Al-Qaeda’s branch in Somalia released a recruitment video on Friday that criticized racism and anti-Muslim sentiment in the US and contained footage of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump announcing his proposal to bar Muslims from entering the country.
The video, released by the militant group al-Shabaab, appeared to be the first time that Trump was featured in a militant recruitment material. During a Democratic presidential debate last month, Hillary Rodham Clinton said that Trump had been used in a recruitment video for the Islamic State (IS), a claim that was later debunked.
Al-Qaeda and the IS are rival militant groups that compete for recruits and money among radicalized Muslims.
Photo: AP
Representatives for the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
The video was part of a series dedicated to Somali-American militants from Minnesota and one Canadian who died on the battlefield in Somalia. The video was authenticated by the SITE Intelligence Group, which studies militant propaganda and it appeared to be aimed at the African-American community.
Citing “historical injustices” against African-Americans, including police brutality and racial profiling, the video urged them to convert to Islam and engage in jihad at home or abroad.
In addition to footage of Trump, the video, which is 51 minutes long, included excerpts from speeches by Malcolm X and unnamed white supremacists, as well as footage of white police officers, African-Americans protesting police brutality and African-American men in prison.
Some appeared to be performing Islamic prayers.
Using a previously recorded footage of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American member of an al-Qaeda affiliate who was killed in a US drone attack in 2011, the video also said the US was gripped by a “malignant hatred” of Islam.
It warned American Muslims that “there are ominous clouds gathering in your horizon.”
“Yesterday, America was a land of slavery, segregation, lynching and Ku Klux Klan, and tomorrow, it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps,” al-Awlaki said in the footage.
The video includes footage of Trump in front of a poster with his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
“So remember this, so listen, Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” Trump said.
Al-Awlaki then reappeared on the video, saying: “The West will eventually turn against its Muslim citizens.”
Only two choices remained for Muslims in the US, he said.
“You either leave or you fight,” he said. “You leave and live among Muslims, or you stay behind and follow the example of Nidal Hasan and others who fulfilled their duty of fighting for Allah’s cause.”
Major Nidal Malik Hasan was an army psychiatrist who staged a one-man attack at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, in November 2009, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others.
He once attended a mosque in Virginia where al-Awlaki had preached and exchanged messages with him before committing his attack.
Al-Qaeda is in many ways the parent organization of the IS, which split from the group over differences in strategy in the war in Syria. The groups compete for influence among radicalized Muslims, a competition that the IS has dominated in recent years.
That contest has played out in acts of spectacular violence around the world. Analysts have said that recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Mali have been partly driven by the desire of one group to outdo the other.
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