Jihadist Recruitment Techniques Are Changing
New terrorism trends prompt a dramatic shift in British government policy.
The Internet, too, plays an increasing role in recruitment as an easy, cheap, and anonymous networking tool, as seen in the dedicated efforts of many Islamic terrorist groups to produce slick multimedia presentations. Neumann’s report states that online forums, videos, and sermons normalize extremist ideology and serve as an echo chamber amplifying a long list of Islamic grievances.
But even the list of those grievances is subject to change, he observes. While terrorist groups continue to reinforce the overarching jihadist narrative of Islam under attack by Western forces of occupation and globalization, recently the themes that support the grand narrative have shifted. In recent years the primary source of attention has been the presence of allied troops in Iraq, but that has changed recently with renewed focus on Afghanistan and the recent conflict in Gaza. In terms of recruitment, these changing themes have the power of connecting recruits to distant conflicts and framing events to promote escalating confrontation locally.
These findings of shifting trends in jihadist recruitment coincide with new changes in UK government policy. Where the government had previously embraced and funded many extremist but nominally non-violent organizations, in the hopes of countering terrorist activity, a new program dubbed “Contest 2″ is redefining these relationships.
As reported on the BBC’s Panorama program last Monday, “Muslim First, British Second,” the government is backing away from groups that promote extremist ideology and serve as “conveyor belts” to terrorist groups. A draft of this new strategy obtained by the Telegraph outlines five ideological points that will mark an organization as “extremist”:
- They advocate a caliphate, a pan-Islamic state encompassing many countries.
- They promote Sharia law.
- They believe in jihad, or armed resistance, anywhere in the world. This would include armed resistance by Palestinians against the Israeli military.
- They argue that Islam bans homosexuality and that it is a sin against Allah.
- They fail to condemn the killing of British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan.
These policy changes come none too soon as Channel 4 just reported that UK Somalis that have trained in al-Shabaab terrorist camps are now returning home and pose a new domestic terror threat. That report stated that at least one 21-year-old individual from Ealing launched a successful suicide attack in Somali. As I noted here at Pajamas Media back in December, this is a rapidly growing problem in the U.S. as well.
This awakening by UK government officials as to the problem of non-violent extremists fueling jihadist recruitment should be noted by U.S. officials. Despite the recent announcement that the FBI was distancing itself from known Muslim Brotherhood front groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Obama administration continues to embrace Saudi-backed extremists, such as the appearance of Islamic Society of North America president Ingrid Mattson as a prayer leader at the Obama inaugural prayer service. Mattson’s participation was despite her organization being named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial.
What the Brits have learned is that such associations with Islamic radicals have not served to better engage the Muslim community, but rather have empowered the extremists and effectively shut out moderate leaders. Thus, the UK experience with shifting trends in jihadist recruitment and the changes in government policy are developments that deserve immediate notice on this side of the Atlantic.
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Patrick Poole is a regular contributor to Pajamas Media, and an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.
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17 Comments
1. Marc Malone:Man, but these people are stupid with their PC nonsense. They dare not do the right thing for fear of offending Muslim and Liberal sensibilities. (Hey! I just made a joke! Muslim and Liberal combined with the word sensibilities! Hilarious!) So, they start hobnobbing with radical Muslim groups. They just can’t believe that these whackjobs are really THAT insane!
The best way to beat them is to inform the public. Start jihad websites, run by western secret agencies. Put all the filth out there for all to see, including the concept of taquiyya (stealth jihad). Highlight the vilest portions of the Quran, the hadeth, and Muhammed’s writings and history. Exhort the ragheads to violence. Extoll the virtues of past atrocities. Make it all mainstream, and in the LOCAL LANGUAGE. After awhile, the locals will get wind of the vileness being spewed, and come to realize the nature of the enemy. Call it a disinformation/information campaign.
The problem is the language and cultural gulf. Once people come to realize how great is the gulf, they will turn on the Muslims in our midst and begin to roll back the tide.
Feb 24, 2009 - 12:39 am 2. Blackwater:Time to leave political correctness behind and ban islamic evangelizing in prisons and to deport muslims who show signs of extremism. It will be rough and the media and liberal establishment will go nuclear but it has to be done in order to protect our civilization. We also need to come up with a comprehensive strategy for weakening islamic power through secularization efforts. I know it sounds unseemly to many people but it must be done. We either do that or hope radical islam goes away when all the evidence shows the trend going in the complete opposite direction. We can’t stand idly by and watch the second rise of a facist militant ideology like we did with Nazism and communism. We need to start acting now before the conflict scales out of control. I’m not suggesting we do something which only increases the problem. But we must find a solution that works regardless of the political cost. And no, giving in to the terrorists is not an option.
Feb 24, 2009 - 2:05 am 3. windy blow:As much as I may agree something ought to be done the truth – hard to swallow though it is – is that this is about votes. No, the British government won’t do anything about radical muslims and islamism and the rest, because they are a (numerically) growing section of British society.
The Labour government of the UK has been screwing the UK for approaching twelve years. It is an unprecedented time for socialists to have power, and they know as we all do that at the next election the incompetent Gordon Brown and his squad of self-serving, useless cronies will be out. The Tories aren’t much better but hope and change, hey?
So the only thing that will keep the present mob in power is to rally the votes from the muslims. That means giving them what the tribes want in the hope that they remember to vote the correct way and keep the miserable socialists in power.
Feb 24, 2009 - 8:31 am 4. Jonesy55:#3
But even if labour got 100% of all muslim votes, it wouldn’t be enough to keep them in power as muslims only make up around 2% of the electorate and are concentrated in a few geographical areas that are mostly very safe labour seats anyway.
If anything, a policy such as the one you describe will just annoy the swing voters in marginal seats even more and these are the people who decide which party wins the election.
I can’t see any way that Labour can win the next election, especially as the economy is only going to get worse over the next year.
I predict a conservative government with a decent if not huge majority, some gains for Lib-Dems from labour balanced by some losses to the conservatives and a bigger share of the vote for BNP in labour heartlands although that won’t translate into seats.
Feb 24, 2009 - 9:36 am 5. LynnS:I know someone who worked in the Philadelphia prison system and his theory was that prisoners picked Islam over other religions because it had the most holidays. That conversation was about four years ago. I sometimes wonder what he would say today. I think that jihadist recruitment techniques are anything that gets them jihadists. It’s like the mafia, once in, try getting out. Alive that is.
Feb 24, 2009 - 9:42 am 6. Morton Doodslag:Many thanks, Patrick Poole, for being on the vanguard of this central topic. I only quibble with one aspect of your analysis.
You state:
What the Brits have learned is that such associations with Islamic radicals have not served to better engage the Muslim community, but rather have empowered the extremists and effectively shut out moderate leaders.
I think you make a small but important mistake in this formulation. In essence, you buy into the completely false notion that our actions in the West somehow help to make Islam more or less radical. We are in NO WAY responsible for the central core tenets of Islam — tenets which extoll the virtues of mass genocide, world domination, hatred and contempt for all non-Muslims, tenets which minutely mandate a totalitarian all-in-one belief system complete with brutal laws, severe social strictures, and a soul crushing “religious” regime which brooks no opposition.
Those Muslims who resort to violence, or tacitly support terrorism and the spread of Islam through the recruitment of terrorist soldiers, or the funding of same, are simply Muslim who have connected with these core tenets of Islam, and choose to take it seriously. Those elusive moderate Muslims are elusive because 1. Islam itself is not moderate, and 2. those who don’t take their Islam seriously are condemned by Islam itself to severe punishment, including death, for their apostasy. This is why so-called “moderate Muslims” are as rare on the ground as Unicorns or Centaurs. Their rarity isn’t our fault. It isn’t the fault of the West that Islam embraces the eradication of these moderates in those extremely rare cases where one can even be found.
Feb 24, 2009 - 9:44 am 7. Patrick Poole:Morton – you’re confusing two different issues. I wasn’t saying that the engagement efforts were causing Islamic radicalization. The point I was making in the second part of the article that you quoted from is that these government “outreach” programs end up legitimizing the radicals, which in fact they do. The example I gave was CAIR. In response to their unindicted co-conspirator designation in the HLF trial, CAIR responded by saying that they have worked with the government at all levels, ergo, they couldn’t be radicals as the prosecutors alleged. ISNA makes the same argument. Both the FBI and the UK govt have realized that yes, engaging with these groups does empower them by giving them official government sanction.
In making that observation I haven’t “bought into” some notion that we “make Islam more or less radical.”
Feb 24, 2009 - 11:12 am 8. Marc Malone:#7 Mr. Poole – Government outreach does not provide these radical groups legitimacy. If it weren’t that, then they’d have some other canard for denying their radicalism. Control freaks lie. It’s what they do.
What government outreach does do, is deny the problem. The problem is the very nature of Islam. It is simply a Theocracy. It is a political/religious system with the clearly stated goal of conquering the world. The stated means are through Fascism and genocide. Because govenment does not address the realities of the situation, they abet the Islamofascism.
Feb 24, 2009 - 11:38 am 9. Patrick Poole:Sorry, Marc. These groups continually invoke their participation in govt outreach programs and their govt contacts as proof of their legitimacy (take a look at the CAIR website sometime). You and I may not see it that way, but THEY certainly do. And so does the media, etc. That’s the very reason they demand to be included – to give the appearance of acceptability. In the case of ISNA, in court documents they have cited their involvement in govt outreach programs and their contacts with govt agencies as proof that they are legitimate, e.g. not radical. The legitimacy and cover these programs provided is the very reason why many of us have been so vocal about the govt cutting their ties with these Muslim Brotherhood front groups, like CAIR and ISNA.
Feb 24, 2009 - 3:15 pm 10. vb:I remember reading about a mosque in the US that was taken over by bullying radicals. The original members tried to tell authorities what was happening, but no one listened. This certainly wouldn’t inspire many people to resist the radicals, and certainly any hint of government-endowed legitimacy would decrease resistance further.
Feb 24, 2009 - 4:14 pm 11. James:I think there was an Islamo fascist under my bed.
Feb 24, 2009 - 6:13 pm 12. WestGuard:Amazing they can recruit in Western prisons. I’d have thought our Cons would be giving them a daily arse whooping.
Feb 24, 2009 - 9:51 pm 13. Marie Claude:What’s the world coming to..
James was he dressed in white ?
Feb 24, 2009 - 9:58 pm 14. Turkey Brain:James
Gobble Gobble
Turkey Brain sees him there too!
Gobble gobble
Feb 24, 2009 - 10:27 pm 15. LynnS:I think that your article points out the ability of Jihadist recruiters to be like chameleons changing as they find the need. Jihad is very adaptable as a word so therefore it can be fit to many beliefs of what it means and can take on new or different meanings as the need may be. A struggle can mean within, without, for something, and/or against something. It is illusive and be a call to an individual or a call to a group or to a nation.
It might be why there is much conflict within the world of jihad. It means different things to different people so when there is a need for group action it can often lead to the need for total control over peoples lives to become cohesive.
Feb 26, 2009 - 8:19 am 16. ked5:@6,
I think you misunderstand the original post. I don’t think it was ever suggested anything in the west was responsible for inciting the violent feelings of these radicals – but rather the “friendly” policies of western countries can make it “easier” for violent islamofacists to act out their already violent tendencies.
Feb 26, 2009 - 10:24 am 17. Paul T.:EVERYONE needs to understand Islam is about World domination in the name of Religion and if you resist they get to KILL you….in the name of Religion. People they want to KILL us, GET IT? AND, The Quaran says it’s OK to lie to people if it is to help to dominate….in the name of Islam, GOT IT!!!!
Feb 27, 2009 - 8:54 pm