That is, those whom Al-Qaeda has killed are not innocent, just as Anjem Chaudary said a few years ago. This comes in the Ask Ayman Q&A that has just come out — you can access a full pdf here.
It would be refreshing to see Muslim spokesmen in the West who say they oppose Al-Zawahri to explain why his reasoning is wrong here, and why American civilians killed by Al-Qaeda on 9/11 are indeed innocent and cannot lawfully be killed even on Islamic grounds. But I won’t be holding my breath. For one thing, you will notice that the questioner asks him about the legitimacy of killing innocent civilians in a way that makes it clear that he is only angry about Al-Qaeda killing Muslims. Where is the indignation, where is the anger from Muslims when Al-Qaeda kills non-Muslims?
Here is the full question and answer referred to in this story.
1/1: The questioner Mudarris Jughrafiya [Geography Teacher] asks, “Excuse me, Mr. Zawahiri, but who is it who is killing with Your Excellency”s blessing the innocents in Baghdad, Morocco and Algeria? Do you consider the killing of women and children to be Jihad? I challenge you and your organization to do that in Tel Aviv. Why have you — to this day — not carried out any strike in Israel? Or is it easier to kill Muslims in the markets? Maybe it is necessary [for you] to take some geography lessons, because your maps only show the Muslims” states.”
My reply to Mudarris Jughrafiya is that we haven’t killed the innocents, not in Baghdad, nor in Morocco, nor in Algeria, nor anywhere else. And if there is any innocent who was killed in the Mujahideen’s operations, then it was either an unintentional error, or out of necessity as in cases of al-Tatarrus [taking of human shields by the enemy]. I explained in detail the ruling concerning al-Tatarrus in the book The Healing of the Believers” Chests and in the eighth chapter of the book The Exoneration, and the brother Abu Yahya al-Libi has a book called Al-Tatarrus in Contemporary Jihad.
I would like to clarify to the brother questioner that we don’t kill innocents: in fact, we fight those who kill innocents. Those who kill innocents are the Americans, the Jews, the Russians and the French and their agents. Were we insane killers of innocents as the questioner claims, it would be possible for us to kill thousands of them in the crowded markets, but we are confronting the enemies of the Muslim Ummah and targeting them, and it may be the case that during this, an innocent might fall unintentionally or unavoidably, and the Mujahideen have warned repeatedly the Muslims in general that they are in a war with the senior criminals — the Americans and Jews and their allies and agents — and that they must keep away from the places where these enemies gather.
The Crusader-Jewish propaganda claims that the Mujahideen kill the innocent, but the Muslim Ummah knows who its enemy is and who defends it.
There is much more of interest in Al-Zawahri’s answers, including more on this subject. Read it all, and I will comment on other aspects as time permits.