Introduction
On 15 February 2025, the Bengali-language Islamic State-supportive At-Tamkeen Media Foundation created a room on Element. At-Tamkeen Media is an unofficial media outlet that spreads Islamic State propaganda online, targeting the Bengali-speaking community. According to its website, Element is a messaging platform that emphasises secure communications through features such as end-to-end encryption and decentralisation. The use of highly secure platforms such as Element by extremist actors poses a challenge for content moderation and the online-offline safety nexus. This Insight will discuss At-Tamkeen’s recent expansion onto new social media platforms and explore possible avenues for countering its growing online presence. At-Tamkeen should not be confused with At-Tamkin, an Indonesian IS-supportive media outlet.
At-Tamkeen and its online presence have existed for several years. The group has posts on Facebook dating back to as early as 2022. However, beginning in February and March 2025, the group began to expand onto new social media platforms where it did not previously have a presence.
Figure 1: Examples of At-Tamkeen activity on Facebook.
The At-Tamkeen chat room has been active on the Islamic State’s Rocket.Chat server since 1 March 2025, and the group is also active on SimpleX. At the time of writing, the group’s GemSpace and Telegram accounts are suspended. According to Rocket.Chat’s Github repository, it is a free and open-source, fully customisable communications platform for organisations with high standards of data protection. Users can host Rocket.Chat on their own servers, meaning they can run and maintain the service using a private web server instead of relying on a third-party outside of the administrator’s control. This is one of the features that makes the platform highly secure. According to its App Store page and website, GemSpace is a messaging app where chats are encrypted, calls are protected, and communication spaces are private or public, as desired. SimpleX is described on its website as a messenger focused on providing complete privacy to users. Further details on SimpleX will be explored below.
Figure 2: The At-Tamkeen room on Element shares links to its profiles on other social media platforms. GNET has redacted the name of the IS Rocket.Chat server in the final line of this image.
At-Tamkeen’s Content
Since its inception, At-Tamkeen has almost exclusively posted Bengali-language translations of content from IS’s official Nashir and Amaq news agencies. The group shares the latest imagery from Nashir and Amaq, along with translated Bengali claims of responsibility for attacks. The group also releases weekly Bengali translations of the editorials and infographics of the Islamic State’s weekly magazine, al-Naba.
However, it is notable that on 22 and 24 March 2025, respectively, At-Tamkeen shared two posters that appear novel and of the group’s own creation. The posters did not say anything particularly noteworthy; one called for worship during the last ten days of Ramadan, while the other showed a dua (an act of supplication) for Laylat al-Qadr. The posters were captioned with the words Maktabatul Himmah (Library of Resolution/Strength/Ability), and further, were not translations of official IS content. Both posters had been branded with the Maktabatul Himmah branding – a circle containing the words Maktabatul Himmah in Arabic. A user on Facebook used a hashtag including this phrase when spreading translated official IS content.
Figure 3: A User on Facebook spreads At-Tamkeen content uses the Maktabatul Himmah hashtag.
This could be evidence that At-Tamkeen’s content is gaining some support with online Bangladeshi users and beyond. It should also be noted that Maktabatul Himmah was the name of a now-defunct official IS news outlet that distributed IS materials online and offline in Iraq and Syria during the height of the Caliphate in 2014 and 2015. Content was disseminated through pamphlets, books, posters and more. The Bengali-language posters At-Tamkeen shared had the same branding as the previous Maktabatul Himmah. The relationship between the old Maktabatul Himmah and At-Tamkeen’s current content is unclear. However, since some Bengali-language posts now carry the Maktabatul Himmah label and feature original content, this may signal the start of an unofficial IS-supportive Bengali media wing.
Figure 4: Bengali-language posters shared by At-Tamkeen with the Maktabatul Himmah branding (left and centre); An official IS book with the Maktabatul Himmah branding (right)
GemSpace and Telegram Countermeasures to At-Tamkeen
On 17 March 2025, At-Tamkeen posted in Bengali on Rocket.Chat. The post informed followers that it had created a room on Element, which they view as a more stable long-term space compared to their channel on GemSpace. The post gave step-by-step instructions for how users who want to access Element can create an anonymously generated email to enable them to join the platform and view the group’s content securely. Creating a false email is not very complicated, but it still requires some technical know-how. This underscores those behind At-Tamkeen are adaptive and forward-thinking in the technical realm. This is consistent with the high-quality Bengali-language media the group produces, which also necessitates some level of technical skill. The statement about the channel on GemSpace not being a long-term option for the group could be a result of proactive measures by the GemSpace team to curb IS propaganda, though it is unclear if this is the case. The fact that At-Tamkeen alluded to switching to Element as a result of repeated takedowns on GemSpace also shows that continuous takedown campaigns are sometimes an effective tactic to rid platforms of IS propaganda and presence. In this case, the At-Tamkeen producers moved from GemSpace to Element due to repeated takedowns of their GemSpace accounts. This is reminiscent of when numerous official IS channels on GemSpace were removed after the group started using this platform in the wake of mass takedowns of their channels on Telegram in November 2024.¹ In fact, many IS-supportive rooms on IS’s Rocket.Chat server stopped sharing links to official IS channels on GemSpace at the time of writing, very likely due to the continuous takedowns by the platform. At-Tamkeen’s presence on Telegram also seems to be limited by consistent takedowns of the group’s channels. At the time of writing, At-Tamkeen’s Telegram accounts that it shared on Element have been removed by Telegram, and it seems that Telegram and GemSpace are not viable long-term options for the group due to the effective counter-extremism measures displayed, in this instance, by the platforms.
SimpleX
In a notable development, At-Tamkeen set up a SimpleX account on 31 January 2025, where it shares the same content as on all its other channels. At the time of writing, the account had 153 members, but it is unclear how many are real followers of the content and how many are researchers. SimpleX is a highly secure platform; according to its website, “unlike other messaging platforms, SimpleX has no identifiers assigned to the users. It does not rely on phone numbers, domain-based addresses (like email or XMPP), usernames, public keys or even random numbers to identify its users.” The website says that even SimpleX itself doesn’t know how many people use the SimpleX servers. The highly anonymous nature of this platform poses a unique challenge for countering the spread of terrorist propaganda. It highlights that counter-terrorist propaganda campaigns need to adapt to keep up with new technologies as they come to life.
Figure 5: Screenshots of the At-Tamkeen channel on SimpleX.
Amplification on Facebook
While the group has expanded to encrypted, anonymity-focused platforms like SimpleX and Element, At-Tamkeen’s content is also widely disseminated on public Facebook pages.
While some pages share only Bengali-translated official IS materials – mirroring posts on Element, Rocket.Chat, and SimpleX – others include additional extremist-supportive material in Bengali. This other content, not from At-Tamkeen, often has a violent tone and calls for Jihad and the establishment of the IS Caliphate. Some posts call for the killing of Jewish people.
Figure 6: A Facebook page that shares At-Tamkeen content also shared this video of a militant calling for jihad.
Figure 7: A Facebook page that shares At-Tamkeen content has the intro “Oh Prophet incite the believers to kill”
Figure 8: A Facebook page that shares At-Tamkeen content also shared this post calling for the killing of all the Jewish people. The post also boasts about the future return of IS to its previous strength, presumably referring to the height of the caliphate in Syria and Iraq in 2014.
Conclusion
At-Tamkeen has been amplifying its online presence this year. The group is creating new accounts on various platforms and is highly active, spreading Bengali translations of official IS content and creating original materials. Notably, the group is pivoting away from platforms like Telegram and GemSpace, where terrorist content appears to be taken down frequently enough that it has become a hindrance to their cause. At-Tamkeen has moved towards platforms like SimpleX, where effective moderation appears to be extremely challenging due to the highly encrypted interface.
The group is likely expanding its online presence in order to amplify its recruitment efforts in Bengali-speaking online communities. Additionally, the presence of extremist and violent content on Facebook pages that share the At-Tamkeen content is concerning and likely indicates that At-Tamkeen is reaching its target audience. A possible countermeasure to this content proliferating on Facebook is as simple as consistently removing the users who share it. This appears to have proven effective on GemSpace and Telegram and could have the same effect on Facebook. Overall, At-Tamkeen appears resolute in their online propaganda campaign and the situation calls for a steadfast approach by the authorities and social media companies alike to prevent IS recruitment from within the Bengali-speaking community.
Endnote
- The group had previously used GemSpace in May 2023, when the platform was known as Gem4Me, but all IS accounts were suspended by the platform within a month.
Cara Rau is an intelligence analyst with experience in monitoring online Jihadist communications. She is particularly interested in terrorism and political violence affecting the developing world and is passionate about the intersection of technology and terrorism. She is also experienced in OSINT investigations focused on human rights abuses and conflict in Africa. Cara holds a Master of Terrorism and Security Studies and speaks Afrikaans, French, Russian and some Levantine Arabic.