The Rise & Fall Of CaliphateBook

by JASmius



The clash of civilizations rages on in cyberspace - or does it?:

Following bans of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) accounts on Facebook and Twitter, a new site called ‘Caliphate Book’ appeared on Sunday night. It had disappeared by Monday, leaving doubts as to whether it was a genuine IS project or merely a PR stunt.

Named ‘Khelafabook’ (5elafabook), after the transliterated Arab word for ‘Caliphate’, the page was reportedly created as an alternative for supporters of the IS, a group claiming parts of Iraq and Syria as an Islamic Caliphate.

The site was registered and hosted by the U.S. internet provider GoDaddy, to the name of ‘Abu Musab’, who listed his home country as Egypt, but said he lived in “Mosul, The Islamic State,” reported the Independent.

Mosul is a city in northern Iraq currently under IS control. ‘Abu Musab’ means ‘father of Musab’ in Arabic, possibly referring to the former leader of Islamic militants in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, killed by a US airstrike in 2006.

Not long after it was set up, however, the site went offline, with the hacker collective Anonymous claiming credit.

You remember our friends from Anonymous.....



They made quite a to-do about declaring a cyberwar against ISIS a month ago, including taking out their Twitter and Facebook accounts.  Could "CaliphateBook" have been the "CyberCaliphate"'s attempt to get around Anonymous's cyberblockade?

Nah, probably not:

The fact that the page was set up on a shared hosting site, not built for massive traffic or security, has prompted speculation that ‘5elafabook’ may have been just a publicity stunt, rather than an actual Islamic State social network project.

That's one convincing reason.  The other is that Islamic Fundamentalists, not unlike the Borg Collective, do not create, but only destroy.  They seek to conquer "Dar al-Harb," not to segregate themselves from it.  They would not try to set up their own version of social media; they want to take over ours or destroy it if they cannot.  And they certainly wouldn't be so gullible as to set themselves up to be so effortlessly humiliated by Anonymous.

Frankly, ISIS has better things to do, from their demonic point of view....