Broadcast: Monday 06 November 2006 11:00 PM |
Internet footage of beheadings has become a vital weapon in al-Qaeda's jihad against the West. In the second programme of its Iraq season, Dispatches investigates this powerful propaganda machine and its impact on young Arabs and Muslims in the UK.
Jihad TV
Video footage of smiling suicide bombers, missile attacks and beheadings has become as important a weapon as plastic explosives and guns both in the war in Iraq and in al-Qaeda's global jihad against the West. The jihadis have seized on the power of broadband Internet and their message cannot be silenced.
Paul Eedle, an Arabic-speaking journalist who has reported Islamic movements since the 1980s and monitored al-Qaeda's internet sites since 9/11, investigates the jihadi propaganda machine and its impact on young Arabs - and young Muslims in the UK.
The film moves from Egyptian migrant workers in the Gulf swapping 9/11 conspiracy theories to Lebanese children playing Hezbollah video games in the slums of Beirut. From war coverage on Syrian children's television to young Muslim radicals watching Internet videos in London and Blackburn. It examines jihadi videos ranging from the chilling to the grotesque, and features exclusive footage of a jihadi propagandist assembling a video of operations by al-Qaeda in Iraq.
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