to do it. If it weren't certain to give the Daniel Pipeses and Martin Kramers of the world something to pontificate about I'd say MESA should sponsor it.
Posted by: moloch-agonistes | February 03, 2007 at 03:52 PM
Islam has been Hijacked from all of the Good muslims by the Religious Zeolot fundementalist terrorist pigs! and the worst part abou it, that Even Moderate and Normal muslims never speak up to condemn the stupidity and shame the jerkoff zeolts put on us.
Posted by: Modern Pharaoh | February 06, 2007 at 09:33 PM