View source for Global Islamic Media Front

'''Global Islamic Media Front''' is allegedly an organisation that relays news from the point of view of Al Qaeda under the title [[Voice of the Caliphate]]. <ref>see, for example, Steve Coll and Susan B. Glasser, '[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/05/AR2005080501138.html Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations]', ''Washington Post'', 7 August 2005; Shaun Waterman, 'Cyber-jihadis use of encryption', ''UPI'', 30 January 2007; [[Steve Stalinsky]] (of [[MEMRI]]), 'Qaeda's Successful Recruiting Efforts', ''The New York Sun'', 19 January 2007</ref> At best this service does not live up to the reports about it.

The first reference to it appears in a ''Washington Post'' article from August 7, 2005 <ref>Steve Coll and Susan B. Glasser, '[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/05/AR2005080501138.html Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations]', ''Washington Post'', 7 August 2005</ref> where [[Rebecca Givner-Forbes]] from the [[Terrorism Research Center]] makes a reference to it. Other propagators of the story are two Israeli connected websites the [[Search for International Terrorist Entities]] and the [[Middle East Media Research Institute]]. French terrorologist [[Jean-Pierre Filiu]] claims the organization has been around since 2003. Many references to it come from a Zionist weblog, [[The Jawa Report]]. <ref> Via Lexis Nexis</ref> 

In 2007 various media outlets in the UK received messages of a new terrorist initiative: an alleged organization by the name of the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) had just launched a new online channel, the Voice of the Caliphate  According to Idrees Ahmad 

:The message was forwarded by someone at the BBC to my PhD supervisor and media analyst, David Miller, who decided to have a look. The website seemed to have been put together in a hurry, and had nothing except a screen shot of a purported broadcast. It had a link to a video, except when he tried to download, it said the site had exceeded its 16 downloads limit.'<ref>The Fanonite (blog), '[http://fanonite.org/2007/07/13/cyber-jihad-the-phantom-menace Cyber Jihad: The Phantom Menace]', 13 July 2007</ref>

==Organizations and People Who Have Made Reference to GIMF==
*[[iDefense]] | [[Globalsecurity.org]]<ref>GlobalSecurity.org [http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/global_islamic_media_front.htm Global Islamic Media Front], accessed 18 March 2009</ref> | [[Terrorism Research Center]] | [[Search for International Terrorist Entities]] | [[Middle East Media Research Institute]] | [[Jean-Pierre Filiu]] | [[Guido Steinberg]] - terrorism analyst at the [[Berlin Foundation of Science and Politics]]

==External Resources==
The Fanonite (blog), '[http://fanonite.org/2007/07/13/cyber-jihad-the-phantom-menace Cyber Jihad: The Phantom Menace]', 13 July 2007

==Notes==
<references/>
[[Category:Middle East Watch]][[Category:Terrorism Spin]]