Fifty young Italians were recruited via the web to fight down on ISIS militias in Syria and Iraq. They come from different cities like Brescia, Turin, Ravenna, Padua, Bologna. Saudi backing and Wahhabi networks led Isis to be a hegemonic in a third of the original Iraq and to guarantee operational autonomy in an equivalent area in Syria.
It was from a Wahabite schism that the ISIS was born, which today gathers proselytes also in Europe. In the 50 years an Egyptian, Sayyed Qutb (1906-1966), a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, had theorized on the front of political Salafism the armed struggle to take power over Arab leaders and restore an Islamic state. Qutb was the ideological referent of many terrorist movements and so is Isis. In his writings he maintained that the real problem of the modern world is caused by Christianity and the only way to heal the anguish created by what he considers an ancient error of "followers of Christ" is martyrdom.
But what is it that generates terrorist anger?
In Qutb's vision the culprits of all this are not only Christians in their great error, but also the Jews, whom he sees as ungrateful to God, unscrupulous, arrogant when in power. Zionism is part of the eternal Jewish campaign to destroy Islam. But even more dangerous than the Jews are the Muslims who go hand in hand with the Christian error, those who inflicted Christian "schizophrenia" on the Islamic world, such as the Turkey of Kamal Ataturk. Still for Qutb in the fourth century after Christ, the emperor Constantine converted and so the whole Roman Empire became Christianized. But it was a conversion - says Qutb - made with an opportunistic pagan spirit, dominated by scenes of lust, half-naked girls, gems and precious metals. Christianity, having abandoned the Mosaic code, could not defend itself or be morally defended. And therefore the Christians, horrified by the uses and customs of the Romans, defended themselves from the imperial swoon with the cult of monastic asceticism, losing contact with the physical world.
Among the Europeans who joined the ISIS there are solitary travelers not involved in political propaganda or even in religious preaching. The way to socialize is web chats, jihadist forums. People who are part of the social fabric that dress and behave like Westerners, who do not regularly present themselves for Friday prayers and do not publicly engage in political or religious discussions. The process that gives him the status of shahid (suicidal martyr) passes through frustration and the growing unease about the quality of life they live. They are manipulated through viral contents that provoke excitement in the aspiring warriors of Isis. The selection instead takes place between two specific recruitment areas: the West and the Middle East. Each terrorist circuit has specific and separate channels of recruitment and training, even if the operating methods are similar.
Isis also uses the web to finance itself. Donations from the Arab-Muslim world and sympathizers living in Europe and the West flow from the network. Many donors from Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia raise funds for extremist groups in Syria, starting with Isis and al-Nusra. Finally, fictitious and complicit providers: in order to avoid the sudden closure of a site (with consequent unavailability of files), the organizations have begun to set up fictitious or willing providers. An example that has been discussed for some time concerns the provider Everyone's Internet Inc., owner of the domain www.hostinganime.com. Before the communication of terror on the network came through analog video with rocks in the background today travels fast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. A strategy that moves ahead with the video of the beheadings posted everywhere even before the military intervention in the field.
Roberto Colella
