“Islamic nation of resistance and jihad (holy war) in the Maghreb, see how your children are uniting under the banner of Islam and jihad against the United States, France and Spain.” But of course this kind of appeal has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam, and if you suggest that its Islamic component needs to be investigated, instead of ignored and denied, and that peaceful Muslims need to counter this appeal on Islamic grounds if they can, well then! You must be some kind of Islamophobe!
From AFP (thanks to all who sent this in):
DUBAI (AFP) “” Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri called for a holy war against North African leaders and their French, Spanish and US allies in an audiotape message Saturday in which he announced a new Libyan arm of the militant network.
In the message released on the internet, he also called on members of Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah movement to overthrow the Palestinian president, saying he had turned the movement into an “annex of the CIA”.
He urged militants to target US, French and Spanish interests in North African countries in the recording, the authenticity of which could not immediately be verified.
“Islamic nation of resistance and jihad (holy war) in the Maghreb, see how your children are uniting under the banner of Islam and jihad against the United States, France and Spain,” Zawahiri said.
He also called for the overthrow of the leaders of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco over their support for Washington’s so-called war on terror.
“Support… your children in fighting our enemies and cleansing our lands of their slaves (Moamer) Kadhafi, Zine El Abidine (Ben Ali), (President Abdelaziz) Bouteflika and (King) Mohammed VI,” he said.
Zawahiri, the Egyptian lieutenant of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, also focused on Palestinian leader Abbas as the Fatah leader prepares for a US-sponsored international peace meeting on the Middle East next month.
“I call on those among the members of Fatah and the (Fatah-linked armed) Al-Aqsa Brigades who still have a little dignity to fight their leadership which has tranformed their movement into an annex of the CIA and a division of Mossad,” Zawahiri said in the tape.
He said Fatah members should “return to their religion and rally to the support of their brothers, the mujahedeen (fighters), in Palestine and elsewhere in the Muslim world.”
Zawahiri called on “nationalist and lay Arabs” to “repent and embrace Islam” because Arab leaders “like Moamer Kadhafi and Mahmud Abbas have sold you to the United States and Israel.”
In the same audiotape, Zawahiri said that a Libyan Islamist group had joined the network, the second in north Africa after Algeria’s Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.
“The esteemed leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group have announced their allegiance to the Al-Qaeda network,” he said.
The group was formed in the early 1990s in Afghanistan by Libyan militants fighting the Soviet Union occupation. It’s stated goal is the overthrow of Kadhafi’s regime and its replacement with a radical Islamic state.