This information will come as no surprise to long-time LGF readers, but the Associated Press is beginning to notice that Islamofascist groups use the internet and other Western technologies in a parasitical fashion, to amplify the effects of their atrocities: Extremists Using Web to Spread Terror.

The real surprise is how the word “terror” got into an AP headline sans scare quotes.

Militants can put images on the Internet most TV news producers would consider too shocking to televise. The Internet, though, also can be subject to censorship.

Postings signed by the Saudi branch of al-Qaida — everything from claims of responsibility for attacks in the kingdom to training and diet menus for a fit fighter — started popping up on a sub-domain of a Qatar-based Web-hosting company run by Murad Alazzeh.

Alazzeh told The Associated Press he shut down one of his two servers after his site was repeatedly hacked. He said he has cut subscribers from 48,000 to 4,000.

The Web savvy, though, have ways around the gatekeepers.

The Malaysian company that hosted the site on which the Berg beheading video was first posted shut it down days later, but surfers combing Islamic forums could find it elsewhere.

Contributors on forums or chat rooms alert one another to the latest postings. Links are sometimes written in a kind of code, with letters or numerals missing from addresses. The initiated or the patient can figure out what’s missing by perusing the rest of the posting.

Experts say Islamic groups were among the first in the Arab world to realize the importance of staying connected. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood uses dozens of Web sites to post literature banned by the government. Lebanon’s Hezbollah is known for the sophistication of the propaganda on its Web site.

Until the site was taken over by an American hacker, one site appeared to be the place where al-Qaida reported on developments in fighting in Afghanistan, and, some law enforcement officials believe, posted low-priority information for its to fighters. Some top al-Qaida operatives were trained as cyber specialists.

The mushrooming of the sites and forums is an indication of the growing number of people who sympathize with militants who argue Islam is under attack in by the West, said Rashwan.

Young, educated, unemployed people can spend hours managing or contributing to such sites from their own homes, rather than traveling to Iraq or Afghanistan to do battle. Their targets are people like them in the developing world — educated and disenfranchised — and Westerners.

“They have no other part in holy war. Electronic holy war is their contribution,” said Rashwan, whose book “Electronic Jihad” is to be published soon in Arabic and was to be translated into English soon.