Asiem El Difraoui


Asiem El Difraoui is a political scientist, economist, and documentary director and producer of Egyptian-German descent. He focuses primarily on topics related to the Arab world, and is widely considered as a leading expert on Arab media in general and jihadism internet propaganda in particular.

Biography

Asiem El Difraoui studied at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, where he earned a B.A. honours degree in political science and economics. In 1992 he acquired a DEA, an advanced post-graduate research degree comparable to the M.Phil., in political science from Sciences Po Paris. This is also where he completed his PhD in 2010, under the supervision of French scholar Gilles Kepel. His thesis was entitled: "The Jihad of images – a political analysis of Al Qaeda's audio-visual propaganda".
Between 1992 and 2008, he produced with his own production company, "Impossible Productions", a variety of political documentaries and reports on as diverse socio- and geo-political issues as the Second Gulf War in Iraq and the far-right 'National Front' movement in France. As a journalist and director and producer of documentaries, Asiem El Difraoui has thus worked in Germany, France, the MENA region, the Balkans, and South East Asia.
Between 2004 and 2010, El Difraoui moreover taught journalism at Sciences Po in Paris. From 2010 to 2013, he joined the 'Near/Middle East' research group at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin as a research fellow. During this time he was involved with the project "Jihadism on the Internet: The internationalization of violence discourses on the World Wide Web" and served in this capacity as an advisor on the European Commission's 'Clean IT' initiative. Since 2012, he is also a senior fellow at the Berlin Institute for Media and Communication Policy.
El Difraoui is also one of the founders of the Candid Foundation in Berlin, an independent think tank which attempts to promote intercultural understanding and creative approaches in international development, focussing especially on the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Mediterranean. Since 2015, he is also an editorial advisory board member of Zenith Magazine, an independent German magazine, focusing on the Arab and the Islamic world. Today, his expertise on the Arab world encompasses particularly dynamics in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
He is a member of the board of the Paris-based think tank EuropaNova. In 2019, El Difraoui was head of a project for the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees to develop a qualification course and a non-fiction book on exiting Islamic extremism. El Difraoui has advised French and German ministries and EU institutions on extremism prevention for many years. His book "Die Hydra des Dschihadismus" will be published by Suhrkamp Verlag in November this year.

Filmography (partial)

Toulon, Vitrine des Front National. Arte, 1998, author.Frieden im Baskenland? Arte report, 1998, author.Die Belagerung Bagdads . Spiegel-TV, 2003, author.Osama bin Laden: Der Prophet des Terrors. Spiegel-TV, 2004, author.Mekka retten: Ein Mann kämpft gegen die Zerstörung seiner Heimat . WDR, 2005, author.Die Sprache von Al-Qaida. . Arte/WDR, 2008, author and co-producer.Tahrir 2011: The Good, the Bad and the Politician. WDR/Canal Plus, 2011, co-producer.

Awards and honours

  • 1998 : Prix Franco-allemand du journalisme in the category "Television" for "Toulon, Vitrine du Front National" .
  • 2004 : Bronze medal at the New York Film and Television Festival for "Die Belagerung Bagdads" .
  • 2006 : Silver medal at the Al Jazeera Documentary Film Festival in the category "investigative reports" for "Mekka retten" .
  • 2010 : Certificate for creative excellence from the U.S. International Film & Video Festival for "La langue d'Al-Qaida" .
  • Certificat pour l'excellence créative du U.S. International Film & Video Festival pour "La langue d'Al-Qaida".
  • 2012 : The UNESCO's Enrico Fulchignoni award for "Tahrir 2011".