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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS