Al-Zawahri invites Bush for a glass of orange juice..in the Green Zone

AL-Zawahri invites Bush for a glass of orange juice in Iraqi par­lia­ment in the Green Zone.

This is what he said in his yes­ter­day English-subtitled inter­view, also he talked about the future of Hamas in Pales­tine urg­ing them to leave the gov­ern­ment and go back to jihad against Israel.

Q: You talk of an Amer­i­can fail­ure and an Amer­i­can predica­ment, but Bush says that his secu­rity plan has begun to bear fruit. What is your opinion?

A: It bears its fruits in his pock­ets and the pock­ets of Hal­libur­ton. And lest Bush worry, I con­grat­u­late him on the suc­cess of his secu­rity plan, and I invite him on the occa­sion for a glass of juice, but in the cafe­te­ria of the Iraqi par­lia­ment in the mid­dle of the Green Zone!

For full trans­la­tion:
Inter­view with
Shaykh Ayman al-Zawahiri

As-Sahab Media
Rabi’ al-Aakhir 1428

Mus­lim brethren every­where: peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His bless­ings.
As-Sahab Media is pleased to host today Shaykh Ayman al-Zawahiri for its third con­ver­sa­tion with him. We ask Allah to ben­e­fit us and all Mus­lims with this work, and to make it sin­cerely for His Noble Face.
To begin, Shaykh Ayman: peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His bless­ings, and we wel­come you as a guest of As-Sahab Media.

And upon you be peace and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.

Hon­or­able Shaykh: these days are wit­ness­ing the fourth anniver­sary of the entrance of the Amer­i­cans and their helpers, whom they car­ried on the backs of their tanks, to Bagh­dad of the Caliphate and Jihad. What are your impres­sions of this event after the pass­ing of four years since it?

In the name of Allah, and all praise is due to Allah, and may peace and prayers be on the Mes­sen­ger of Allah and on his fam­ily, com­pan­ions and allies.
I praise Allah for what has been suf­fered by the Amer­i­cans, their Cru­sader allies and their helpers, the wor­ship­pers of thrones, in terms of dis­as­ters and defeats over the last four years in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I give the good news to the Mus­lim Ummah — and not just it, but all the world’s oppressed, the vic­tims of West­ern Cru­sader repres­sion — that the Empire of Evil is about to come to an end, and that a new dawn is about to rise, Allah per­mit­ting, over a mankind lib­er­ated from the Cae­sars of the White House, Europe and the Zion­ists.
We are going through a his­toric period of utmost impor­tance in the his­tory of the Mus­lim Ummah and, indeed, all of human­ity: a period in which many truths have been revealed and a num­ber of masks have fallen away. It seems that the Mus­lim Ummah was in need of this period, for it to be shown the way; for the decep­tion to become clear to it; for it to know who its enemy is, who is betray­ing it, who is loyal to it, and who is defend­ing it; for it to be cleansed of its dis­eases and ill­nesses which sapped its strengths; and for it to make a new start enlight­ened by the light of the Quran and guided by the guid­ance of the Prophet (peace be upon him) as it advances towards its honor, dig­nity and freedom.

The Amer­i­can Con­gress recently passed a bill which ties the fund­ing of Amer­i­can forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to a timetable for the with­drawal of Amer­i­can forces from Iraq which ends next March. What is your com­ment on this resolution?

This bill reflects Amer­i­can fail­ure and frus­tra­tion. How­ever, this bill will deprive us of the oppor­tu­nity to destroy the Amer­i­can forces which we have caught in a his­toric trap. We ask Allah that they only get out of it after los­ing two hun­dred to three hun­dred thou­sand killed, in order that we give the spillers of blood in Wash­ing­ton and Europe an unfor­get­table les­son which will moti­vate them to review their entire doc­tri­nal and moral sys­tem which pro­duced their his­toric crim­i­nal Crusader/Zionist entity.

In your opin­ion, what stage has the Jihad in Iraq reached today?

The Jihad in Iraq today, by the Grace of Allah, is mov­ing from the stage of defeat of the Cru­sader invaders and their trai­tor­ous under­lings to the stage of con­sol­i­dat­ing a Mujahid Islamic Emi­rate which will lib­er­ate the home­lands of Islam, pro­tect the sacred things of the Mus­lims, imple­ment the rules of the Shari’ah, give the weak and oppressed their rights back, and raise the ban­ner of Jihad as it makes its way through a rugged path of sac­ri­fice and giv­ing towards the envi­rons of Jerusalem, with Allah’s permission.

Some level the accu­sa­tion at you that al-Qaida and the groups in agree­ment with it and then the Islamic State of Iraq after them have all become embroiled in the futile mire of sec­tar­ian war­fare. What is your opinion?

This is some­thing which no intel­li­gent per­son believes, because the one who is apply­ing him­self to Jihad against the strongest Crusader/Zionist coali­tion in his­tory can­not pos­si­bly pre­oc­cupy him­self with any side con­flict. No, he of all peo­ple is most in need of some­one to help and strengthen him. And he is the last one who would want to dis­perse his few efforts, espe­cially at the out­set of the Jihad. How­ever, as our broth­ers in Iraq have empha­sized repeat­edly, the helpers of the Amer­i­cans just won’t leave them alone: on the con­trary, they are the spear­head of the Amer­i­cans and their claw with which they com­bat the Mujahideen and tor­ture the Mus­lims. And they are the ones who joined their ranks and formed the secu­rity forces, spe­cial forces and army units which the Amer­i­cans have sicced on the Mujahideen and the rest of the Mus­lims to kill, tor­ture and tres­pass.
The ones who have stirred up strife in Iraq are those who today are beg­ging the Amer­i­cans not to leave, and those who are ask­ing the Cru­saders to pro­long their occu­pa­tion, and not the Mujahideen who are defend­ing the faith, honor and sanc­ti­ties of their Ummah.

What is the way out of this sec­tar­ian fighting?

I imag­ine that the first step towards emerg­ing from this affair is that those who col­luded with the Amer­i­cans and Cru­saders in the Lon­don con­fer­ence, the Salahud­din con­fer­ence and the other secret meet­ings stop serv­ing the Amer­i­cans and empow­er­ing the Cru­saders in Iraq of the Caliphate and Islam, and that the religion-traders stop for­bid­ding the Iraqis from resist­ing the Amer­i­cans and stop incit­ing the Iraqis to fight the Mujahideen and attack the Mus­lims’ sacred things.

But do you imag­ine that, among those who have become embroiled in these crimes, there is any­one who might be sym­pa­thetic to what you have proposed?

I imag­ine that there are ben­e­fi­ciary lead­er­ships, and that some of their fol­low­ers may have con­sciences in which there is some life, but those lead­er­ships are intent on estab­lish­ing cer­tain con­cepts which nul­lify the intel­lects of their fol­low­ers and pre­vent them from under­stand­ing the Quran and Sun­nah except through their inter­pre­ta­tions and expla­na­tions, and are intent to gather around them­selves the biggest pos­si­ble num­ber of fol­low­ers through claims of noble lin­eages and con­nec­tions with the unseen, in order to use them in polit­i­cal con­flicts which often clash with the slo­gans they used to raise.

Such as?

Such as the slo­gan “Amer­ica, the Great Satan,” which became the slo­gan, “Amer­ica, the Clos­est Part­ner.” Such as the slo­gan, “Death to Amer­ica, Death to Israel,” which became “Gov­ern­ment from Amer­ica and Peace with Israel,” and such as the move­ments which used to claim that they were car­ry­ing the mes­sage of Islam to lib­er­ate the Mus­lims in Iraq from Sad­dam the Ba’athist, but are now send­ing mes­sages of sur­ren­der to keep the forces of Bush the Cru­sader in the Mus­lims’ lands. But let me fin­ish what I started.

Go ahead.

I say: there are ben­e­fi­ciary lead­er­ships intent on con­sol­i­dat­ing con­cepts of their holi­ness and immu­nity from account­ing for well-known rea­sons, and there are fol­low­ers run­ning behind those lead­er­ships, and I imag­ine that there must be among them peo­ple pos­sess­ing intel­lects and con­sciences in which there is a remain­der of life and love for the Prophet (peace be upon him), his puri­fied fam­ily and right­eous Com­pan­ions (with all of whom Allah was pleased), and which can’t pos­si­bly accept this humil­i­at­ing sur­ren­der to the Cru­saders, whose tank treads and air­borne bombs shall have no mercy on those who aided and helped them and rec­og­nized their hireling gov­ern­ments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thus, I call on those who still have intel­lects and con­sciences to refuse what these ben­e­fi­ciary lead­er­ships impose on them and the loss of reli­gion and life which they are dri­ving them towards.
I call on every­one who declares that he loves the Prophet (peace be upon him), his puri­fied fam­ily and right­eous Com­pan­ions (with all of whom Allah was pleased), to bear arms in the face of the Cru­sader inva­sion of the lands of Islam, and to help and sup­port the Mujahideen, who have bro­ken America’s back in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I call on him to ask him­self: if our mas­ters Ali bin Abi Talib, al-Hasan and al-Husayn (with whom Allah was pleased) were alive today, would they have been sym­pa­thetic to the Cru­sader invaders, become part of their organs, police and army, and begged for the con­tin­u­a­tion of their occu­pa­tion? Or would they have declared Jihad against them?
I call on him to ask him­self these ques­tions, and if he doesn’t, then let him await Allah’s pun­ish­ment for him, which He men­tioned in His Noble Book, “O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Chris­tians for your friends and pro­tec­tors: they are but friends and pro­tec­tors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them [for friend­ship] is of them. Ver­ily Allah guides not a peo­ple unjust. You see how those in whose hearts is a dis­ease run about among them, say­ing, ‘We fear lest a change of for­tune bring us dis­as­ter.’ But it may be that Allah will give you vic­tory, or a deci­sion from Him, then they will regret the thoughts which they secretly har­bored in their hearts. And those who believe will say, ‘Are these the men who swore their strongest oaths by Allah that they were with you?’ All that they do will be in vain, and they will become losers. O you who believe! If any from among you turn back from his faith, Allah will soon pro­duce a peo­ple whom He will love as they will love Him; hum­ble with the believ­ers, mighty against the rejecters, fight­ing in the way of Allah, and never fear­ing the blame of a blamer. That is the grace of Allah, which He bestows on whom He pleases.” (5:51–54)
Thus, I warn every­one who has helped the Cru­sade against Iraq and Afghanistan that the Cru­saders are depart­ing — by their own admis­sion — and soon, with Allah’s per­mis­sion, so let him pon­der his fate and future.

Some media have claimed that you were call­ing for nego­ti­a­tions with the West when you men­tioned that Amer­ica isn’t nego­ti­at­ing with the real pow­ers in the Islamic world. Is this true?

Regret­tably, this is what some media alleged about me, and per­haps some of them were try­ing to pol­ish the image of Bush and Blair, by claim­ing that al-Qaida has been weak­ened, and thus it’s seek­ing nego­ti­a­tions. I never said this, but was merely describ­ing the con­di­tion of the Amer­i­cans and their bum­bling in their search for a way out of the dark tun­nel in which they’re squeezed.

But what do you mean by the real pow­ers in the Islamic world?

I mean the Mujahid pow­ers in the Islamic world, which is wit­ness­ing, by the Grace of Allah, a Jihadi awak­en­ing which is shak­ing its very being and breath­ing life into its veins; those pow­ers which the Cru­sader West knows well, but whose true size, strength and influ­ence it refuses to rec­og­nize. And despite the fact that its his­to­ri­ans, thinkers and research cen­ters are aware of many facts and real­i­ties, they are all par­tic­i­pants in the con­spir­acy of silence, in an attempt to res­cue what remains of their pres­tige after the strength of their fire and iron failed to save them or pro­tect them after their defeat — by the Grace of Allah — in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in an attempt to deceive their peo­ples, whose youth they are dri­ving like blind sheep to the mires of death in Afghanistan and Iraq, and whose tax­pay­ers they black­mail in order for them to con­tinue to fund the projects of their lead­ers — the emper­ors of evil — in their greedy plans to enslave mankind.
Amer­ica and the Cru­sader West pre­tend not to see these pow­ers, despite the daily losses they are inflict­ing on them, and despite these pow­ers’ rapid devel­op­ment and inten­si­fy­ing growth due to the fact that they are the hope of the Mus­lim Ummah, and indeed, the hope of weak and oppressed all over the world in con­fronting aggres­sion, oppres­sion and repres­sion; and they pre­fer to deal with the lowly ones among the rulers of the Mus­lim Ummah or with the trai­tor­ous religion-sellers and the fanat­i­cal sec­u­lar nation­al­ists in Iraq and Afghanistan. But none of these can res­cue Amer­ica from its predica­ment, because they depend for their sur­vival on Amer­ica, and the one who is miss­ing some­thing can’t give it.

You talk of an Amer­i­can fail­ure and an Amer­i­can predica­ment, but Bush says that his secu­rity plan has begun to bear fruit. What is your opinion?

It bears its fruits in his pock­ets and the pock­ets of Hal­libur­ton. And lest Bush worry, I con­grat­u­late him on the suc­cess of his secu­rity plan, and I invite him on the occa­sion for a glass of juice, but in the cafe­te­ria of the Iraqi par­lia­ment in the mid­dle of the Green Zone!

You crit­i­cized in your most recent speech the lead­er­ship of HAMAS for its sign­ing the Makkah accord, and some have accused you of divid­ing Pales­tin­ian ranks. What is your reply?

It’s not nec­es­sary that unit­ing Pales­tin­ian ranks be made into an excuse for aban­don­ing the rule of Shari’ah and giv­ing up most of Pales­tine. The Truth (Exalted is He) says, “And hold fast, all together, to the rope of Allah, and be not divided among your­selves.” (3:103) So we must hold fast to the rope of Allah, not the rope of the sec­u­lar­ist, Palestine-selling hirelings of Amer­ica. We must hold fast to the rope of Allah, not the rope of the spy Muham­mad Dahlan, who HAMAS con­tin­ues to this very day to refuse to appoint to the National Secu­rity Coun­cil, because — as they announced — he is work­ing for Israel against Pales­tin­ian national secu­rity. So has HAMAS, by its rejec­tion of Muham­mad Dahlan, become a divider of Pales­tin­ian ranks?
We don’t want a sin­gle rank full of holes through which the Cru­saders and Jews can come in; rather, we want unity around the word of Tawheed.

But they say that they are part of the Arab con­sen­sus which man­i­fested itself at the recent Riyadh summit.

Yes, they have been trans­formed from a Mujahid move­ment to part of the Arab con­sen­sus which sur­ren­ders to Amer­ica, the Arab con­sen­sus which sells the lands of the Mus­lims, the Arab con­sen­sus which represses the Mus­lim Ummah, the Arab con­sen­sus which hands power from one cor­rupt ruler to another in defense of the Cru­saders’ inter­ests. They have truly become part of this hated con­sen­sus which sits on the chest of our Ummah.
And the Amer­i­can game began with enter­ing them into the elec­tions, and tempt­ing them into accept­ing the Arab res­o­lu­tions and inter­na­tional accords and sur­ren­der­ing to the Amer­i­cans’ man, Mah­moud Abbas, the right to nego­ti­ate with Israel. Then Con­doleeza Rice gath­ered her boys in Riyadh, and gave them a course prior to the sum­mit, to dic­tate to them the lat­est instruc­tions. And so they met and pro­duced a res­o­lu­tion in favor of the Arab ini­tia­tive which side­steps the right of return for the refugees with an ambigu­ous phrase which each party under­stands the way it wants to, say­ing, “We demand a just solu­tion to the prob­lem of the refugees!“
All of this so Amer­ica can reach a far­ci­cal solu­tion to the issue of Pales­tine, with which it is try­ing to remove one of the biggest causes of Mus­lims’ hatred of it, to tell them after that, “Why do you sup­port the ter­ror­ists who attack Amer­ica because it backs Israel? Look here! Those whom you used to con­sider to be Mujahideen have agreed with us. So what do the oth­ers in the Maghreb, Afghanistan, Egypt, the Lev­ant and the Penin­sula have to do with Palestine?”

But they say that it is a gov­ern­ment of national unity.

Where is this home­land around which they have united? Where is the Pales­tine of 1948, the Pales­tine buried in the ceme­tery of obliv­ion? Have they aban­doned its peo­ple? Have they sur­ren­dered them to the Jews?
I won’t ask them where is Chech­nya, or where is Kash­mir, or where is Iraq, or where is Soma­lia. Rather, I will ask them: where is Ashqelon? Where is Galilee? Where is Akko? Where is Jaffa? Where is Haifa? To whom have they sur­ren­dered them? To Mah­moud Abbas, Amer­ica and Israel? And for how much have they sold them? For a third of the cab­i­net with a fourth of sov­er­eignty on a tenth of a homeland?

But they say that they are a mod­er­ate Islamic move­ment prac­tic­ing pol­i­tics, so what objec­tion do you have to that?

My brother: fie on mod­er­a­tion, pol­i­tics, the pres­i­dency and the cab­i­net, and I thank Allah for the bounty of extrem­ism, mil­i­tancy and ter­ror­ism and every­thing else we are labeled with, if pol­i­tics causes a branch of the mother move­ment to aban­don the rule of Shari’ah and Pales­tine, while — to our severe and painful regret — the rest of the branches of the move­ment are false wit­nesses to the deal and silent like graves in front of this fall.
Actu­ally, I heard on the BBC Ara­bic ser­vice on the 7th of April a state­ment by Dr. Sa’ad al-Katatni, the leader of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood bloc in the Egypt­ian People’s Coun­cil, in which he said that he met with a del­e­ga­tion from the Amer­i­can Con­gress, and that he empha­sized to them that the solu­tion to the Pales­tin­ian prob­lem will be achieved with the estab­lish­ment of two states in Pales­tine on the basis of the Makkah accord. He also crit­i­cized America’s lack of con­cern for the Brotherhood’s detainees even as it con­cerns itself with the case of Ayman Noor.
This is why the Ummah must be aware of the duties its reli­gion imposes on it, and of what goes on around it, and of what its lead­ers are doing. The Truth, Exalted is He, says, “O you who believe! If a sin­ner comes to you with news, ascer­tain the truth…” (49:6)
And the Truth, Exalted is He, says, “Thus do We explain the signs in detail, that the way of the sin­ners may be shown.” (6:55)
And the Most Noble of Speak­ers says, “When you look at them, their bod­ies please you; and when they speak, you lis­ten to their words. It is as if they are pieces of tim­ber propped up. They think that every cry is against them. They are the ene­mies, so beware of them. Allah curse them, how they lie!” (63:4)
Aware­ness is a must, because the gov­ern­ments have betrayed, the orga­ni­za­tions have aban­doned, and the lead­er­ships have tired, and the Ummah must wage its Jihad and depend on its Lord and shoul­der its respon­si­bil­ity with­out wait­ing for any strag­gler, hag­gler or maneu­verer. This is its respon­si­bil­ity to Allah first and to his­tory sec­ond. There is no excuse for any­one to leave the lands of Islam in the grip of the enemy while he is able to strive for their deliverance.

But they con­tend that this accord is the way out of spilling Pales­tin­ian blood.

What does the preser­va­tion of Pales­tin­ian blood have to do with the aban­don­ment and sell­ing of Pales­tine and its inter­ment in the tomb of obliv­ion? Pales­tin­ian blood must be sac­ri­ficed cheaply for the ele­va­tion of Allah’s word and the lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine. Oth­er­wise, why did the mar­tyrs pour out their blood in the path of Allah for the lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine, if we were just going to aban­don their goals in order to pre­serve blood? Was the blood of those mar­tyrs lost in vain? And why is the preser­va­tion of Pales­tin­ian blood made a cover for the aban­don­ment of Pales­tine? Pre­serve Pales­tin­ian blood — if you wish — but far away from the sell­ing of Palestine.

What is it you’re ask­ing of the lead­er­ship of HAMAS, which has had all these pres­sures placed on it and been pre­vented from prac­tic­ing government?

I ask the lead­er­ship of HAMAS, first, not to turn away from the rule of Shari’ah, and to only agree to par­tic­i­pate in elec­tions on the basis of an Islamic con­sti­tu­tion. And I ask it, sec­ond, that if it is given the choice between aban­don­ing gov­ern­ment and aban­don­ing Pales­tine, it should abstain from gov­ern­ment, hold on to Pales­tine and choose Jihad and resis­tance instead of a third of the seats in the munic­i­pal coun­cil of Gaza and Ramal­lah.
How­ever, the cul­ture of con­ces­sion and method­ol­ogy of back­track­ing bore their evil fruits, and HAMAS’s lead­er­ship agreed to par­tic­i­pate in the aggres­sion against the rights of the Mus­lim Ummah in Pales­tine. I request every Mus­lim to look at this map to appre­ci­ate the ugli­ness of the crime in which the lead­er­ship of HAMAS took part.
I know that many of the peo­ple of Jihad and Islam in Pales­tine and even in HAMAS reject what has hap­pened, and that’s why I call on the peo­ple of Jihad and gar­rison­ing in HAMAS to con­front this aggres­sion against the rights of the Mus­lim Ummah, and to strive to cor­rect HAMAS’s course. And if they are unable, then let them remem­ber that they are Mus­lim Mujahideen first. And this is an address which I direct to all mem­bers of the Islamic orga­ni­za­tions, that they keep in mind that they only joined these orga­ni­za­tions to help them in obey­ing Allah, so if these orga­ni­za­tions come between them and obey­ing Allah, then they must give prece­dence to Islam over the orga­ni­za­tions, and never hes­i­tate to strive to obey Allah.
I also call on the Mus­lim Pales­tin­ian peo­ple, which for so long has offered up thou­sands of mar­tyrs in defense of Pales­tine and Jerusalem, and which for 80 years has nei­ther been shaken by the earth­quakes nor car­ried away by the storms; the peo­ple about whom the mar­tyr (as we see him) Abd al-Raheem Mah­moud, Allah have mercy on him, said:

A peo­ple used to dif­fi­cul­ties
But the dif­fi­cul­ties didn’t harm it
A rebel which never once agreed
To remain in tor­ment
It knew the way by its truth
And walked to it on the right paths
Rights are not returned
To their own­ers except with spears

The peo­ple which con­tin­ues to defend to this very day the holy gar­ri­son of Islam in the envi­rons of Jerusalem with its blood, wealth, farms and all it owns: I call on this gar­risoned, patient, res­olute, heroic, Mujahid Mus­lim peo­ple to never con­cede one sand-grain of Pales­tine, how­ever great the pres­sure applied to it, how­ever intense the embargo becomes and how­ever numer­ous the con­spir­a­cies might be.

What do you mean by the cul­ture of con­ces­sion and method­ol­ogy of backtracking?

I mean the cul­ture and method­ol­ogy which led to alle­giance being pledged to the cor­rupt, sec­u­lar­ist king Farooq, and to the reelec­tion of Hosni Mubarak and recog­ni­tion of his legit­i­macy, the legit­i­macy of his laws and con­sti­tu­tion and the legit­i­macy of Ali Abdul­lah Salih, Abdul­lah son of al-Hussein, the rulers of the petrol shops on the coast of the Gulf, and Mah­moud Abbas and the sec­u­lar­ist, Palestine-selling Lib­er­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion; the cul­ture and method­ol­ogy which led to enter­ing Kabul and Bagh­dad on top of Amer­i­can tanks and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the gov­ern­ments which the Cru­sader occu­pier set up there, and which most recently led to aban­don­ment of the rule of Shari’ah, recog­ni­tion of the sur­ren­der accords and han­dover ini­tia­tives and con­ces­sion of most of Pales­tine; the cul­ture which says that we on the inside have divorced vio­lence thrice, and shall only work through the laws which the cor­rupt sec­u­lar­ist rulers invented to defend their reign and hand it down to their sons, while on the out­side, we shall only per­form Jihad if our gov­ern­ments allow us: i.e., if Amer­ica and Israel allow us; the cul­ture which apol­o­gizes for a sports exhi­bi­tion even as the blood of the Mus­lims runs in rivers in Chech­nya, Kash­mir, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pales­tine, and Soma­lia; the cul­ture which claims that the Jihad of the Pales­tini­ans is con­fined to Pales­tine only, and they have noth­ing to do with other lands of Islam, and that its peo­ple are eager to have good rela­tions with the Cru­sader West which slaugh­ters their broth­ers and sis­ters in Chech­nya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Soma­lia; the cul­ture of lambs in con­fronta­tion with the wolves of the Zion­ist Cru­sade; the cul­ture which turned the lion cubs, grand­sons of lions, into scream­ers in the demon­stra­tions in con­fronta­tion with the police dogs who vio­late the sanc­tity of the female pro­test­ers who find no one to defend them; the cul­ture which turned the lion cubs, grand­sons of lions, into par­tic­i­pants in the cor­rupt game of elec­tions in Egypt in which they waste their time and effort, while their broth­ers in Chech­nya, Afghanistan and Iraq blow up the Rus­sians and Amer­i­cans and force the Cru­saders in Iraq and Afghanistan to admit the neces­sity of with­draw­ing; the cul­ture which the strug­gler and mar­tyr (as we see him) al-Hajj Malik al-Shabaaz, or Mal­colm X (may Allah have mercy upon him), fought against when he told his repressed black broth­ers in Amer­ica, “If you’re not ready to die for it, take the word ‘free­dom’ out of your vocab­u­lary.“
And he said also about his reli­gion, al-Islam, “I believe in a reli­gion that believes in free­dom. Any time I have to accept a reli­gion that won’t let me fight a bat­tle for my peo­ple, I say to hell with that reli­gion.“
And he also said, “Con­cern­ing non-violence, it is crim­i­nal to teach a man not to defend him­self when he is the con­stant vic­tim of bru­tal attacks.“
And he also said, “We are non­vi­o­lent with peo­ple who are non­vi­o­lent with us, but we are not non­vi­o­lent with any­one who is vio­lent with us.“
And he also said, “Any time you demon­strate against seg­re­ga­tion and a man has the audac­ity to put a police dog on you, kill that dog, kill that dog. I say it if they put me in jail tomor­row, kill that dog.“
And he also said (may Allah have mercy on him): “I don’t think, when a man is being crim­i­nally treated, that some crim­i­nal has the right to tell that man what tac­tics to use to get that crim­i­nal off his back. When a crim­i­nal starts mis­us­ing me, I am going to use what­ever nec­es­sary to get that crim­i­nal off my back.“
These pow­er­ful con­cepts were real­ized and under­stood from Islam by the strug­gler and mar­tyr (as we see him) al-Hajj Malik al-Shabaaz, or Mal­colm X (may Allah have mercy on him), while sea­soned Islamic move­ments have missed them. ?And that is the Grace of Allah which He bestows on whom He wills.

But these move­ments which carry what you call the cul­ture of con­ces­sion and method­ol­ogy of back­track­ing have Muftis who pro­vide them with fat­was which approve the path they have taken, and they have pro­duced stud­ies and writ­ings in this regard. Don’t you admit that?

Yes, I admit that. And you also have to admit that among these Muftis are the schol­ars of the Marines, who were asked for a fatwa by Muham­mad Abd al-Rasheed, the head Imam in the Amer­i­can armed forces, and who replied to him with the scan­dalous fatwa which per­mit­ted the Mus­lim to join the Amer­i­can Cru­sader forces to fight his broth­ers, the Mus­lim Mujahideen, whom the schol­ars of the Marines called “ter­ror­ists in Afghanistan.“
And among these schol­ars of the Marines is the great scholar who also gave a fatwa which called for respect­ing the old agree­ments which were made between the Amer­i­cans and the rulers of the region and as a result of which Amer­i­can bases exist in the Gulf region, because they came — accord­ing to his fatwa — in accor­dance with the res­o­lu­tions of legit­i­mate governments.

And what do you ask of the Mujahid who belongs to one of the orga­ni­za­tions who lead­er­ship has become involved in endors­ing the accords of surrender?

I ask him to work with his Mujahid broth­ers to reform their orga­ni­za­tion and direct it to endorse the rule of Shari’ah, take the path of Jihad and resis­tance, and hold on to the lands of Islam. And if they don’t suc­ceed, they must know that they are slaves of Allah and not slaves of any orga­ni­za­tion, move­ment or group.
The mar­tyr of Islam, Shaykh Abdul­lah Azzam, may Allah have mercy on him, says, “The pledge is always to observe right­eous­ness and piety, because it is a covenant to coop­er­ate in right­eous­ness and piety, and pledg­ing to com­mit sin and aggres­sion is not per­mit­ted, like those who make a pri­vate covenant, then after a while it is asked of the pledger that he carry out some deeds which Allah isn’t pleased with and the Shari’ah doesn’t endorse, like boy­cotting so-and-so, and spy­ing on so-and-so, and search­ing for the faults of oth­ers.“
Until he says, may Allah have mercy on him,
“And it is not per­mis­si­ble for any­one to use a pledge as an excuse for pre­vent­ing the pledger from per­form­ing a right­eous deed laid down by the Book and Sun­nah, like Jihad in Allah’s path for exam­ple, as the pledge would then turn into a pledge to com­mit sin ‘and obe­di­ence is in good­ness’ ‘and there is no obe­di­ence to a cre­ated being in dis­obe­di­ence to the Creator.’”

The Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment passed con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments which pave the way for hand­ing power to the son of Hosni Mubarak and enable the cor­rupt clique to con­tinue to repress Egypt. What do you read in this endeavor?

I read in it Amer­i­can hypocrisy, which calls for democ­racy even as it con­sid­ers Hosni Mubarak to be one of its clos­est friends, and which sends detainees to be tor­tured in Egypt, exports tools of tor­ture to Egypt and spends mil­lions to sup­port the secu­rity organs and their exe­cu­tion­ers in Egypt, even as the Amer­i­can State Depart­ment, in its annual report on human rights, crit­i­cizes the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment because it tor­tures detainees!
These amend­ments are a blow to every­one who took the path of elec­tions to enact change in Egypt. And I had warned over one year ago that the path taken by some of the Islamic move­ments by enter­ing the American-produced elec­tions in Egypt will not lead to any change; on the con­trary, it will lead to an impo­tent par­lia­ment with a gov­ern­men­tal major­ity.
Some Islamic move­ments had imag­ined that they could enter into a deal with Amer­ica: they would con­demn ter­ror­ism and vio­lence, and describe the raids on New York and Wash­ing­ton as “crimes,” and present a new Islam daubed with sec­u­lar­ism, and oppose Amer­ica with words alone, and for­bid the youth from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Jihad against Amer­ica because Hosni Mubarak didn’t give them his per­mis­sion! And in return, Amer­ica would per­mit them to engage in the Egypt­ian elec­tions whose details Amer­ica con­trols. And here I’d like to read two para­graphs of a study pre­pared last year by two researchers from the Com­bat­ing Ter­ror­ism Cen­ter at the Amer­i­can army’s United States Mil­i­tary Acad­emy:
“The U.S. could dis­cretely fund main­stream Salafi fig­ures like Mad­khali who are effec­tive in siphon­ing off sup­port from jihadis and who do not advo­cate vio­lence (e.g. by pay­ing for pub­li­ca­tions, lec­tures, new schools).“
They go on,
“The U.S. could also fund non?Salafis, but it cur­rently lacks the exper­tise nec­es­sary to deter­mine who is truly influ­en­tial. Per­haps a bet­ter strat­egy in the near term would be to pres­sure Mid­dle East­ern gov­ern­ments to allow greater polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion and vis­i­bil­ity for groups that jihadis are threat­ened by. This approach should vary from coun­try to coun­try. For exam­ple, in Egypt, it would be the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood; in Saudi Ara­bia, the Shi’a. Again, it is essen­tial that the U.S. hand not be seen.“
These are not my words, but are the words of two anti-terrorism researchers with the Amer­i­can army.
And in fact, they entered the elec­tions with num­bers which couldn’t pos­si­bly have achieved a major­ity, even if every­one of them had won, and then found out that Amer­ica and the regime were more devi­ous than them, as their exper­i­ment ended with con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments which deprived them even of the use of any slo­gan which includes a word about reli­gion or Islam. And so went another fail­ure. And tomor­row they will invite the youth to sec­ond and third elec­tions and never-ending rounds of loss and for­fei­ture. That’s why I con­sider my Mus­lim broth­ers — espe­cially the youth among them, who are the ammu­ni­tion of this Ummah and the source of its power — to be far above wast­ing their lives in this anti-Shari’ah futil­ity and absur­dity, and I call on them to invest their ener­gies, efforts and thoughts in seri­ous striv­ing for change and the mak­ing of sac­ri­fices for that.

Are we to under­stand from this that you are against cer­tain elec­tions or against all elections?

I and all Mujahideen in all Islamic lands are striv­ing, fight­ing, sac­ri­fic­ing, emi­grat­ing and los­ing our dear­est brethren and fam­ily as mar­tyrs and cap­tives for the sake of the Mus­lim Ummah, which includes Mus­lims from all races, eth­nic­i­ties and col­ors with no dif­fer­ence between this race and that, this eth­nic­ity and that, or this color and that, and with­out them being divided by bor­ders and lines drawn up by arro­gant tyrants…I say, we are sac­ri­fic­ing all of this — and ask­ing Allah to accept it of us — for our Ummah to win its free­dom, dig­nity and honor and restore its Caliphate, which will imple­ment jus­tice, spread the Shura, pro­tect the sacred things, and pre­serve rights. There­fore, if the elec­tions are under the umbrella of an Islamic con­sti­tu­tion in a land free of for­eign occu­pa­tion and run by trust­wor­thy hands, then wel­come to them. If, on the other hand, the elec­tions are under a sec­u­lar­ist con­sti­tu­tion imposed by or called for or wel­comed by the Zion­ist Cru­sader enemy, with our lands occu­pied, and the run­ning of the elec­tions in the hands of the thiev­ing, fal­si­fy­ing rulers, then no, and a thou­sand nos. And the only way to achieve for us the rule of Shari’ah, expul­sion of the invad­ing ene­mies of Islam, and impar­tial super­vi­sion of bal­lot­ing is Jihad in Allah’s path.

But on the other hand, those who take part in elec­tions in the cir­cum­stances you men­tioned say that using what they call vio­lence has led to noth­ing but fail­ure. What is your comment?

My com­ment is twofold: first, the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence with them is in their skid towards sec­u­lar­ism, by their adop­tion of the rule of the major­ity of vot­ers and aban­don­ment of the rule of Shari’ah with no log­i­cal or legal proof; by their recog­ni­tion of cit­i­zen­ship as a basis of coex­is­tence and their aban­don­ment of the fra­ter­nity of Islam; by their sat­is­fac­tion with the nation­al­is­tic ter­ri­to­r­ial state and aban­don­ment of efforts to restore the Caliphate; and by their recog­ni­tion of the legit­i­macy of the cor­rupt rulers and their regimes and their claim that Jihad is only pos­si­ble with their per­mis­sion. As for the dis­pute about the fruit­ful­ness or oth­er­wise of vio­lence, it is a sec­ondary dis­pute about which means to use, even if events — par­tic­u­larly in Egypt and Alge­ria — have proven the com­plete fail­ure of their method of beg­ging rights from the cor­rupt rulers, and that it is a fruit­less method from its roots to its branches.
The sec­ond point is that the one who has thwarted the Amer­i­can plot in the region and forced the Amer­i­cans to accept a pull­out — about which they only dif­fer in regard to its tim­ing — is what they call the move­ment of vio­lence. As for those who entered Kabul and Bagh­dad on top of Amer­i­can tanks, and par­tic­i­pated in the gov­ern­ments of the occu­pa­tion, and ruled it per­mis­si­ble for the Mus­lim to fight in the Amer­i­can army against the Mus­lims, and declared that they shall only wage Jihad against the Amer­i­cans if the agents of Amer­ica per­mit them, they belong to the move­ment of the cul­ture of con­ces­sion and method­ol­ogy of backtracking.

But some see this method as stir­ring up dif­fer­ences between the Islamic move­ments, and see it as frag­ment­ing the power of the Mus­lim Ummah as it faces the most vio­lent Cru­sade in its his­tory, and see that pri­or­ity should be given today to unit­ing all move­ments of Islamic action in an attempt to get out of this cri­sis. What is your opin­ion about that?

My opin­ion about that is that the Mus­lim Ummah with all its fac­tions must unite to expel the Cru­sader and Jew­ish invaders and their hirelings from its lands in order to restore the Caliphate state which imple­ments the Shari’ah, judges by it and pro­tects the sacred things of the Mus­lims. So how is unity pos­si­ble with the one who only wages Jihad against the Cru­saders with the per­mis­sion of their hirelings? And how is unity pos­si­ble with the one who nei­ther rec­og­nizes the rule of Shari’ah nor the fra­ter­nity of Islam which doesn’t know the lines of Sykes-Picot?
And in gen­eral terms, and to reach a ben­e­fi­cial result: I call on the Mus­lim Ummah with all its fac­tions to com­bine its efforts to make the puri­fied Shari’ah the high­est author­ity which is unri­valed by any other author­ity, and to take away legit­i­macy from the cor­rupt and cor­rup­tive rulers and end recog­ni­tion of them, their con­sti­tu­tions and their laws. And I call on it to rush to sac­ri­fice lives, riches and efforts to fight the Cru­sader and Jew­ish invaders and their hirelings loyal to them.

Fine. Regard­less of who has failed and who hasn’t, what is it you’re ask­ing of the Mus­lim Ummah in Egypt?

I ask the Mus­lim Ummah in Egypt, and not just in Egypt but in all lands of Islam, to bear arms in defense of Islam, to spend in defense of Islam, to sac­ri­fice in defense of Islam, and to die in defense of Islam. And if it is unable to bear arms, it must back those who bear them, because the Mus­lim Ummah is now under attack, and if we relax and stay behind, we will lose both the Deen and Dunya, we will lose both lives and wealth, and we will lose both dig­nity and sacred things. In fact, we will lose every­thing if we are stingy with any­thing. We are in a state of war, and if we haven’t yet real­ized that we are in a state of war, when will we real­ize that? And we won’t get any­thing by beg­ging, beseech­ing and hoars­en­ing our throats. What is called con­fronting by peace­ful means the Egypt­ian regime and its like is in fact lambs sur­ren­der­ing to wolves.
Would that those who insist on peace­ful resis­tance had heard what was said by the strug­gler and mar­tyr (as we see him) al-Hajj Malik al-Shabaaz, or Mal­com X (may Allah have mercy on him):
“Any­time you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free. Free­dom is some­thing that you have to do for yourself…The price of free­dom is death.“
A num­ber of demon­stra­tions in Egypt have been held which car­ried a cof­fin rep­re­sent­ing the con­sti­tu­tion, and I call on them and the entire Mus­lim Ummah in Egypt to bury in that cof­fin impo­tence, to bury in it fear, to bury in it hes­i­ta­tion, lack of con­fi­dence in Allah’s promise and crav­ing for the scraps of this world, and to take them­selves out of the graves of the meth­ods of the impo­tent, the paral­y­sis of refrain­ing from sac­ri­fice and the bias for orga­ni­za­tions and into the lofty open space of Jihad in Allah’s path. The Truth, Exalted is He, says, “O you who believe! Respond to Allah and His Mes­sen­ger when he calls you to that which gives you life, and know that Allah comes between a man and his heart, and that it is He to whom ye shall be gath­ered.” (8:24)
And let us keep in mind that our fun­da­men­tal bat­tle is with our­selves: with our fear, with our hes­i­ta­tion, with our back­track­ing, weak­ness and inabil­ity and with our crav­ing for this lowly life in which we die every day instead of the hon­or­able life in which we die with dig­nity one time.
If we con­tinue to aspire to noth­ing more than diplo­mas, posi­tions, salaries, pen­sions and the rais­ing of our chil­dren, there will be noth­ing but humil­i­a­tion in store for us, our chil­dren and our grand­chil­dren. If, on the other hand, we are happy with killing, cap­tiv­ity, emi­gra­tion, los­ing one’s spouse, orphan­age, and los­ing one’s wealth, home­land and beloved in the path of Allah, then with Allah’s help, no power on the face of the earth can defeat us. If we are vic­to­ri­ous over our­selves, we shall be vic­to­ri­ous in every bat­tle, with Allah’s help, and if we are defeated by our­selves, then let us for­get about any­thing called dig­nity, lib­erty and honor.
The Truth, Exalted is He, says, “O you who believe! What is the mat­ter with you, that, when you are asked to go forth in the cause of Allah, you cling heav­ily to the earth? Do you pre­fer the life of this world to the here­after? But lit­tle is the com­fort of this life as com­pared with the here­after.” (9:38)

But against whom should the Ummah bear arms?

At this stage, it is the duty of the Mus­lim Ummah to bear arms against the tres­pass­ing invaders and their inter­ests. Every­one who tres­passes on the Mus­lim Ummah must have his hand cut off, whether this aggres­sion is in Chech­nya, or in Afghanistan, or Kash­mir, or Iraq, or Pales­tine or Soma­lia. And along with this con­fronta­tion of the invaders, the Mus­lim Ummah must also beware of those defend­ers of the invaders who stab it from behind, and must strive from today to work for their removal.

But some call for stop­ping inter­nal fight­ing in the Islamic coun­tries. What is your comment?

Any deci­sion in this regard rests with the Mujahideen. And most of those who say that nei­ther fight on the inside nor on the out­side. I saw some­thing said by one of them where he for­bade the youth from going forth to Iraq, telling them that the Mujahideen don’t need men and it is our duty to sup­port them with books and cas­settes! This, despite the fact that the Mujahideen are appeal­ing to the Ummah day and night to deploy to Iraq, Afghanistan, Chech­nya, and Soma­lia with its sons, wealth and exper­tise.
And then we ask those who call for pre­vent­ing inter­nal fight­ing: what’s the alter­na­tive? Is the alter­na­tive keep­ing silent about the oppres­sion, trea­son and treach­ery? Or is it our duty to sup­port the Mujahideen and enjoin good and for­bid evil? The Prophet, peace be upon him, was asked, “What’s the best Jihad?” He replied, “A word of truth in front of an unjust ruler.” (Nisa’i #4138).

But you invite the Ummah to bear arms and sup­port those who bear arms, while oth­ers invite it to some­thing else. What do you say to that?

I say what I said before: the Ummah must reach a level of aware­ness, sen­si­tiv­ity and real­iza­tion of what its duty is and what goes on around it; an aware­ness, sen­si­tiv­ity and real­iza­tion which enables it to dis­cern the trea­so­nous religion-traders in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sci­en­tists of beg­gary in the Penin­sula, Yemen, Amman and Cairo, those who issue fat­was accord­ing to the school of the head of the Church of Eng­land in Lon­don, and the schol­ars of the Marines spread here and there; and enables it to search for the pious Mujahid men of knowl­edge who per­se­vere despite harass­ment and declare the truth and invite to it and act accord­ing to it in the face of the ene­mies of the Ummah, the Cru­saders and their tyran­ni­cal, crim­i­nal helpers; and enables it search for the active, fight­ing Mujahideen who race to the death rais­ing the ban­ner of Jihad, Tawheed and resis­tance; to search for them, and sup­port, aid, defend and fol­low them, and in this way it can con­front its ene­mies and save itself from the ban­dits who lie in wait for it on the road to Allah.

A ruckus has been made recently about the killing of Egypt­ian pris­on­ers at the hands of a unit of Israeli spe­cial forces in the 1967 war. What’s your com­ment on that?

This inci­dent reminds of one of the most painful peri­ods in my life and the life of Egyp­tians and all Arabs and Mus­lims, when the Egypt­ian army fell apart, lost its dis­ci­pline and suf­fered a ter­ri­ble defeat in just six hours.
But this ter­ri­ble defeat didn’t come out of nowhere. No, it came as a bit­ter har­vest of the cor­rup­tion and repres­sion which spread through Egypt at the hands of the Nasserite regime, repres­sion from which the Islamic move­ment suf­fered the most.
And among the results of this defeat was Abdul Nasser’s offi­cial recog­ni­tion of the state of Israel by agree­ing to Secu­rity Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion 242, which at the time the Pales­tin­ian orga­ni­za­tions rebelled against, before most of them agreed to even worse than it, among them the lead­er­ship of HAMAS.
Abdul Nasser offi­cially rec­og­nized Israel because he used to secretly and in an unde­clared man­ner rec­og­nize it by his agree­ing to the armistice agree­ment of 1949, which included recog­ni­tion of the par­ti­tion of Pales­tine res­o­lu­tion passed in 1947, and by his accep­tance of the char­ter of the United Nations, which Israel joined after the armistice accord. So it wasn’t expected of the Egypt­ian regime that it pay atten­tion to the tragedy of the Egypt­ian pris­on­ers, when it was the one who for­feited all the lands.
Then Sadat came along, and he paid no atten­tion to the tragedy of the killed Egypt­ian pris­on­ers, because he was busy sign­ing three accords with Israel and nor­mal­iz­ing rela­tions with it; those accords which the Arab states rebelled against, then joined one and all, includ­ing the munic­i­pal­ity of Gaza and Ramal­lah led by HAMAS.
Then came Hosni Mubarak, dur­ing whose reign air­craft took off from Egypt and ships passed through its canal to strike Iraq, and who didn’t move a fin­ger dur­ing the inva­sion of Lebanon, so how could he be con­cerned with the killing of some poor pris­on­ers, when he humil­i­ates the Egypt­ian peo­ple daily in his jails, pris­ons and police sta­tions? Hosni Mubarak and his sons and part­ners, the lead­ers of the regime which pro­tects the owner of the ferry which drowned thou­sands and lets him get away and pro­tects him from being held to account, while the dri­ver ‘Imad has his honor vio­lated in the police sta­tion.
Those who revealed this mas­sacre were the Israelis and not the Egyp­tians, and Mubarak’s reac­tion was to direct the For­eign Min­istry to fol­low up on the mat­ter, and the For­eign Min­istry requested the Israeli gov­ern­ment to inves­ti­gate.
Hosni Mubarak, who con­cerns him­self with the Israeli pris­oner held by the Pales­tini­ans while ignor­ing the tragedy of hun­dred of Egypt­ian pris­on­ers.
This shows us that this regime is a part of the sys­tem of anti-Muslim Ummah Cru­sader repres­sion and aggres­sion, and that to deal with this regime with peace­ful, con­sti­tu­tional means is to sur­ren­der to a pack of wolves which is only repelled by the power of Jihad in the path of Allah.

Recently, a num­ber of attempts towards reform have appeared in the Ara­bian Penin­sula. What is your eval­u­a­tion of con­di­tions in the Penin­sula in general?

There will be no reform in the Penin­sula so long as Cru­sader forces con­tinue to des­e­crate the Ara­bian Penin­sula, and so long as Al Saud and their broth­ers, the pro­pri­etors of the kerosene and ben­zene shops on the coast of the Gulf, remain where they are. The Ara­bian Penin­sula is suf­fer­ing from devi­a­tion from the method­ol­ogy of Islam, which has led to the polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion which has thrown the coun­try into a mire of sub­mis­sion to the West to ensure the sur­vival of sons and grand­sons in power; which has deprived the Ummah of any polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion and led to the finan­cial cor­rup­tion which has made every­one and every­thing above the ground and under it prop­erty of the rul­ing fam­ily which con­trols resources and mar­kets; and which has led to moral decline and admin­is­tra­tive corruption.

And what is the road to reform, as you see it?

The road to reform, and Allah knows best, requires, in the Ara­bian Penin­sula and the other Islamic lands, work on two plans. The first is in the near term, and seeks to strike Cru­sader and Zion­ist inter­ests so that the ground erupts in flames under the feet of the Zion­ists and Cru­saders in our coun­tries and theirs and every­where we are able to strike their inter­ests until they leave our coun­tries and stop their con­tin­u­ous and increas­ing inter­fer­ence in our affairs.
And the sec­ond plan is for the longer term, and depends on two pil­lars: the first is prepa­ra­tion for the con­fronta­tion, by going forth to are­nas of bat­tle like Iraq, Afghanistan and Soma­lia, and the sec­ond pil­lar is dili­gent work to change the cor­rupt and cor­rup­tive regimes through invi­ta­tion, incite­ment, mobi­liza­tion and plan­ning, and to per­se­vere in that how­ever much time it takes or sac­ri­fice it requires. And every time we achieve vic­tory in one arena, that will ease — with Allah’s help — vic­tory in the next one.
And from this, the crit­i­cal impor­tance of the Jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan becomes clear, because the defeat of the Cru­saders there — soon, Allah per­mit­ting, will lead to the set­ting up of two Mujahid Emi­rates which will be launch pads for the lib­er­a­tion of the Islamic lands and the estab­lish­ment of the Caliphate, with Allah’s per­mis­sion.
That’s why I call on the Mus­lim Ummah not to lag behind or tarry in sup­port­ing the Jihad in gen­eral and the Jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan in par­tic­u­lar, in view of the piv­otal impor­tance of these two are­nas.
The Truth, Exalted is He, says, “Go forth, [whether equipped] lightly or heav­ily, and strive and strug­gle with your goods and your per­sons in the cause of Allah. That is best for you, if you but knew.” (9:41)

The Pen­ta­gon has recently issued a num­ber of press releases about the con­fes­sions of Khalid Shaykh Muham­mad. What is their objec­tive in that, in your opinion?

The Amer­i­can regime is attempt­ing to show its peo­ple that it’s achieved some results in its war against Islam, which it calls the war on ter­ror. And with that it is deceiv­ing its peo­ple twice: the first time is when it por­trays the war as being against an orga­ni­za­tion or a few peo­ple and flees from the biggest fact, which is that it is nei­ther fac­ing indi­vid­u­als nor orga­ni­za­tions, but rather, is fac­ing an angry Jihadi awak­en­ing which is shak­ing the lands of Islam.
As for the sec­ond decep­tion, it is its por­tray­ing to the Amer­i­can peo­ple that with its arrest and killing of a few peo­ple, it has destroyed al-Qaida. They pre­tend to for­get that Ramzi Yousef tried to demol­ish the two Trade tow­ers, and suc­cess was not decreed for him, but Khalid Shaykh came along after him and destroyed them with the squadron of martyrdom-seekers, with much more than Ramzi Yousef had expected. And now Khalid Shaykh has become a role model for hun­dreds who are fol­low­ing in his foot­steps, and they shall achieve more than he achieved, with Allah’s per­mis­sion and help.
When Khalid Shaykh (Allah free him) was arrested, he advised the Pak­istani inter­roga­tors to return to their Islam and stop serv­ing the Amer­i­cans, but Musharraf’s hunt­ing dogs were lowlier than that. He also warned the Amer­i­can inter­roga­tors of the hor­rors they would see should they invade Iraq, and Allah made his expec­ta­tion come to pass, and this is what Bush is hid­ing from his people.

And what is your mes­sage to the Amer­i­can people?

The Amer­i­cans deserve what they’re get­ting. They chose this liar two times, so let them pay the price for their choice.

Ear­lier in our con­ver­sa­tion, you referred to state­ments of Malik al-Shabaaz, or Mal­colm X, may Allah have mercy on him. But there are black Amer­i­can sol­diers fight­ing the Mus­lims in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am hurt when I find a black Amer­i­can fight­ing the Mus­lims under the Amer­i­can flag. Why is he fight­ing us when the racist Cru­sader regime in Amer­ica is per­se­cut­ing him like it per­se­cutes us, and oppress­ing him like it oppresses us? And per­haps his slave ances­tors whom Amer­ica kid­napped from Africa were Mus­lims like us. The racist Amer­i­can Cru­sader regime is using him and the other weak and oppressed to die so that the crim­i­nals in the White House can amass their for­tunes and add to their mil­lions, whereas he receives scraps after his blood is spilled or he comes out of the war a crip­ple.
Al-Hajj Malik al-Shabaaz (Allah have mercy on him) says,
“This is our invest­ment, this is our con­tri­bu­tion: our blood. Not only did we give of our free labor, we gave of our blood. Every time we had a call to arms, we were the first ones in uni­form. We’ve died on every bat­tle­field the white man has. We have made a greater sac­ri­fice than any­one who’s stand­ing up in Amer­ica today. We have made a greater con­tri­bu­tion, and have col­lected less.“
And I hope no one replies to me by say­ing that blacks in Amer­ica have been deliv­ered from its tyranny because there are the likes of Colin Pow­ell — the liar of the Secu­rity Coun­cil — and Con­doleeza Rice in power. They are the ones who Malik al-Shabaaz (may Allah have mercy on him) described as house slaves, when he talked about the house slaves and the field slaves and said:
“You have to read the his­tory of slav­ery to under­stand this. There were two kinds of Negroes: there was that old house Negro and [there was] the field Negro. And the house Negro always looked after his mas­ter. When the field Negroes got too much out of line, he held them in check. He put them back on the plan­ta­tion. The house Negro could afford to do that because he lived bet­ter than the field Negro. He ate bet­ter, he dressed bet­ter, and he lived in a bet­ter house: he lived right up next to his mas­ter, in the attic — or the base­ment. He ate the same food that mas­ter ate, and wore the same clothes. And he could talk just like his mas­ter: good dic­tion. And he loved his mas­ter more than his mas­ter loved him­self: that’s why he didn’t want his mas­ter hurt. If the mas­ter got sick, he’d say, ‘What’s the mat­ter, boss? We sick?’ When the master’s house caught afire, he’d try to put the fire out: he didn’t want his master’s house burned. He never wanted his master’s prop­erty threat­ened, and he was more defen­sive of it than the mas­ter was. That was the house Negro. But then you had some field Negroes, who lived in huts, [and] had noth­ing to lose. They wore the worst kind of clothes, they ate the worst food, and they caught hell: they felt the sting of the lash. They hated their mas­ter. Oh yes they did. If the mas­ter got sick, they prayed that the mas­ter die. If the master’s house caught afire, they prayed for a strong wind to come along. This was the dif­fer­ence between the two. And today, you still have house Negroes and field Negroes. I’m a field Negro.“
And I’m amazed at the impu­dence of this per­son called Colin Pow­ell: how is it that he didn’t apol­o­gize? And how is it that no one took him to account? And how is it that he was not put on trial, after this out­ra­geous global lie? But then again, why should he apol­o­gize, when he is a part of the regime of lies which leads the world from Wash­ing­ton and which the Mujahideen are seek­ing to get rid of, with Allah’s help and power.
That’s why I want blacks in Amer­ica, peo­ple of color, Amer­i­can Indi­ans, His­pan­ics, and all the weak and oppressed in North and South Amer­ica, in Africa and Asia, and all over the world, to know that when we wage Jihad in Allah’s path, we aren’t wag­ing Jihad to lift oppres­sion from the Mus­lims only, we are wag­ing Jihad to lift oppres­sion from all of mankind, because Allah has ordered us never to accept oppres­sion, what­ever it may be.
The Mas­ter, Glo­ri­ous and Exalted is He, says in a Hadeeth Qudsi, “O my ser­vants, I have for­bid­den oppres­sion for myself and for­bid­den it for you, so do not oppress each other.” (Mus­lim #4674) And the Prophet, peace be upon him, took part in the alliance of favors in Mecca before his noble mis­sion, and praised it after he, peace be upon him, was sent, say­ing, “I took part in the alliance of the per­fumed ones with my uncles when I was a boy, and I wouldn’t renege on it for any price.” (Ahmad #1567) It was the alliance in which Quraysh made a covenant to help any oppressed one in Makkah.
And the Prophet, peace be upon him, said, “Oppres­sion is dark­ness on the Day of Res­ur­rec­tion.” (Tir­midhi #1953) And the Mes­sen­ger of Allah, peace be upon him, said, “Who­ever helps the oppres­sor in a dis­pute or helps in any oppres­sion will con­tinue to be under Allah’s anger until he aban­dons it.” (Ibn Majah #2311)
And the Mes­sen­ger of Allah, peace be upon him, said, “How can Allah pre­serve a nation which doesn’t help its weak ones against its strong ones?” (Ibn Majah #400)
And al-Baraa’ bin ‘Aazib, with whom Allah was pleased, said, “The Prophet, peace be upon him, ordered us to do seven, and for­bade us from seven. He ordered us to fol­low the funer­als, visit the sick, answer the invi­ta­tion, help the wronged, ful­fill the oath, return the greet­ing of peace, and pray for the sneezer. And he for­bade us from using dishes of sil­ver, rings of gold, al-hareer (silk fab­ric), al-dibaaj (silk gar­ments), al-qassi (gar­ments of flax and silk), and al-istabraq (heavy silk bro­cade).” (Bukhari #1163)
And from al-Baraa’ (with whom Allah was pleased) that the Mes­sen­ger of Allah (peace be upon him) passed by some peo­ple from the Helpers as they were sit­ting by the road­side, and he told them, “If you must do so, then return the greet­ing of peace, aid the wronged and guide the passersby.” (Tir­midhi #2650)
I also invite all the world’s weak and oppressed ones to Islam, the reli­gion of free­dom and rejec­tion of tyranny, the reli­gion which destroyed the emper­ors and Khos­raus and pro­duced the 19 mar­tyrs who demol­ished the sym­bol of America’s arro­gance.
And I tell the sol­dier of color in the Amer­i­can army that the racist Cru­sader regime kid­napped your ances­tors to exploit them in devel­op­ing its resources, and today it is using you for the same pur­pose, after they altered the look of the shack­les and changed the type of chains and try to make you believe that you are fight­ing for democ­racy and the Amer­i­can dream. But al-Hajj Malik al-Shabaaz (may Allah have mercy on him) exposed them when he said,
“No, I’m not an Amer­i­can. I’m one of the 22 mil­lion black peo­ple who are the vic­tims of Amer­i­can­ism, one of the 22 mil­lion black peo­ple who are the vic­tims of democracy…I see Amer­ica through the eyes of a vic­tim. I don’t see any Amer­i­can dream, I see an Amer­i­can night­mare.“
And after you achieve for them what they want, they will throw you into the street with­out mercy like an old shoe. I heard on BBC radio in Eng­lish this past March 17th a pro­gram about thou­sands of dis­charged wounded sol­diers who are now home­less, among them a sol­dier who served in the Amer­i­can army for 14 years, includ­ing two years in Iraq, and who, after being wounded, was dis­charged from the army and given a monthly pen­sion of $400 dol­lars before being evicted from his house. He now sleeps in his grandmother’s car on the street. This is how the cap­i­tal­ist Cru­sade treats its pop­u­la­tion. And this is why I want every oppressed one on the face of the earth to know that our vic­tory over Amer­ica and the Cru­sader West — with Allah’s per­mis­sion — is a vic­tory for them, because they shall be freed from the most pow­er­ful tyran­ni­cal force in the his­tory of mankind. Isn’t it the power which didn’t suf­fice with what it stole and killed from the weak and oppressed, but went out and ruined for the entire world the atmos­phere and cli­mate with the gases emit­ted by its fac­to­ries with­out car­ing about the dis­as­ters and cat­a­stro­phes which will befall the poor states?

As we close this inter­view, is there any­thing you’d like to add?

Yes. I want to place on my broth­ers, the lions of Islam in Pales­tine defend­ing the gar­ri­son of Islam in the envi­rons of Jerusalem, a trust not to for­feit the lands of Islam, and I advise them to be patient and res­olute, how­ever many the con­spir­a­cies against them become.
I also pray to Allah, the Most High, the Omnipo­tent, to grant vic­tory to our patient, res­olute broth­ers in Chech­nya, land of Jihad and gar­rison­ing, and to my broth­ers the lions of Islam in Soma­lia, who turned America’s plans head over heels, by the Grace of Allah, and held their own against the mil­i­tary Cru­sade as well as the pro­pa­ganda Cru­sade led by the elderly, ancient radio sta­tions of the Cru­sader intel­li­gence ser­vices which began repeat­ing the phrase “defeat of the Islamic courts” from the very first day of the Ethiopian Cru­sader inva­sion, even though the war was (and still is) in its open­ing stages, and even though the Ethiopian forces announced that they would be with­draw­ing after two weeks, but Allah frus­trated their plot­ting at the hands of the lions of Islam in Soma­lia of Jihad, by His Grace.
And I ask Him to grant vic­tory to our broth­ers in the Maghreb of Islam, who, with the strength of their faith and reliance on their Lord, are shak­ing the pil­lars of the regime of France’s sons, and who, with their con­fi­dence in their Lord, are strik­ing the inter­ests of the Cru­sade in the Maghreb of Islam, and who, with their firm­ness and gar­rison­ing, have thwarted the con­spir­a­cies of the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and ruses of the defeatist back­track­ers.
So O Ummah of Islam in the Maghreb of gar­rison­ing and Jihad, the Maghreb of Arab­ness and Islam, the Maghreb of defi­ance and resis­tance: here are your devoted sons, car­ry­ing your con­cern and the con­cern of defend­ing your reli­gion, honor and resources. In fact, they are car­ry­ing the con­cern of the entire Mus­lim Ummah from Kash­gar to Granada, and the con­cern of its plun­dered al-Aqsa, which has been enveloped in con­spir­a­cies and deals. So stand with them, so stand with them and help and sup­port them in con­fronting the fiercest Cru­sade ever faced by the Ummah of Islam.
And I ask Allah, the Most High, the Omnipo­tent, to pro­tect our Mujahid broth­ers in Iraq of the Caliphate and Islam, and I ask Him to com­bine their forces, unite them and com­plete His bounty on them with the noble vic­tory and man­i­fest con­quest — soon, by the Grace of Allah.

Hon­or­able Shaykh, excuse me for inter­rupt­ing, but speak­ing of the Mujahideen in Iraq, there are some who say that a num­ber of the Jihadi orga­ni­za­tions in Iraq are closely con­nected to some states which claim to be defend­ing the rights of the Peo­ple of the Sun­nah in the region, and that these states are attempt­ing to chal­lenge the expan­sion of other states. What is your opin­ion of this statement?

I call on the Mus­lims in Iraq to beware of the con­spir­a­cies of America’s ser­vants, who claim to be the pro­tec­tors of the Peo­ple of the Sun­nah. If they were hon­est, they would have said, “We’re the pro­tec­tors of the Sun­nah of Bush and ene­mies of the Sun­nah of Muham­mad (peace be upon him). We’re the ones who empow­ered Amer­ica over the Mus­lims’ petrol and pro­vided it with bases and air and sea ports to kill a mil­lion chil­dren with the embargo and to bomb the Mus­lims in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re the ones who rec­og­nized Israel and con­ceded most of Pales­tine. We’re the ones who hunt the Mujahideen. We’re the ones who set up for Amer­ica the secret pris­ons in which we tor­ture the Mujahideen. We’re the ones who are today attempt­ing to buy hearts and minds to sully the image of the Mujahideen. We’re the ones who pro­mote the Amer­i­can Islam which daubs itself with some rit­u­als, renounces Jihad and enjoin­ing of good and for­bid­ding of evil, blesses oppres­sion and cor­rup­tion and con­demns Shura and tak­ing the rulers to account.“
I ask Allah to pro­tect the Mus­lims and Mujahideen in Iraq from their devi­ous­ness, and I ask Him to guide the Islamic State of Iraq and pro­tect it from the con­spir­a­cies of the states which sur­round it, and to con­sol­i­date this fledg­ling state and strengthen it so it can raise the pure Mujahid ban­ner of Islam accord­ing to the Book and Sun­nah, which Amer­ica fears and whose dan­ger it com­pre­hends.
I also ask Him to pro­tect its patient, gar­risoned Amir, Amir-ul-Mumineen Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, may Allah pre­serve him and keep him on the path of Jihad and gar­rison­ing and the path of the Mus­lim Ummah’s honor, for which his ances­tor al-Husayn bin ‘Ali (with both of whom Allah was pleased) fought under the stan­dard of his grand­fa­ther, peace be upon him. “And honor belongs to Allah, His mes­sen­ger, and the believ­ers, but the hyp­ocrites know not.” (63:8)
And I pray to Allah to grant vic­tory to the Mujahideen every­where, and to quickly relieve the suf­fer­ing of the Mus­lim cap­tives in Amer­ica, Egypt, Afghanistan, the Penin­sula, Morocco, Alge­ria, Libya and in America’s secret pris­ons and every­where else, fore­most among them the star of Da’wah and Jihad, our patient gar­risoned Shaykh Umar Abd al-Rahman (may Allah free him soon), for whose tor­ture the Amer­i­cans shall pay dearly, with Allah’s per­mis­sion and help.

At the close of this inter­view, we thank Shaykh Ayman al-Zawahiri for par­tic­i­pat­ing with us in this con­ver­sa­tion, and we ask Allah to make it sin­cerely for His Noble Face, and to make it ben­e­fi­cial and reward every­one who helps in its dis­sem­i­na­tion. And may peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.

And upon you be peace and the mercy of Allah and His bless­ings. And I’d just like to add a few words, which is that I call on all my broth­ers in Islamic Jihadi media to hone their resolve and sac­ri­fice every­thing in their power, for they are a fun­da­men­tal part of the Jihadi resis­tance in the face of the fiercest Cru­sade ever faced by the Ummah of Islam. I ask Allah to bless their efforts, unite them and aid them against the enemy of Allah and their enemy, who has admit­ted his defeat in front of them despite the huge dif­fer­ence between his capa­bil­i­ties and theirs. And I ask them, if they have found in this con­ver­sa­tion and other Jihadi infor­ma­tional mate­ri­als ben­e­fit and good­ness, to coop­er­ate with their broth­ers in al-Sahab Media and other Islamic infor­ma­tion cen­ters in spread­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing it, and may Allah help and guide them and reward them in the best way. And I can’t for­get in clos­ing to express my thanks to my hon­or­able broth­ers in al-Sahab Media, who are dig­ging rock with their fin­ger­nails to spread the invi­ta­tion to Islam, Jihad, gar­rison­ing and resis­tance, so may Allah reward them for what they have done for Islam and Mus­lims.
And our final prayer is that all praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may peace and prayers be on our mas­ter Muham­mad and upon his fam­ily and com­pan­ions. And may peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.

And upon you be peace and the mercy of Allah and His blessings