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By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Madeleine Blackman
In January, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Madeleine Blackman published an article in the peer-reviewed journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism entitled “Fluidity of the Fringes.” The authors argued for the recognition of a distinct individual-level pathway for radicalization to violent extremism, “fringe fluidity,” that involves a person transitioning from adherence to one set of extremist beliefs to another. They contended that the validity of this theory can be seen in an observable pathway between neo-Nazism and militant Islamism. Gartenstein-Ross and Blackman have adapted their article for Jihadology’s readers.
This article argues for recognition of fringe fluidity as a distinct radicalization pathway in the terrorism studies literature. Most studies about individual-level radicalization examine how relatively normal people come to accept, and act in service of, extremist beliefs that counsel violence. As one prominent study said, most individuals it examined were unremarkable before they became terrorists, in that “they had ‘unremarkable’ jobs, had lived ‘unremarkable’ lives and had little, if any criminal history.” But some individuals who come to accept and act in service of a violent extremist ideology do not begin their journey as unremarkable. In some cases, individuals transition from adherence to one form of violent extremism to another—and understanding their prior extremist involvement is essential. This phenomenon can be observed frequently enough that fringe fluidity should be understood as an independent radicalization pathway.
This article demonstrates the existence of fringe fluidity by detailing the pathway between neo-Nazism and militant Islamism. In recent years, over half a dozen case studies are readily identifiable in open-source literature of individuals who either made the transition from neo-Nazi beliefs to militant Islamism, or worked to advance both causes simultaneously. As this article shows, these individuals’ trajectories cannot be fully understood without an appreciation of the totality of their extremist involvement.
It may seem counterintuitive or surprising that there would be a pathway between these two ideologies. After all, Islamist militants tend to view infidels writ large as adversaries, while committed Nazis view many Muslims as racially suspect. Indeed, today members of the European far right generally view Muslims as their top enemy. Yet there is a clear pipeline between the two—not necessarily a pipeline with an enormous quantitative output, but one that exists nonetheless. This pipeline has some ideological basis, including the fact that both ideologies share a common set of enemies in the Jewish people and the West (as currently constructed) more broadly. Further, the pipeline has some historical precedent.
To concretize what we mean by fringe fluidity, it is not just a process of inter-cultural borrowing and sharing of animosities that facilitate a congruence of extremist perspectives between neo-Nazi and extremist Islamist elements. Rather, fringe fluidity should be regarded as its own individual-level pathway into Islamist militancy. (We emphasize Islamist militancy as the end point because, as our case studies show, this is the direction in which fringe fluidity typically flows for these two ideologies: Rather than Islamist militants developing an interest in neo-Nazism, people with neo-Nazi sympathies far more frequently come to embrace militant Islamism.) The scholarly literature has elucidated such individual-level pathways by which Islamist militants are radicalized as personal grievance, social networks, ideology, and status-seeking. Similarly, there is an identifiable individual-level pathway by which individuals who have already embraced the belief system of neo-Nazism become acculturated into militant Islamism.
Though this article focuses on neo-Nazism and militant Islamism, we believe fringe fluidity is likely more widely applicable. Various extremist causes can likely serve as starting points for an individual’s movement into other forms of extremism. We hope that future research will test whether fringe fluidity is in fact more widely applicable. It is not clear that all three of the factors enumerated above—recent cases of convergence, some ideological overlap, and historical precedent—are necessary for fluidity to exist between two fringe ideologies. Future research can examine which factors are necessary for fluidity between two extremist ideologies, but the relationship between neo-Nazism and militant Islamism is sufficient to illuminate the existence of this radicalization pathway.
This article makes two contributions to the radicalization literature. First, it explicates a new individual-level pathway. Previous scholarship has outlined the convergence of some elements of militant Islam and the extreme right based on a sense of shared enemies, but without exploring how there might be a radicalization pathway between the two. Other academic work has viewed militant Islam and the extreme right as phenomena harboring significant mutual animosity, with little overlap, but that produce “reciprocal radicalization” in the course of their competition. Thus, there have been valuable scholarly explorations of neo-Nazism and militant Islam, but this radicalization pathway has not been identified in the scholarly literature. Second, the article raises—though does not answer—the question of whether individuals who have radicalized through fringe fluidity pose a greater danger of violence than do other extremists. People who have come to embrace more than one extremist ideology may have greater impulsiveness, or a lower threshold for action.
Our article first turns to the relevant literature on radicalization. It then examines the three factors that in our opinion demonstrate the pathway between neo-Nazism and militant Islam. We begin by explaining the ideological factors that, in the view of people who made the journey between the two extremist currents, bind them together. The article then delves into the history connecting these outlooks, before turning to contemporary case studies. The article concludes by discussing the utility of recognizing fringe fluidity, and proposing a future research agenda related to the concept.
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There is no consensus definition of radicalization, nor is there a consensus model describing how it occurs. This section describes the conceptual frameworks that scholars have advanced, and argues that fringe fluidity has explanatory power regardless of which conception of radicalization a scholar adopts.
The lack of a consensus definition of radicalization is unsurprising, and does not call into question the concept’s validity. There is similarly no consensus definition of terrorism, nor is there a consensus definition of such critical and universally recognized concepts as war, civil war, or insurgency. As Peter Neumann has noted, most definitions of radicalization can be distinguished through their emphasis on either the progression to extremist views, or else to extremist behaviors. Fringe fluidity is relevant to the adoption of both extremist views and behaviors.
The fundamental insight of fringe fluidity is that prior extremist involvement provides a pathway by which an individual may come to engage in a new violent extremist ideology cognitively or behaviorally, at least if sufficient points of convergence exist between the prior and more newly-adopted form of extremism. These points of convergence—such as the ideological overlap and shared history that can be found in the case of neo-Nazism and militant Islamism—may allow an individual to transition between even two seemingly discordant movements. With respect to radical beliefs, an individual who has already embraced some form of extremism may find it easier to accept another extremist outlook that is also deeply counter-normative.
Mohammed Hafez and Creighton Mullins have made the important observation that, despite sometimes heated debates in the field of radicalization studies, there is “some consensus on the key variables that produce radicalization and violent extremism.” They highlight grievances, networks, ideologies, and enabling environments and support structures as variables about which there is agreement. But Hafez and Mullins note that despite this agreement on variables that may drive extremism, the field is far from a consensus on the models tracing an individual’s transformation. In many ways, radicalization models can be seen as metaphors for how the adoption of violent extremist views or behaviors comes about.
One influential metaphor has been that of a process. Some scholarship has criticized this conception for being overly singular in its focus, and for overemphasizing the role of ideology. Thus, subsequent scholarship has tended to reject the process metaphor, instead describing variegated pathways to terrorist violence. Reviewing key work that takes this perspective, Stefan Malthaner explains that it rejects the idea that radicalization is the culmination of “linear development,” and instead sees the phenomenon “as part of an ‘activist career’, understood as ‘a long-lasting social activity articulated by phases of joining, commitment, and defection.’” Other academic work counsels against the use of processes or pathways as metaphors. Hafez and Mullins argue for the use of puzzle as a metaphor because there is no “orderly sequence of steps or procedures that produce an output.” They maintain that this metaphor best expresses the “multifactor and contextual approach” that is required to understand radicalization.
In this article, we are agnostic about the best overarching model for conceptualizing radicalization, though we utilize the language of pathways a few times because fringe fluidity possesses certain unique characteristics that can be understood as distinct from radicalization rooted primarily in, say, ideology or discrete social networks. It is clear that debates over which radicalization model is most powerful will continue for years. The concept of fringe fluidity should have explanatory power regardless of which model scholars or analysts employ.
The Role of Hate Speech. Hate speech also has explanatory power for the study of radicalization regardless of which model scholars employ. As this section shows, hate speech is a formidable mechanism for extremist groups to identify and define key out-groups. We highlight the role that hate speech plays because one of the most obvious connections between neo-Nazism and militant Islamism is that both view the Jewish people as an arch-enemy—and individuals who have exhibited fringe fluidity have fingered Jew-hatred as critical to their transition from one extremist outlook to the other.
Hate speech can magnify grievances and help mobilize an audience to violence. Hateful messaging can thus aid the indoctrination of extremist groups’ potential recruits. Hateful rhetoric can break down psychological barriers to violence, while repeated exposure to and engagement in hateful rhetoric accelerates the process of dehumanizing one’s foes, and thus morally disengaging from physical harm inflicted upon them.
Experts generally agree that individuals derive a certain level of self-concept from group membership. One’s identification with a social group provides a set of norms and behaviors to adhere to, as well as a sense of pride and self-esteem. By positively differentiating our in-group from another out-group, we can bolster our individual sense of positive distinctiveness. But there are also pitfalls to this kind of social categorization, particularly when extreme priority is given to group identification, and when out-groups are vilified. One set of dangers relates to discrimination based on group identity. Even more dangerous, the cognitive prioritization of the group can depress an individual’s “psychological threshold” for carrying out acts of violence. If a group portrays violent or alienating behavior as compulsory and vindicated, then an individual belonging to that group is more likely to adopt this mentality, and engage in such acts.
Hateful rhetoric strengthens the salience of collective identity and can condition individuals to perceive members of an out-group in a highly pejorative manner. Such messaging exaggerates the differences between in-group members and out-group members. Hateful messages targeting an out-group often feature accusations and alarming statements depicting the out-group as an existential threat to the in-group. Such assertions heighten in-group members’ “lack of empathy and increased animus to out-groups.”
Hate speech can also function as a mechanism for dehumanization, which social psychologists and historians have connected to violence. Alexandra Roginsky and Alexander Tsesis note that hate speech employs “dehumanizing images to justify exclusion, discrimination, and, in genocidal cases, elimination of identifiable groups.” Put simply, exposure to the dehumanizing rhetoric and beliefs that characterize hate speech can reduce psychological impediments to violence by encouraging emotional and cognitive detachment between the actor and target. “To perceive another as human activates empathetic reactions through perceived similarity,” writes Stanford University psychologist Albert Bandura. But, notes Bandura, once a target is dehumanized, it is no longer seen as possessing “feelings, hopes and concerns”—which are characteristic of other human beings—but rather is viewed as a “sub-human” object. Adam Lankford explains that “if your enemies are not regarded in human terms, it is much easier to exterminate them.”
Dehumanization is only one aspect of the psychological disengagement process that can enable militant violence. Bandura explains that normal individuals can be transformed into killers when the “moral value of killing” is restructured, and self-restraint is removed. Hate speech and extremist ideology often mutually reinforce one another. Hateful rhetoric can advance an extremist ideology by articulating group grievances and facilitating a process of moral restructuring. In turn, writes Bandura, the persuasiveness of hateful messages is stronger when paired with “religious principles, righteous ideologies, and nationalistic imperatives.” Hateful rhetoric and extremist ideologies can thus create a cyclical process wherein ideology prescribes a moral framework, while hate speech allows individuals to tune out voices opposed to their growing extremism, and lowers their moral disinclination to carry out or support violence.
As previously explained, three factors—ideological overlap, historical precedent, and recent cases—clarify the fringe fluidity pathway between neo-Nazism and militant Islamism. Now that this article has situated fringe fluidity within theories of radicalization, we explore the three factors that lead us to conclude that this pathway exists. We first outline the ideological commonalities between these two extremist strains.
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Several ideological commonalities exist between neo-Nazism and militant Islamism. Both offer similar cognitive frameworks, as they are totalitarian movements that propose rigid, far-reaching, and all-consuming worldviews that divide the world unambiguously into “good” and “evil.” Both movements have revolutionary aspirations, seeking to replace the existing order with new states “built around racial or religious exclusivity.” Michaela Glaser, who works on preventing violent extremism for the German Youth Institute, sees these ideological similarities as critical to the phenomenon that we dub fringe fluidity in this article. Commenting on Sascha Lemanski, a former neo-Nazi who became an ISIS-supporting jihadist (who is discussed later in this article), Glaser noted that “extremist ideologies offer people … a clear distinction between good and evil and a sense that its adherents belong to a special, chosen group.”
Perhaps most significantly, both ideologies have clearly defined in-groups and out-groups. The Jewish people are a key out-group for both ideologies, with neo-Nazi and militant Islamist spokesmen arguing that the American government is controlled by a shadowy Jewish elite. Indeed, a shared enmity toward Jewish people frequently lies at the center of cases of Nazi-jihadist fluidity.
Jewish People as a Key Out-Group. Both Nazis and militant Islamists hold the Jewish people responsible for a disproportionate amount of humankind’s misfortunes. This perspective is articulated in copious speeches, statements and writings of militant Islamist and Nazi leaders. While this section highlights the views of Sayyid Qutb and Adolf Hitler in particular, this shared perception of the Jewish people as an enemy is unambiguous in both movements, expressed by individuals who range from the top echelons of leadership to the foot soldier level.
In his infamous essay “Our Struggle with the Jews,” Sayyid Qutb—a key ideological forebear of today’s militant Islamists—wrote: “Everywhere the Jews have been they have committed unprecedented abominations. From such creatures who kill, massacre and defame prophets one can only expect the spilling of human blood and dirty means which would further their machinations and evil.” Hitler’s sentiments were, of course, similar: Anti-Semitism was a bedrock ideology of the Nazi movement. Like Qutb’s accusation that the Jews commit “unprecedented abominations,” Hitler asked in his autobiography Mein Kampf: “Was there any excrement, any shamelessness in any form, above all in cultural life, in which at least one Jew would not have been involved?” To Hitler, the Jews are universal villains, their mere existence menacing and malign. He compared the Jewish people to “maggots” in a “decaying body.”
Both Qutb and Hitler not only blamed and vilified the Jewish people, but dehumanized them. As we have explained, the dehumanization of an out-group is common among extremist movements, particularly those that seek to incite violence against, or cause the extermination of, a group. In the Nazi and militant Islamist movements, the dehumanization of Jews occurs through degradation and demonization.
Degradation includes the reduction of the Jewish people to vermin, such as Qutb and Hitler’s portrayal of Jewish people as murderous “creatures,” loathsome “maggots.” The cognitive distance that both movements create between in-group members and Jews increases the acceptability of violence. According to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Jewish people were “unconditionally exterminable,” a depiction he advanced in the Nazi party’s propaganda. As scholar David Livingstone Smith explained, “all that Goebbels could see were vermin: carriers of the Jewish disease—a disease that would engulf the world unless it was obliterated.” In one diary entry, Goebbels wrote that Jews “are no longer human beings, but animals. It is, therefore, also no humanitarian task, but a task for the surgeon. One has got to cut here, and that most radically. Or Europe will vanish one day due to the Jewish disease.” The depiction of Jewish people as the personification of malice and grime persists today among adherents to both neo-Nazi and militant Islamist ideologies.
A second form of dehumanization exhibited by both groups is demonization. David Patterson notes that both movements see “the Jew” as someone who “not only commits evil but embodies the essence of evil and is therefore beyond remission.” In Mein Kampf, for example, Hitler wrote that “no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.” Similarly, Qutb wrote that Jews represent the “blackest devil and source of the worst anti-Islamic machinations.” Jewish people, both movements contend, are not only responsible for spreading corruption and evil, but are intrinsically wicked and immoral by virtue of their ethnicity.
This combination of demonization and degradation fuels the “exterminationist anti-Semitism” that exists within both ideologies. While comparing a particular ethnic group to disgusting, lowly creatures undoubtedly facilitates the process of moral disengagement necessary for violence, declaring them to actually be an altogether different species provides the justification for extermination. As Elana Gomel has explained, no license to exterminate a people comes from saying they are like bacteria. But “if the Jews are really parasites, a different biological species, masquerading as humans but in fact, dangerous, alien and strange, killing them becomes as morally neutral as cleansing a house from bugs.”
Hatred of Jews is further fueled by both movements’ belief in a “Zionist conspiracy,” the idea that Jewish people are secretly plotting to manipulate or control the world. Contemporary conceptions of this purported conspiracy are often rooted in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery birthed in czarist Russia that claimed to be a “record of secret meetings of Jewish leaders.” Though the Protocols were exposed as a fraud in the 1920s, the document became a key facet of Nazi propaganda. The Nazi party published at least twenty-three editions of the Protocols between 1933 and the onset of the Second World War. In “Our Struggle with the Jews,” Sayyid Qutb referenced the Protocols multiple times. Qutb further articulated his belief in a “Jewish master plan” in Milestones, declaring that the Jewish people intend to “eliminate all limitations, especially the limitations imposed by faith and religion, so that [they] may penetrate into the body politic of the whole world and then may be free to perpetuate their evil designs.”
Anti-Semitism and the scapegoating of Jewish people plays an important role in the ability of some individuals to move seamlessly from neo-Nazism to the militant Islamist movement. The “Jewish question” looms large for both ideologies, and for some individuals, scapegoating of “the Jew” is more powerful than the movements’ differences. In addition, the fluidity between neo-Nazism and militant Islamism has historical precedent, which our next section explores.
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In the view of contemporary figures who have attempted to reconcile militant Islamist beliefs with support for neo-Nazism, the historical convergence between Nazism and militant Islamism is best exemplified by Haj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini. The former grand mufti of Jerusalem, Husseini is notorious for his collaboration with Hitler’s Nazi regime. Husseini was both anti-Semitic and anti-British, a combination that aligned closely with Hitler’s interests.
Though Husseini began cultivating ties to the Nazi movement as early as 1933, a publicly acknowledged reciprocal, cooperative relationship did not form until 1937, when the British Royal Commission published the Peel Report recommending that Palestine be divided into separate Jewish and Arab states. Following the Peel Report’s publication, Husseini publicly voiced his support for the Third Reich, and requested that the Nazis assist his fight against the Jews. Fearing that Jewish statehood might strengthen “international Jewry,” Nazi Germany began to see the Arabs as “assets” for their cause, and to view Husseini as a potential strategic partner. Nazi Germany began supplying Palestinian Arabs with weapons to combat the anticipated Jewish state, while the Palestinian press promoted Nazism and European anti-Semitic propaganda. Toward the end of 1937, Husseini was forced to flee Palestine to avoid arrest for inciting a rebellion against the British Mandate.
By 1939, Husseini operated out of Baghdad. He collaborated with Rashid Ali al-Gaylani to orchestrate a Nazi-backed coup. When the British stopped the coup, Husseini was forced to flee once again. In November 1941, he settled in Berlin, and almost immediately obtained an audience with Hitler, where Husseini pledged his support for the Third Reich.
In the years that followed, Husseini played a relatively important role for the Nazis. He made pro-Axis radio broadcasts designed for the Arab world, and helped to organize the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar, a volunteer force in the former Yugoslavia composed predominantly of Bosnian Muslims. Husseini authored a treatise, Islam und Judentum (“Islam and Judaism”), to promote these units’ dedication to the Nazi cause. The treatise was composed of a series of crude caricatures of the Jewish people that together formed an argument for eliminationist anti-Semitism.
Following Nazi Germany’s defeat in the Second World War, Hitler’s erstwhile officers fled in an effort to avoid accountability for the Nazi regime’s atrocities. Egypt emerged as a particularly important safe haven. Among other notables, Haj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini fled there in June 1946, and Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1952 coup created further opportunity for Nazis to embed themselves in the new government.
Johann von Leers, who had been a high-ranking assistant to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, produced material for Nasser attacking the United States and Israel. Von Leers even converted to Islam, adopting the name Oman Amin von Leers. Corresponding with a fellow fascist, von Leers opined that “if my nation had got Islam instead of Christianity we should not have had all the traitors we had in World War II.” Martin Lee notes that several other Nazi propagandists followed von Leers’s lead in relocating to Egypt and adopting Arabic names, including Hans Appler and Louis Heiden. Nazi commando Otto Skorzeny, whom the Allies once described as “the most dangerous man in Europe,” became a key military advisor to Nasser. In 1953-54, Skorzeny planned the first wave of terrorist attacks into Israel and the Gaza Strip carried out by newly-trained Palestinian guerillas.
Some of these historical connections are not between Nazism and jihadism, but rather between Nazi figures and Arab nationalists. Nonetheless, this historical precedent has proven important for contemporary neo-Nazis who have made the transition to immersion in the jihadist movement. The fact that prominent Third Reich figures cooperated with Arab regimes and militants can help neo-Nazis overcome reservations they may have about the possible ethnic impurity of their new allies. Indeed, the next part of this article shows that the figures discussed in this section were explicitly referenced by militants who saw neo-Nazism and militant Islamism as reconcilable.
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This article has explained how fringe fluidity can serve as an independent radicalization pathway; and it has explained how individuals who exemplify the phenomenon see the ideological synergy and historical connection between some aspects of neo-Nazism and militant Islamism as proof of their compatibility. This section now goes beyond the broad case for fringe fluidity and turns to case studies that demonstrate its existence.
This section examines eight people who illustrate fringe fluidity between neo-Nazism and militant Islamism: David Myatt, Steven Smyrek, Emerson Begolly, Ahmed Huber, Sascha Lemanski, Thomas Usztics, Diego José Frías Álvarez, and Nicholas Young.
David Myatt. One the most famous examples of fringe fluidity is David Myatt, a founder of the British National Socialist Movement. Myatt converted to Islam in 1998.
According to George Michael, Myatt “has arguably done more than any other theorist to develop a synthesis of the extreme right and Islam.” Prior to his religious conversion, Myatt authored a handbook entitled A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution, and served as the ideological leader of the British neo-Nazi gang Combat 18. In an online article titled “From Neo-Nazi to Muslim,” Myatt acknowledged the apparent irony of his conversion. He wrote: “These were the people who I had been fighting on the streets, I had swore [sic] at and had used violence against—indeed, one of my terms of imprisonment was a result of me leading a gang of skinheads in a fight against ‘Pakis’.” But Myatt eventually lost hope in the far right’s ability to combat Zionism and the West. He explained that he now believed there would never be a successful uprising “in any Western nation, by nationalists, racial nationalists, or National Socialists—because these people lack the desire, the motivation, the ethos, to do this and because they do not have the support of even a large minority of their own folk.”
This disillusion contributed to Myatt’s turn to Islam, after which he assumed the name Abdul Aziz ibn Myatt. Myatt adopted a militant interpretation of the faith, and drew a straight-line connection between his fight against the Jewish people as a neo-Nazi and as a Muslim. Much of Myatt’s public writing during his time as a Muslim focused on encouraging enemies of the Jewish people to unite under a single banner. He exhorted “all enemies of the Zionists to embrace the Jihad,” referred to Islam as the “true martial religion,” and claimed that it “will most effectively fight against the Jews and the Americans.” Myatt praised Osama bin Laden, describing the al-Qaeda leader as “an exemplary warrior who has forsaken a life of luxury to pursue his Islamic duty.”
A careful review of Myatt’s writings reveals how his hatred for Jewish people and enmity toward the “so-called New World Order” superseded the discordant elements of militant Islamist and Nazi ideology. After interviewing Myatt, George Michael described the thrust of his argument as holding that “the primary battle against the Zionist occupation government (ZOG) has shifted from the West to the Islamic world.” Indeed, Myatt perceived a synthesis between the two movements’ goals, believing that the fight between militant Islam and the West “makes the extreme right’s goals more easily obtainable.” Consequently, in an April 2003 interview with Michael, Myatt deemed an alliance between militant Islamists and neo-Nazis to be not only “possible,” but “indeed necessary.”
Myatt eventually came to reject both Islam and extremism in favor of a new philosophical outlook that he dubbed the Way of Pathei-Mathos. Despite this later conversion, Myatt provides an example of how one’s commitment to anti-Semitism can bridge the ideological divide between Nazism and jihadism.
Emerson Begolly is a Nazi sympathizer turned jihadist who hails from Pennsylvania. He had been involved in neo-Nazism at a young age, as Begolly’s father introduced him to Nazi beliefs, and dressed him as a Nazi. Begolly even posted photos on his MySpace page depicting him dressed as a Nazi while he was a teenager.
Begolly later converted to Islam and became an active member of several jihadist forums. Similar to Myatt, for Begolly anti-Semitism served as a tie binding his two distinct involvements with extremism. He established a reputation for particularly harsh anti-Semitic posts, even relative to the extremist forums in which he participated. In one post in which he referenced Hitler’s Final Solution, Begolly wrote: “The only the good about that all the jews weren’t gassed that that insha’Allah someday we will get a chance to kill jews ourselves.” Begolly was also known for collecting, distributing, and producing his own nasheeds, Islamic works of acapella music. Many Islamist militants produce nasheeds because they believe musical instruments are religiously proscribed, thus making acapella one of the few permissible forms of music. Begolly composed an original nasheed titled “When the Jew’s Blood Reds My Knife, Then My Life is Free from Strife”:
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