Practicum Post #2

For the my second endeavor into the world of online activism, I visited a message board, Ansar Al-Mujahideen, that is well known as being a meeting place for al-Qaeda sympathizers and members. From what I had read, I expected the presence of extreme jihadist sentiments and anti-Western discussion to be prominent, but most of the website was centered around the discussion and appreciation of Islamic culture. I was at first deterred from exploring this website at all, since registration had just recently been closed to anyone without an invite. But once I looked around for a few hours, and after I did field work in other sites, I started to understand that Ansar Al-Mujahideen was actually quite reflective of what a lot of internet activism is like.

The instances of jihadism and calls for activism were relegated to only one board among many on the site, and even there, the only hint of activism I found was in the picture above that someone had posted. None of the comments in reply to this picture spoke of specifics, like times or people or methods. It was all simply praising God and the person who made the post. This was pretty much the gist of the rest of the site: posts with vague references or praises to instances of jihadism or texts concerning jihadism, followed by even more vague comments that supported the original poster or made praise to God.