The shadow clerics behind Islamist propaganda

By 2024, analysts had identified more than 93 active and partially defunct unofficial Islamic State-support media outlets across digital platforms.

By Mohammad Taha Ali, Middle East Forum

Counterterrorism agencies have targeted Islamist extremists, militant leaders, and terror financiers for decades.

Yet another group now shapes Islamist propaganda with far less scrutiny. Rather than give sermons, command armed units, or issue communiqués, they translate, archive, and distribute propaganda across languages and digital platforms.

These have become the movement’s shadow clerics.

These volunteers form a hidden infrastructure of modern Islamist propaganda, translating Arabic-language communiques to Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, English, Spanish, French, and German.

These volunteers archive propaganda after platforms remove it, operate encrypted channels, and ensure that every sermon, article, or battlefield claim reaches new audiences.

In contrast with propagandists of the past, the modern shadowy cleric usually will not work in official media offices. They are almost all amateurs.

Analysis of the Islamic State’s “media ecosystem” finds that young supporters now feed a new, informal media ecosystem alongside its state-media outputs.

By 2024, analysts had identified more than 93 active and partially defunct unofficial Islamic State-support media outlets across digital platforms.

These operators act like nodes on an ad hoc, largely leaderless communication network. They edit and localize extremist messaging instead of simply translating it.

A study in 2022 found that volunteer networks translated Al Qaeda material into 29 languages. Islamic State Bengali-language channels push out weekly installments of Al-Naba editorials and battle communique.

Editors and channel administrators form the second layer of this network. Every few days, the English-language news channel Halummu posts newly translated material and magazines.

Rather than simply translating material into local languages, they tailor it for local tastes and sensibilities, expanding both range and relevance.

Channel administrators maintain sites, store data files, automate posting schedules, and redirect the flow of followers when any of these sites is shut down.

The Islamic State itself centralized this operation in 2023 when it launched Fursan al-Tarjuma, a union of 14 media groups working to distribute media in 18 languages.

This established how important informal volunteers had become to the group’s communication apparatus.

While loss of territory eroded the Islamic State’s media infrastructure, volunteers, translators, archivists, and administrators filled the vacuum. Decentralization made propaganda more decentralized and durable.

Fan sites push material in translation via various encrypted platforms such as Telegram, WhatsApp, Element, and Rocket. Chat and SimpleX.

Every reshare, forward, or download extends the lifespan of propaganda published by Islamic State and its media arms such as Amaq.

The Islamic State acknowledged this with a statement referring to unofficial propagandists as “media mujahideen” who should carry on their online campaign.

Their influence becomes most apparent in region-specific propaganda. Pro-Islamic State channels targeting Indian audiences emphasize communal tensions.

In Bangladesh, meanwhile, they latch onto debates about the nation’s Islamic identity. Both amplify localized arguments to support global jihadist arguments.

The At-Tamkeen Media Foundation, meanwhile, translates articles released through Nashir and Amaq into Bangladeshi vernacular and issues original Ramadan greeting images targeting Bangladeshi users.

Translation efforts now expand throughout Latin America, some of which appear to have ties to Brazil’s Comando 860, with efforts to translate materials into Spanish, Portuguese, and other local languages to provide them for an audience spanning the entirety of Latin America.

European fans do the same for the local diaspora in French, German, and Dutch. Again, shadow clerics not only redistribute propaganda; they also customize it.

Governments and corporations try to disrupt this process, but they have yet to eradicate it.

Earlier this year, Europol helped to stage raids on thousands of jihadist Telegram channels, and a coalition of countries targeted the Arabic-and-English I’lam Foundation.

Even so, content creators have always rebuilt channels via a suite of encrypted technologies, private servers, and decentralized messaging networks.

The strategy for fighting these narratives must expand beyond the high-profile figures it traditionally targets.

If states are serious about countering extremism, they must address the translators, the channel moderators, and content amplifiers who provide essential continuity and the shadow clerics who carry jihadism beyond battlefield and leadership failures.

They may not represent the new face of Islamist propaganda, but they remain the engine driving it.

PropagandaRadical IslamTerrorism