Zawahiri: "Realities of the Conflict Between Islam and Unbelief" (Analysis of Speech)

In the latest speech of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two, titled: “Realities of the Conflict Between Islam and Unbelief,” he discusses several topics within the context of this subject, focusing on the incumbency for jihad upon Muslims and the support for the Mujahideen in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Algeria, and Somalia. The speech derides several recent events, such as the victory of Democrats over Republicans in the November 2006 U.S. midterm elections, and the November 30 meeting in Amman, Jordan between U.S. President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, giving an indication that the video was recorded within the last few weeks.

The speech opens with a discussion of Palestine, Zawahiri reminding of Israel’s establishment and stating that the animosity of the British to Islam stretches over decades. He then turns to attempts by the UN and “America’s man in Palestine,” Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, to broker peace agreements with Israel and cease dispute with Hamas, and argues that elections based on secular constitutions or resolutions accepting Israel will not liberate “one sand-grain” of Palestine. Jihad, then, is the sole means to effect the desired change. He states: “It is our duty to reject and cast off these resolutions and wage war on them, instead of taking indecisive stances towards them, and saying that we shall respect them and acknowledge them as a fact of life, and other such terms which lead to the forfeiture of the Muslims’ rights”.

Zawahiri also discusses the five years which have passed since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, arguing that coalition forces have faced a torrent of Mujahideen and Taliban fighters supported by Pashtun tribes, and America will soon fail in this prospect just as the Soviet Union two decades ago. He states: “And the Islamic Emirate shall return to Kabul soon - Allah willing - following the Crusader pullout, and its popularity has not merely increased in Afghanistan, but also in neighboring countries. And these are facts known to all”.

To the Democrats in America, Zawahiri states that they did not win and the Republicans did not lose; rather, it is the Mujahideen who have won, and the American forces and their allies those who lost. Zawahiri addresses the American people and reminds that their security will not be assured unless such is realized in Palestine, and adds that they only realize the failure of the current administration when the Mujahideen slaughtered their soldiers. The Mujahideen, he indicates, will not stop inflicting losses upon their enemy until American and “Crusader” forces leave Muslim lands and cease supporting their rulers. Zawahiri then advocates that America seek to negotiate with the “real powers” in the Islamic world for their departure. It is a new era and period in world history, Zawahiri announces; a period of Khalid Islambouli, Abdullah Azzam, Muhammad Atta, Muhammad Siddique Khan, and Shehzad Tanwir.

Harkening to the speech’s subject, Zawahiri directly tells the Muslim Nation that they have a decision in which they may live on the margins of the New World Order, or rely upon Allah and embrace Islam, doing jihad for His Sake. Scholars who advocate Muslims to take a moderate and progressive position are condemned and those who obligate Muslim women in France to remove their hijab and those who obligate the Muslim in Britain to “obey Elizabeth” are not suitable, in Zawahiri opinion, to take the reins of leadership or authority. The Palestinian women of Beit Hanoun who surrounded the besieged mosque are deemed more courageous, resolution, and honorable than the “religion-selling traitors” in Iraq and Afghanistan, Cairo, Riyadh, Amman, and Sana’a.

Zawahiri advocates Muslims take up arms and stake out targets and observe activities of the “American-Zionist” presence in Muslim lands, and present such information to the Mujahideen. He also recommends they exploit methods of popular protest, hitting traders who supply the “Crusader” forces, and boycott “Crusader” and Jewish products. Focus is then turned to Muslims in Turkey who demonstrated against the visit of “Benedict the Charlatan,” congratulating them for this rejection.

The speech closes with greetings and advice for a variety of groups in the jihadi battlefield, including the Mujahideen in Iraq, congratulating them on the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq and encouraging its support and joining of other Mujahideen groups. The Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) in Algeria are also given greetings, as well as the Mujahideen in Somalia, reminding them that they are the “southern garrison” of Islam, and must defend Muslims’ honor in the Horn of Africa.

You know, for someone who purports who runs a site called mosquewatch.com, I would expect you to know this kind of thing. This is al qaeda 101.

Profile: Ayman al-Zawahiri
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1560834.stm
(snip)

Born in Egypt in 1951, Ayman al-Zawahiri, comes from a middle class family of doctors and scholars.

His grandfather, Rabi'a al-Zawahiri, was the grand imam of Cairo's al-Azhar university, a centre of Islamic learning in the Arab world.

He was already involved in Egypt's radical Muslim community when he was arrested at the age of 15 for being a member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood - the Arab world's oldest fundamentalist group.

He graduated from Cairo University's medical school in 1974 and obtained a masters degree in surgery four years later.

His father, who died in 1995, was a pharmacology professor at the same school.

Zawahiri's wife and children were reportedly killed in a US air strike in Afghanistan in late November or early December 2001.

Radical youth

Zawahiri was tried along with scores of radical Islamists for their part in the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat during a Cairo military parade.

He was convicted and served a three-year sentence for illegal possession of arms. After his release, he left for Saudi Arabia.

Soon afterwards he headed for Peshawar and later to neighbouring Afghanistan, where he established a faction of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group.

Zawahiri was in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in 1970s and 1980s, working as a doctor.

In 1997, the US state department named him as leader of the Vanguards of Conquest group - a faction of Islamic Jihad thought to have been behind the massacre of foreign tourists in Luxor the same year.

Two years later, he was sentenced to death in absentia by an Egyptian court for activities linked to Islamic Jihad.

Zawahiri reportedly spent six months in the Russian custody for his alleged extremist activities in the southern republic of Dagestan.

But he was released as his name was not known to Russia's secret services.

Western targets

Zawahiri is believed to have lived in Denmark and Switzerland in the early 1990s, sometimes travelling on a false passport.

Giles Foden says Zawahiri's freewheeling role across western Europe during the early 1990s raises questions about the security and asylum policies of a number of European nations and about their refusal to act on information provided by the Egyptian government.

Zawahiri appeared in a video alongside Bin Laden threatening retaliation against the United States for the detention of the Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Then, in 1998, he was the second of five signatories to Bin Laden's notorious 1998 "fatwa" calling for attacks against US civilians.

He is also listed on the US government's indictment sheet for the 1998 US embassy bombings.

He was one of the figures whose satellite telephone conversations were used as proof that Bin Laden was behind the plot.

You're welcome.
Ayman al-Zawahiri is not just some POS mujahadin. He's the #2 man(well maybe not man, let's say male) in al qaeda, and you could say the driving force behind it.
For more I highly recomend "The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright (I don't use the term MUST READ very often, but this book is. I read almost everything i see on the war, and this is one of the best books I've read in the last year.

Hugh Hewitt interviews "The Looming Tower" author Lawrence Wright
Hugh Hewitt Show ^ | 9/22/06

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1706824/posts
Posted on 09/23/2006 4:46:35 AM CDT by Valin

The Looming Tower author, Lawrence Wright The Hugh Hewitt Show 9-22-06 at 6:02 PM

HH: If you’re driving, you’ll want to pull over. If you’re in your house, you’ll want to sit down. For the next two hours, I’m going to talk with Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda And The Road To 9/11, about the nature of al Qaeda, where it came from, where it is going, what it did on 9/11, and what it did before and since. It’s a conversation you really don’t want to miss. The Looming Tower is now on best seller lists across the United States, widely hailed as the most comprehensive history of al Qaeda ever put forward. Lawrence Wright is a staff writer at the New Yorker, a fellow at the Center On Law and Security at New York University. He’s the author of five previous books. He’s a graduate of Tulane, and I’m pleased to welcome him. Lawrence Wright, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.
(snip)

HH: There’s one anecdote in here, one bit of history of al Qaeda, which I want to get in before our first break, so that people understand. It’s the boy spies…

LW: Oh, yes.

HH: …about which I’d heard nothing. But it tells us about Egyptian secret police, it tells us about Zawahiri. If you could, in a minute and a half, tell people what that episode was.

LW: In 1995, Zawahiri, the number two guy in al Qaeda, and other Egyptian groups, attempted an assassination on Hosni Mubarek, the Egyptian president. It was part of their long term campaign against the Egyptian state. But that went too far. The Egyptians, the intelligence agencies, went to Sudan, where Zawahiri and his organization, al Jahad, were located. And they enticed a young boy, a 12 year old boy, into coming to watch some videos and have some sodas. And they drugged him and sodomized him and photographed the entire thing. Then, they told him that they were going to turn these photographs over to his father if he didn’t cooperate. That could have been a death sentence for that boy. So he cooperated. He put microphones and listening devices in his parents’ apartment. He brought home papers…he brought papers to the Egyptian spies. And he also recruited another boy, who was subjected to the same degrading treatment. And the Egyptians decided to use these boys to try to assassinate Zawahiri. They actually got them to try to plant a bomb outside an apartment building where Zawahiri and some of his leaders were going to meet. The Sudanese intelligence intercepted this…

- - -

HH: Lawrence Wright, before we went to break, we were telling…you were recounting the story of the boy spies kidnapped in Sudan in 1995 by Egyptian intelligence, sodomized, brutalized, turned against Zawahiri. And what happened to them?

LW: Well, the Sudanese intelligence intercepted this young boy as he was planting a bomb on behalf of the Egyptian intelligence officers. And Zawahiri found out about it, and he demanded to talk to the boys. And the Sudanese willingly handed him over, thinking they were going to get him back. Zawahiri put these two boys on trial. First of all, there was some objection about putting children on trial, but he had them stripped naked to see if they had pubic hair, which was an indication that they were mature enough to stand trial. And then, he convicted them and executed them, and videotaped the entire procedure to distribute among other followers who might be tempted to betray him.

HH: And how old were they?

LW: 12.

HH: To me, both the brutality of the Egyptian secret police, and the brutality of Zawahiri, come through in that in ways that lots of books fail to communicate, and we’ll come back to that.
(snip)

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