This sounds just crazy enough to be real: Scans of a new glossy magazine started popping up online this week. Inspire features slick graphics, high-quality production and stories like “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.” The first page also promises an editorial from Osama bin Laden himself, although due to technical issues, only three pages of the magazine are currently available.
Inspire is being published by a Yemen-based branch of al-Qaida, and it’s aimed at radicalizing an English-speaking audience. Al-Qaida has a well-established propaganda arm, but, as analyst Juan Zarate tells NPR host Guy Raz, Inspire marks its first major effort to reach out to English speakers.
Zarate is a former deputy national security adviser in the Bush administration and is currently a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He says that despite concerns about the authenticity of Inspire, he believes it genuinely does come from al-Qaida.