Security Expert: Terrorists Recruit Americans With 'Jihad Cool'

Terrorists are using rap music, toys and the promise of adventure to lure young Americans to the Middle East to train in and carry out jihad, says Brigitte Gabriel, president of ACT! for America, the nation's largest national security movement.

Jihad is defined as a holy war undertaken as a sacred duty by Muslims.

"This shows you how creative they have become. How, on the creativity side at least, [they are] appealing to the young generation,'' Gabriel told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

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"They're basically using the same tactics that we use in the United States in appealing to children, whether we are selling products or toys," she said.

Gabriel said radical Islamists use a recruiting tool known as "Jihad Cool'' that involves videos with fast-talking rappers, pro-terror dolls, and T-shirts and promises of fun and adventure to those who participate.

"We have seen this phenomenon before in the Middle East and people love it,'' she said.

"After the bombing of the World Trade Center in 2001, we saw people in the Middle East wearing these shirts of the World Trade Center in flames and people jumping out. They were wearing it proudly all across the Islamic world.

"It's another way of branding and making the jihad something very cool, very hip.''

Gabriel said terror groups have been recruiting Americans since al-Qaida first became a huge threat.

"Forty Somalis from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area as well as in the Tennessee area have been already convicted for fighting for jihad,'' she said.

She urged online providers to monitor content and keep terror-friendly material off the web.

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