Arab Islamists Seek to Adopt Tactics of Republican Party

Even jihadists follow the Republican primaries. Which is interesting, because I don't think many Americans even follow the Republican primaries. See below

غينغريتش انسحب رسميا قلم يعد امامه اي منافس ومن غير انسحايه فالامر محسوم له

هناك ميثاق في الانتخابات داخل الاحزاب ممنوع الضرب تحت الحزام بين المرشحينيعني من غير المقبول ان يقوم اي مرشح جمهوري خلال فترة الانتخابات التمهيدية الحزبية بكشف فضائح لمنافس له من نفس الحزبحتى لا يستفيد منها الحزب المنافس لو حصل ونال المفضوح الترشيح عن حزبهتصور اخي ديقار لو تم تطبيق هذا الميثاق بين الاسلاميين !!


Translation of key post on a thread called "Mitt Romney Wins Five Republican Primary Elections":

Gingrich withdrew officially, so therefore there's no one left to compete with him, it's settled. There's an agreement in internal party politics- 'bellow the belt' hits are not allowed among the candidates. Meaning that it's not acceptable for one republican candidate, during the primary elections, to expose the scandals of his competitors from the same party. Therefore, if the scandalized candidate actually won and represented the party, the other side doesn't get to benefit from it. Imagine, Diqar, if Islamists followed that rule!!!

Woman's Sunglasses Expose Syrian Regime Propaganda

This one's from over a week ago, but it's good. We meant to post it then, but it's been a busy week.
Check out this still shot of a woman getting interviewed on Ad-Dunia channel, a pro-regime satellite propaganda channel:

We initially saw this photo on Hanein forums, where a user linked to an Al-Arabiya news story discussing the incident. Al-Arabiya, in turn, was alerted to the find by opposition users who discovered the reflection and posted it on Facebook.  We hadn't seen this particular interview, but we've seen many like it on Syria News and on Ad-Dunia channel.

In the brief interview, the woman noted that "Yes, the Syrian crisis has ended, the bloody scenes seen from the opposition and on Arab satellite channels are fake, the Syrian people are living in safety."
From the reflection on her glasses, you can see the numerous soldiers and armed men surrounding her car, making sure that she had the right answer to the "reporter's" questions.

Don't like Hazem Abu Ismail? Vote for His Mother.

For those of you who don't like Egyptian presidential candidate Hazem Abu Ismail, take a look at this  video of a TV interview with him and his mother. [The video is included within the article on Al-Arabiya, and it has English subtitles.]Yes, that's right, the mother whose American citizenship got him prohibited from running for president (at least for now).

We also found the video on YouTube:

You might be surprised, but his mother comes off as....articulate, respectful, religiously moderate, and intelligent. We here at the blog wish his mother was running instead of him. His mother, Dr. Nawal AbdelAziz Nour, presents herself very well, speaking positively of other religions and condemning the Al-Qaeda attacks.

Nour's attitude is in stark contrast to that of her son, who regularly issues streams of lies to the Egyptian people.  An example of that can be found in this video that we found on Bramjnet. Here, Abu Ismail rails against American aid to Egypt, spouting lies such as:

American aid never consists of actual money;  Americans love homosexuality and gay marriage, and American aid is intended to promote that; American aid is tool intended to end American unemployment by giving jobs and factories to Americans in Egypt but disguising it as American aid to Egyptians; Americans give Egypt defective food; Americans throw thousands of tons of wheat into the sea to keep the prices high....the list goes on and on. Watching Abu Ismail's videos really shows that the man is not fit to be a president.

More Syrian Facebook Action

As we noted in our last post, the polls used to name Friday protests on the Syrian revolution's facebook page are significant. So much so that people try to mobilize their own online networks to get the result that they want.

Amal Hanano, writing over at Foreign Policy, published an article today detailing the importance of the polls. The article is good, but it could be better. The author did an acceptable job of describing the online battle between secularists & Islamists for the name of Friday's protests, but she obviously didn't do any research to see what people were saying on social media platforms other than Facebook and Twitter. Hanano writes: 

Last week, before the Facebook polling closed for the name of the April 13 protests -- the day after the U.N. ceasefire deadline, the day in which solidarity was key -- one name was in the lead: the Friday of the Armies of Islam. Yet another divisive (and completely off message) choice. This time, however, peaceful activists were ready to take action and fight back in a battle for the Friday name.

On Wednesday, April 11, media activists on Facebook and Twitter began a campaign to "rock the vote" for Friday's name. They advocated the secular, inclusive choice, "A Revolution for all Syrians." It was an intense campaign. Usually around 8,000 votes are cast each week, but last week there were more than 30,000. It was as much a battle between Islamic sentiment and secular inclusiveness as it was a struggle between those dedicated to solely an armed resistance, and those who still valued the power of nonviolent activism.

If the author looked a little further, she would find that it wasn't a one sided campaign: Islamists were mobilizing their networks as well. They were doing it on forums and on Facebook. Some on Twittter even ignored the results of the poll, deciding to name the protests "Friday of the Armies of Islam" anyway, regardless of the fact that this name was defeated badly.



While the article does have its shortcomings, at the end of the day, we salute the author of this article for shedding light on the ongoing and dynamic significance of social media to the Arab revolutions.

Even Jihadists Use Facebook Polls

As we mentioned in Wednesday's post, there was some prime social media mobilization going on this week when it came down to naming Friday's protests in Syria. 

Early afternoon on Wednesday, one choice was winning:

جمعة جيش الاسلام: اغيثوا الشام (The Friday of 'Armies of Islam: Come Relieve Syria')

Now, one can interpret that name as they want. For example, maybe the name is referring to gulf countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia who have aided the Free Syrian Army. Maybe it is a gesture to the conscious of the Muslim world in an effort to mobilize Muslims to action. 

We have discovered that among at least some Salafi-Jihadist types (i.e. supporters of Jibhat An-Nusra) that name held a different meaning. The name meant that Syrians would be protesting in support of militant, Islamic action against the regime. Proof of that can be found on Hanein, where one user started a thread begging people to vote for the "Armies of Islam: Come Relieve Syria" option:

كما تعلمون بأن تسمية الجمعة لها أثر نفسي كبير وصدى إعلامي واسع في خضم الأحداث الجسام التي نمر بهاوبعد أن كانت الفرق كبير بنسبة الاصوات إلى تسمية جيوش الإسلام اغيثوا الشام بدأ جمع بني علمان يحاولون أن يحرفوا البوصلة ليجروا الجمعة من بعدها الإسلاميفالرجاء ممن له حساب على الفيس بوك الدخول والتصويت لصالح التسمية الإسلامية

Translation:

["As you know, the naming of Fridays has a lot of influence and a big media echo because of the magnitude of the events that experiencing. There used to be a wide gap in the number of votes given to "Armies of Islam: Come Relieve Syria," but now the 'secularists' have started to get together and try to pervert the results to steal away the Islamic dimension of Friday. So please, to whoever has a Facebook account, go on and vote for the Islamic name."]

The guy's avatar:

- Another user replies "Thanks, I just voted"

- The author replies "Thanks for voting, I hope the other brothers will vote too, it's between two competing names, one Islamic and one secular. Voting closes in three hours."

-A 3rd user replies "Victory to the Armies of Islam. I just voted, God bless you."

-The author replies "May God give you life. The amount of users on this forum (if they all voted) could create a wide gap between the two. So don't give up on it brothers, and don't say the the name doesn't make any difference, because it does."

- A 4th user replies, stating that he voted as well. 

- The author thanks him, noting that "I'm waiting for the rest of the brothers to vote - the voting is getting close, we used to be winning by more than 2500 votes, and now it's less than 1300! It's important."

The stuff is happening in real time. About a half hour later, the author comes back: 

"The difference is less than 50 votes! Unfortunately, in half an hour the results will flip on us and Friday's protest will have some secular name!"

Then a few minutes later:

"It didn't even take half an hour. Now the secular name is winning. God help us. 

Posts on this thread: 9

Number of times the thread was viewed: 132

(i.e. look how many people read the thread, and only a few people posted to let us know they voted)

I'm sorry for all of my posts on the thread, but it gets to me that secularists are winning over Islam, even if it's just a Facebook victory. "

This guy is clearly disappointed. We are pretty happy though - what a great example of cross-platform social media mobilization...or, rather, attempted social media mobilization. 

The Syrian Revolution Facebook Page

For the first time, you can watch a political revolution play out online. That's what's happening with the Syrian revolution's facebook page, which serves as the primary outlet for the opposition movement. Every day features hundreds of new posts (sometimes even thousands), with videos, articles, cell-phone recordings of regime violence; this site has everything.

It's truly revolutionary (forgive the pun) in that with this revolution, the opposition is using social media as a weapon to respond to actions of the Syrian government. The government has its TV channels, radio stations, and websites. The opposition has none of those, therefore it uses social media to promote and distribute its message. The posting of videos of protests and the violent repression of the regime allows readers to watch the revolution as it's happening - truly fascinating.

While we've seen the Facebook page mentioned on other social media platforms before, today a friend pointed out a particularly dynamic example of the intersections that occur in Arabic social media, and how that interaction can change events on the ground.

Above is a poll issued by the page. The poll asks for readers to vote and choose the name of next Friday's demonstrations. It has become a tradition in Arab Spring revolutions, and especially in Syria, to name each Friday's demonstrations. With the Syrian revolution, that naming now takes place on its Facebook page.  The choices are (from top to bottom):

• جمعة ثورة لكل سوريين (The Friday of Revolution for All Syrians)
• جمعة سينتصر الدم على الرصاص (The Friday Where Blood Will Defeat Bullets)
• جمعة المجتمع الدولي يقتلنا (The Friday of 'The International Community is Killing Us')
• جمعة حسبنا الله و كفى (The Friday of 'God is our Protector, Enough')
• جمعة اوقفوا القتل (The Friday of 'Stop the Killing')
• جمعة جيش الاسلام: اغيثوا الشام (The Friday of 'Armies of Islam: Come Relieve Syria')
• جمعة قاوم فيداك الاعصار (The Friday of 'Resist, Your Hands are the Hurricane')
• جمعة تكالبت علينا الامم (The Friday of 'The UN Has Left Us')

What's fascinating about this week's poll is the that readers took to other social media platforms (in this case, forums) to lobby for their particular choice. 

More info, with links, to come.