Anti-Jihad Bloggers Get Some Well-Earned Respect

It’s good to see some bloggers getting props, instead of the usual disrespect.

The Jawa Report is being credited by mainstream media, like ABC News, (“Internet Posse Tracked 'Jihad Jane' for Three Years”) and the New York Times, (“Views of ‘JihadJane’ Were Unknown to Neighbors”), for having tracked Colleen “Jihad Jane” LaRose for years. Even NPR noted Thursday, with a slight nose of sour grapes, “that “[their] role is getting lots of attention in other media today.” I think “other media” refers to anyone who’s not with public radio.

ABC News wrote:

Groups like JawaReport, Quoth the Raven and the YouTube Smackdown Corps claim they had been monitoring LaRose's growing militancy for three years, and watched as the Internet -- particularly YouTube -- fed her fervor

As reported at Jawa, it was one of their anonymous correspondents who reported Jihad Jane to the Philadelphia FBI in July 2009.

Jawa’s founder writes under the name “Rusty Shackleford,” borrowed from “King of the Hill's” conspiracy-savvy character, Dale Gribble, who used the Shackleford alias whenever he needed to go under cover. Dale was always clueless, but Jawa’s Shackleford is solid. Jawa's been on our blogroll for years.

He tells ABC he’s “a libertarian college professor who created the blog JawaReport in 2004 after he was enraged that Iraqi Islamists had beheaded an American named Nick Berg.”

"It was my way of venting. But mostly it was about countering violent Islamist propaganda, specifically the videos that were being produced by al Qaeda in Iraq and other Salaafist jihadists fighting our troops," he said.

Shackleford said his goal from the beginning was combating violent Islamist material and support on the Web.

"I'm a blogger, but also an activist against violent Islamism.”

And we’re glad of it. Way to go, guys.