Zawahiri on Obama's election

Before anyone asks, the term that he used for "house negro" was zanujī al-beit, a word for word translation. The text under each of the pictures reads, from left to right, "Barack Hussein Obama", "Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri", and "Malcolm X Rahimatu'llah (mercy of God be upon him)".

This is a very worrying video. It's primary purpose seems to be to drive a wedge between Obama and the Black community, or at least elements thereof. Why on earth would al-Qaeda attempt something that obviously hopeless? Well, the only explanation that comes to my mind is that al-Qaeda has been making inroads into parts of the Black Muslim community, and that they're worried about losing them due to Obama's election. This would also explain why it took so long for them to respond; they probably wanted to very carefully gauge what their quarries responses would be— long term as well as the initial jubilation— so that they could act accordingly. It is, of course, impossible to tell which part of the Black Muslim community they've been working on— the focus on Malcolm X would initially suggest Nation of Islam, but when you think about it there aren't very many prominent Black Muslim civil rights activists they could have chosen.

The most interesting part of the video, in my opinion, was the subtitles, or, more precisely, the lack thereof during the first set of excerpts from Malcolm X's speeches. Obviously, American Muslims would not need the subtitles, but the Arabs, Pashtuns, etc. who would also be watching would, and they are provided during the rather lengthy explanation of the term "house negro" (which I suspect would be something of a nonce-word to the Arab audience). They were not, however, provided during the first set. Indeed, this is the only part of the video that lacks subtitles. This suggests that it was intended for the American Muslims, and explicitly not for the others. The reason for this becomes evident once the excerpts in question are considered. Of the three, only the last one has anything to do with the point Zawahiri was making about the global revolution. The other two are about the importance of those in America accepting help from their bretheren across the sea. Al-Qaeda seems to be trying to sell different jihads to different audiences— for the Black Muslims, it's about race, protecting the blacks from their white oppressors; for the others— especially the Arabs, who do not have a very amicable history with the blacks— it's about Islam.

Will this apparent attempt at damage control be successful? As I do not know who the Black Muslims in question are it is difficult to say, but I doubt it; indeed, I'm more inclined to think that it will backfire. Azzam al-Amriki, the presumed mastermind behind this video, has been away from his homeland for far too long; he is beginning to forget what it's like here. He does not seem to have fully understood the pure, unadulterated joy African Americans felt.

Full bin Laden video

Azzam al-Amriki

In my previous post, I speculated that Azzam al-Amriki may have written the bulk of Osama bin Laden's. Having read of his life, and having viewed his video messages, I am now fairly certain that that is the case. He is a highly disturbing individual, because he reminds me so much, in his mannerisms and speech, of those that I know, yet he has fallen into the clutches of the Apostasy. He is, as I had suspected, something of a disaffected Leftist; he was born to a pair of hippy goatherds living in seclusion in Southern California and grew up feeling and perceiving the emptiness that most of today's youth have either observed or experienced themselves. He first sought to express that emptiness through the Death Metal subculture, and later sought to fill it with religion. The religion he found, based on its true merits, was Islam, but through an unfortunate quirk of fate the mosque that he found had a strong extremist presence. He fell in with and was assimilated by these extremists, and was radicalized through them. Despite having spent many years in the Middle East, his old ties to the Grumpy Young Californian Liberal culture are still readily apparent — at one point in one of his tapes he refers to Bush as "Dubya" — and he is thus almost certainly the source of the familiar, though perverted, tone of the middle part of Osama's speech. He does seem to have laid it on pretty thick, though, in comparison with his other videos, which leads me to suspect that he may have been trying to reach out to the 71%.

An excellent article on him can be found here, and some of his videos can be found here and here (part one of six).

Bin Laden shows his face again

Osama bin Laden has finally ended his longest-ever communications silence, though not entirely on his terms. The half hour video, which was supposed to have been released on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, was somehow obtained by the SITE Institute, which released its pirated copy on September 7. A number of transcripts have been made available by assorted news organizations; the most legible is available here.

This is a somewhat peculiar video. While As-Sahab's make-up team seems to have done a fine job making bin Laden look as healthy and photogenic as possible,
whoever it was that put the speech together did considerably shoddier work. I have read from various sources speculation that Azzam al-Amriki influenced the content; while I am unfamiliar with Amriki's rantings, I am still inclined to agree, because much of the speech does not seem to have been put together by bin Laden, and indeed appears to have something of an American touch. Compare, for example, the following, from a 2006 audio tape:

As for us, we do not have anything to lose. The swimmer in the sea does not fear rain. You have occupied our land, defiled our honour, violated our dignity, shed our blood, ransacked our money, demolished our houses, rendered us homeless, and tampered with our security. We will treat you in the same way. You tried to deny us the decent life, but you cannot deny us a decent death. Refraining from performing jihad, which is sanctioned by our religion, is an appalling sin. The best way of death for us is under the shadows of swords. Do not be deluded by your power and modern weapons. Although they win some battles, they lose the war. Patience and steadfastness are better than them. What is important is the outcome.¹

with this, from the just-released video:

It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of the democratic system and how it plays with the interests of the peoples and their blood by sacrificing soldiers and populations to achieve the interests of the major corporations. And with that, it has become clear to all that they are the real tyrannical terrorists. In fact, the life of all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations, yet despite that, the representative of these corporations in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord, with the knowledge that the statistic speaks of the death and displacement of the millions of human beings because of that, especially in Africa. This greatest of plagues and most dangerous of threats to the lives of humans is taking place in an accelerating fashion as the world is being dominated by the democratic system, which confirms its massive failure to protect humans and their interests from the greed and avarice of the major corporations and their representatives.

Since when does Osama bin Laden care about the Kyoto Accords? He's pissed off at us because of our alleged war against Islam, not our lack of concern for the environment. He cares about the smoke rising from our bombs, not the smoke rising from our smokestacks. These seem more to be the words of a former American Leftist than of a former Arab mujahed. Either Osama spent some time cruising the blogosphere for issues he thought Americans would identify with, or the issues were selected by someone who was himself an American — al-Amriki.

There are also important stylistic differences. Osama is fond of using flowery metaphors like "the swimmer in the sea does not fear rain" and "[George Bush is] like the one who plows and sows the sea: he harvests nothing but failure." This seems to me to be a very Arab way of speaking; I am reminded of the words of the Prophet Muḥammad when He said, "By God, if one man were to be guided at your hands, it would be better for you than red camels." (Bukhari 2942). This presumably made a lot of sense to 'Alí, to whom t was addressed, but it seems a mite peculiar to Americans. Although parts of this speech are in this highly Arab style, other parts seem to be in the much more direct manner of speech characteristic of Americans. This is also noticeable in terminology; compare the above mentioned audio tape's "influential people and war merchants in America" with the new video's much blander "major corporations".

Also present are things that I just can't imagine Osama bin Laden saying on his own. In particular, his depiction of Islam as tolerant of Christians and Jews seems inconsistent with "Every Muslim, from the moment they realize the distinction in their hearts, hates Americans, hates Jews and hates Christians."² Also somewhat curious is the sentence, "This innocence of yours is like my innocence of the blood of your sons on the 11th - were I to claim such a thing." Osama has, in fact, claimed precisely that, and I doubt he would have voluntarily risked drawing attention to
this dishonesty.

It seems to me that this speech was most likely written by Azzam al-Amriki and then sent to bin Laden who, after making some adjustments, read it for the video. As I said, though, I know very little about Amriki other than that he is an American convert to Salafism; a follow up post profiling him should shed further light on the situation.

UPDATE: The follow-up has been posted.