Video: Al-Qaeda Urges Black Americans to Convert to Islam, Threatens More Attacks
Al-Qaeda, echoing previous attempts to stoke racial unrest, called on African Americans to convert to its extremist form of Islam in a video released days from the 9/11 anniversary.
Only Islam can save African Americans in the United States from oppression at the hands of the white majority, argues al-Qaeda, nearly two months after its Yemen-based branch urged its followers to specifically target the white community in the U.S.
In a document, released in late June, the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) called on all Muslims in the United States to attack “areas where the Anglo-Saxon community is generally concentrated” and “avoid minorities.”
The new al-Qaeda 9/11 video, titled “Defiance of the Injustice: On the Occasion of Passing of Fifteen Years of the Raids of September 11th,” was released on September 9 by Al-Qaeda’s media wing Al Sahab, and it featured the terror organization’s current leader Ayman Al Zawahiri in a 20-minute address to Al-Qaeda followers, along with archived footage of the group’s former leader, Osama Bin Laden, reports The Foreign Desk.
“As long as your crimes continue, the events of 9/11 will be repeated thousands of times, by the will of Allah. And we will follow you – if you don’t cease your aggression [against us] – until the Day of Judgment,” declares Zawahiri.
Zawahiri boasted at both the economic and human toll the terrorist attack has inflicted on the American people.
He expressed regret that the fourth hijacked plane, United Flight 93, did not reach its intended target, “The biggest criminals in the White House or the Congress.”
The al-Qaeda leader refers to the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people and wounded thousands more as “blessed.”
African American Muslim leader Malcolm X is featured in the video and used to persuade the black community into joining extremist Islam.
Zawahiri urges African Americans to blame the United States for their struggles, adding that “the law is in the hands of the white majority, [who] control it as they wish.”
Al-Qaeda has been targeting the African American community for recruitment for some time.
A video from the Somalian al-Qaeda-linked al Shabaab released in January was aimed at recruiting American blacks to become jihadists, using the messaging of leftist activist group Black Lives Matter.
In the September 9 video, the al-Qaeda leader says:
We inform every weakened [person] in the world: America is the source of calamity and the head of evil in this world, and it is the thief of nations’ ailment, and it is the one who humiliate the Africans [i.e. African Americans] until this day, and no matter how much they try to reform and obtain their rights according to the law and the [U.S.] Constitution, they will not attain it, for the law is in the hands of the white majority, [who] control it as they wish. And they [i.e. African Americans] will not be saved but by Islam.
He urges Muslims around the world to rebel against their leaders and to strengthen their attacks on the U.S., arguing that with the fall of the U.S., many of her allies will fall too.
Zawahiri urged the continued collaboration with the Taliban, nearly 15 years after the Afghan terrorist group helped al-Qaeda carry out the 9/11 attacks.