U.S. authorities have charged a 30-year-old woman from Philadelphia, who allegedly planned to travel to Syria to join ISIS, after following her plans on Twitter.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Keonna Thomas, who went by the aliases Fatayat Al Khilafah and “YoungLioness,” not only indicated her intent to leave the U.S. for ISIS-controlled territory, she also suggested she would be willing to die in one of the militant group’s operations.
Authorities say she also communicated online with an ISIS militant in Syria, who asked her if she would be willing to take part in a martyrdom operation. “That would be amazing.. a girl can dream,” she responded, court documents allege.
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The affidavit detailed pro-ISIS Twitter activity on Twitter account attributed to her, dating back to August 2013.
Authorities charged Thomas on Friday after she allegedly purchased an airline ticket to Barcelona and an electronic visa for travel to Turkey — a hub for foreign recruits travelling to join ISIS.
The number of foreign recruits continues to grow. It’s believed there are more than 20,000 foreigners are now fighting with or supporting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. More than 4,000 of those have come from Europe, the U.S. and Canada.
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While government officials in the U.S., Canada and European countries are well aware of ISIS’s online reach, and have taken measures to counter it, the militant group’s online influence has hardly been diminished.
An analysis by terrorism expert J.M. Berger and data scientist Jonathon Morgan found some 46,000 Twitter accounts were used to support ISIS.
It takes just a matter of minutes to replace a suspended account and the network of ISIS supporters is quick to pass then word when a replacement account appears. And even as social media companies such as Twitter increase their efforts to stop the spread of ISIS propaganda, there are plenty of other online forums in which they can thrive.
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“They’re prepared to exploit… any social media source that will carry them,” David Charters, a senior fellow at the University of New Brunswick’s Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society, told Global News this week.
Aside from how quick ISIS followers and supporters are to adapt to social media obstacles, Charters pointed to two reasons why ISIS is so successful at recruiting online.
He said ISIS has sold itself as victorious in its fight to establishing its caliphate.
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ISIS glorifies the life it offers under its strict rule, Charters explained. But it’s a much different scenario on the ground compared to what recruiters are describing in tweets and other posts.
Counter-propaganda campaigns replicate ISIS’s slickly produced video with an anti-jihadist message, like the ones created by the U.S. Department of State and the Government of France, aren’t likely to do much to dissuade potential recruits, Charters added.
“It may well be that there are people out there with the knowledge and the skills and the cultural knowledge to be able to craft a counter-message… but it will have to come from within the Muslim world,” he said.
A group of British Muslim scholars is trying to do just that.
They’ve released an online magazine, resembling ISIS’s own online publication —Dabiq.
The first issue of Haqiqah, which means “the truth” or “the reality,” aims to expose “the truths about ISIS,” by providing proper interpretations of Qur’anic verses ISIS used to justify its atrocities and legitimize its caliphate.
“Someone has to reclaim that territory from ISIS, and that can only be imams: religious leaders who guide and nourish their community,” Qari Asim, senior editor for the website ImamsOnline.com, told BBC. “But now that we live in a digital mobile world, some young people are not coming to the mosque so we must reach out to them – and this is the Muslims’ contribution to combat radicalization on the net.”
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