In Onward Muslim Soldiers, I recount a recitation of this poem by a cleric employed by the Saudi government, Sheikh Saad Al-Buraik, during an April 2002 telethon to raise money for the Palestinian jihad. Al-Arian update from the Tampa Tribune, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
TAMPA – When the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad challenged the loyalty of Ramadan Shallah, who was living in the United States, Shallah responded by sending a poem.
I am against America until this life ends and the scale is placed in the afterlife.
I am against her even if the stones relented one day and the flint liquefied.
My hatred for America is so that if the worlds contained some of it, the worlds would tumble down.
She is … in evils and all evil on this earth.
Who other than her planted tyrants on our land?
Shallah, whose admission to the United States was sponsored by Sami Al-Arian, told Al-Arian during a wiretapped phone conversation in February 1994 about the poem, which he attributed to Arab poet Ahmad Matar. Shallah told Al-Arian he sent the poem to Fathi Shikaki after Shikaki told Shallah, “You are living in the lion’s den.”
“I sent it to soothe his mind about the issue of America,” said Shallah, who then was executive director of Al-Arian’s think tank, World & Islam Studies Enterprise. He would replace Shikaki as head of the Islamic Jihad after Shikaki was killed in 1995.
Although he didn’t seem upset by the poem, Al-Arian worried about creating problems between the U.S.-based Islamic Jihad members and those in the Middle East, particularly at a time Al-Arian was trying to push through financial reform.
“By God, my brother, the issue is that this is the worst time for any friction and defiance between us and them,” he said. “But it’s either this thing or never. I mean if it doesn’t happen now, it will never happen again.”