Reports say the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has launched an Android app that from the outside looks harmless by teaching children the basics of the Arabic language, but in reality is much more nefarious, Newsweek reported Wednesday.
The ISIS Office of Zeal, one of the group’s many propaganda arms, released the app on the group’s Telegram channels and on file-sharing websites, according to a report on the conflict analysis website Long War Journal (LWJ).
The app, with the nondescript name Huroof, or alphabet, is targeted at children and helps them to learn the Arabic alphabet, but focuses on words such as “gun,” “bullet,” and “rocket.”
The app also plays a nasheed, Arabic for an a cappella battle chant with a goal of teaching children to memorize the alphabet, despite displaying brightly colored images and designed with flowers and balloons to entice young audiences.
The nasheed is “littered with jihadist terminology” and other games “include militaristic vocabulary,” LWJ’s Caleb Weiss reported.
The release of the app on encrypted platforms Tuesday said it “teaches the cubs the alphabet letters,” using the group’s phrase for child recruits, the report said.
According to the jihadi monitoring site Vocativ, the app cannot be downloaded in the Google Store but only using AKP files that are being shared among the group’s supporters.
ISIS has previously released apps, such as its “jihadist news feed” in November 2015, and a radio app in February that broadcasts the group’s propaganda.
The group has frequently used child recruits in its propaganda videos, showing them in training camps engaging in combat exercises or in execution videos purporting to shoot “spies” or press the detonator on a car bomb, the report said.
The group has also released footage of one of its orphanages in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which the group overran in June 2014, where children are seen eating, drinking and playing like normal children before getting changed into combat fatigues and being led through a military-style exercise regime.
The ISIS Office of Zeal, one of the group’s many propaganda arms, released the app on the group’s Telegram channels and on file-sharing websites, according to a report on the conflict analysis website Long War Journal (LWJ).
The app, with the nondescript name Huroof, or alphabet, is targeted at children and helps them to learn the Arabic alphabet, but focuses on words such as “gun,” “bullet,” and “rocket.”
The app also plays a nasheed, Arabic for an a cappella battle chant with a goal of teaching children to memorize the alphabet, despite displaying brightly colored images and designed with flowers and balloons to entice young audiences.
The nasheed is “littered with jihadist terminology” and other games “include militaristic vocabulary,” LWJ’s Caleb Weiss reported.
The release of the app on encrypted platforms Tuesday said it “teaches the cubs the alphabet letters,” using the group’s phrase for child recruits, the report said.
According to the jihadi monitoring site Vocativ, the app cannot be downloaded in the Google Store but only using AKP files that are being shared among the group’s supporters.
ISIS has previously released apps, such as its “jihadist news feed” in November 2015, and a radio app in February that broadcasts the group’s propaganda.
The group has frequently used child recruits in its propaganda videos, showing them in training camps engaging in combat exercises or in execution videos purporting to shoot “spies” or press the detonator on a car bomb, the report said.
The group has also released footage of one of its orphanages in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which the group overran in June 2014, where children are seen eating, drinking and playing like normal children before getting changed into combat fatigues and being led through a military-style exercise regime.
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