American Al-Qaeda Spokesman Adam Gadahn Calls On Muslims In Detroit, London, And Paris To Carry Out Terror Operations, Encourages Lone Wolf Attacks
On October 23, 2010, Al-Qaeda's media production company Al-Sahab posted a video featuring American Al-Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn, aka 'Azzam Al-Amriki. The video came out as response to the March 10, 2010 "Mardin: Abode of Peace" conference in Mardin, Turkey, in which a number of Islamic scholars from various countries convened to denounce violent jihad; this was the same conference that was criticized by the radical Yemeni-American cleric in the second issue of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's English-language Inspire magazine.
In addition to his comments on the conference, Gadahn devoted much of his talk to calling on Muslims living in the West to carry out attacks in their host countries. This is another in a series of statements from Al-Qaeda leaders aimed at encouraging "lone wolf" attacks.
Gadahn took a number of tacks in criticizing the "Mardin: Abode of Peace" conference, but without going into much detail about the technical jurisprudential arguments. According to him, those types of issues should be dealt with by the religious scholars. Instead, he argued more generally that conferences of this sort only serve the "Zio-Crusaders" and their proxies (i.e. the Western-allied regimes in Muslim countries).
Gadahn also addressed the conference's clear attempt to promote its peaceful message to the West, saying that Muslims should worry more about the image of Islam in the eyes of other Muslims than in the eyes of non-Muslims. In addition, Gadahn confessed that he prefers that Muslims be labeled "terrorists" over their being regarded as "lustful," as he claims Muslims were described by Orientalists in the past.
After presenting his arguments against the Mardin conference, Gadahn called upon Muslims who want to participate in the jihad to go to the hot jihad fronts or to attack "interests" belonging to the "Americans, Zionists, Europeans and their allies" all over the world. He said that those Muslims who have a valid shari'a exemption from taking an active role in the jihad should support their fighting brethren in any way they can. He also stressed the importance of destroying the West's "usurious economy" by adhering to the advice of Muslim economists.
He mentioned three important fronts in the jihad – Iraq, Yemen and North Africa – and then added that the fourth "front" is the targeting of interests belonging to the Zio-Crusaders throughout the world. He added that he could not see why there should not be more high profile attacks like the attack on the US consulate in Peshawar or the bombing of the Danish embassy in Islamabad. Likewise, he said that all U.S. bases (e.g. those in the Arabian Peninsula) should suffer attacks similar to the 2009 Fort Hood shooting.
In the most significant portion of the video, Gadahn continued Al-Qaeda's recent emphasis on encouraging Muslims living in the West to plan and carry out jihad attacks of their own. As Gadahn put it, "Don't wait for someone else to do what you can do for yourself, and don't delay until tomorrow what you can do today."
Gadahn added a message specifically addressed "to my Muslim brothers residing in the states of the Zio-Crusader coalition, whether they are from the emigrant communities, like those which live on the margins of society in the miserable suburbs of Paris, London, and Detroit, or are from those arriving in America or Europe to study in its universities or seek their daily bread in the streets of its cities.
My brothers: Know that jihad is your duty as well, and that you have an opportunity to strike the leaders of unbelief and retaliate against them on their own soil, as long as there is no covenant between you and them. Here you are in the battlefield, just like heroes before you like Muhammad Atta and his fellow [9/11] pilots, [7/7 London bomber] Muhammad Siddique Khan and his fellow Fedayeen, [Theo Van Gogh's murderer] Muhammad Bouyeri, [Fort Hood shooter] Nidal Malik Hasan, [Christmas Day bomber] Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, [Times Square bomber] Faisal Shahzad, and hundreds of others..."
See "In Second Issue of Jihadi 'Inspire' Magazine, American Muslim Sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki Publishes Response to 'New Mardin Declaration,' In Which He Rejects Muslim Call for Moderateness and Coexistence, and Supports Jihad and Takfir," October 12, 2010
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For more on the conference and the response of Al-Awlaki and other jihadists to it, and on Al-Qaeda's encouragement of independent jihad initiatives in the West, see: New Trend in Al-Qaeda's Recruitment Efforts: American Muslims Should Carry the Burden of Jihad in U.S., October 19, 2010.
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