Riyadh: Saudi Arabia is taking new steps to counter the messages of Daesh and other Islamist militant groups online, a senior Saudi official said on Saturday, as US President Donald Trump began a visit to the kingdom.
Mohammed Al Eisa, secretary-general of the Saudi-based Muslim World League, told reporters the kingdom will open a coordinating centre on Sunday in an inauguration ceremony attended by Trump and Saudi King Salman.
Saudi Arabia aims to take the fight beyond military action “because we know these groups can only be defeated if we defeat their ideology”, he said.
“Al Qaida did not collapse after the fall of the Taliban because its ideology still existed.” Eisa, who also directs the defence ministry’s new Ideological War Centre and has a seat on the kingdom’s Council of Senior Scholars, said Saudi Arabia had already begun initiatives to discredit and dismantle extremist websites.
The Ideological War Centre, which launched operations last month, aims to correct what it calls “misguidance” about Islam through its channels on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
The kingdom’s Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition has also established the world’s biggest digital centre to monitor Daesh and Al Qaida activities online, said Eisa.
He said the digital centre had closed thousands of militant websites.
