Al-Qaeda leader calls the Islamic countries supporting the Middle East Peace Deal as ‘Slaves of the West’

On the occasion of 19th anniversary of 9/11, the Al-Sahab Media Foundation, the media department of the Sunni militant Islamist group Al-Qaeda, released a nearly 43-minute-long video message in Arabic with English subtitles from the group’s Emir, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The video message, however, did not contain any reference to the 9/11 attacks and focusses mainly on the recent peace deals signed by the Middle Eastern countries with Israel.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), in its Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor section, dated September 11, writes that the 45-minute video is the first instalment in a series titled ‘The Deal of the Century or the Crusade of the Century.’ It was released on the anniversary of Al-Qaeda’s terror attacks on the U.S in 2001, although it does not deal with the attacks directly.

Al-Zawahiri addressed U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the Middle East in the first part of the video, and then went on to refute allegations made in a documentary aired in September 2019 on Al-Jazeera regarding cooperation between his organization and official elements in the Arab countries. It should be noted that Al-Zawahiri’s message does not appear to have been recorded recently, seeing that he does not address any of the momentous events of 2020. The events mentioned by Al-Zawahiri himself can be dated to the Al-Jazeera documentary from September 2019, and the Peace to Prosperity conference which took place in Manama, Bahrain, in June 2019.

Zawahiri then continues to describe the historical “struggle between the Muslims and the Crusaders,” and claims that the interests of these two groups lie in diametrically opposite domains. He then criticises the leaders of the treacherous Muslim States who “build mosques, encourage the memorisation of the Qur’an, and support the needy and immigrants across the Islamic world”, but who are, in reality, allies of and slaves to the West. Countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia have renegaded on the Palestine issue and abandoned the larger cause of Islam.

“Some of them maintain secret ties with Israel, while others do so openly and normalize their relations with Israel in full view of the world. Ironically, some of these states claim to support and defend the Arab Revolutions and the Palestinian cause, while in reality they are fully submerged in the swamp of their security agreements with Israel, and their lands are occupied by American bases. They even send their forces to fight under the auspices of NATO regional security alliances in Afghanistan and Somalia,” he said.

The MEMRI report mentions that Al-Zawahiri posed three questions: how can Muslims identify their enemies? How can they revive the doctrine of al-Wala wal-Bara (loyalty to Muslims and disassociation from non-Muslims) as a way of life? And whom should Muslims seek guidance from and follow? He then offered his answers, saying that at the top list of the Muslims’ enemies are “America and its hirelings among the local rulers, Russia, China, India, and Iran.”

Zawahiri then accuses Al-Jazeera News Channel for its 2019 documentary on the anniversary of September 11, titled ‘La’iboon bil Naar’ and calls it slanderous and deceptive. The documentary was in a form of undercover reporting and suggested that Bahraini intelligence services hired Al-Qaeda members to assist in the violent crackdown on Bahrain Shia Muslim demonstrators during the ‘Arab Spring’. Zawahiri denied that individuals interviewed for the documentary were either Al-Qaeda members or members of Sunni militant Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda and its network of groups.

“The Al-Qaeda organization has been unjustly accused of relations with intelligence agencies and states. They accuse us of being agents of America, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Russia, and Egypt … and so on. They accuse us of being Takfeeris, Murjiah, extremists, and hardliners. They say that we are after money and power; that we are unrealistic, treacherous and disloyal; and that those among us who were killed in Waziristan with their women and children were traders of heroin who were bombed by America, and so on. We seek our reward from Allah for being patient in the face of these accusations.

However, here I would like to warn the honorable and free viewers against this distortion. If one wants to judge us, one should see the message of Al-Qaeda, which is the most precious thing we possess. The reception and acceptance of this message by the Ummah is our real victory,” he concluded.

Source: New Delhi Times