Saturday, November 22, 2008

What Did Al Qaeda's "House Negro" Message Mean?

No doubt, you have by now heard of the information in this article, which appeared in the BBC News on November 18, 2008, and other news media:
A statement purporting to be from the second-in-command of Islamic militant network al-Qaeda has called on Muslims to harm "criminal" America.

In the message, Ayman al-Zawahiri is heard accusing President-elect Barack Obama of betraying his Muslim roots.

He also likens him to a "house slave" - who had chosen to align himself with the "enemies" of Islam.

[...]

Zawahiri also criticised Mr Obama - whose father is Muslim - for betraying the Islamic world.

"You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims, and pray the prayer of the Jews, although you claim to be Christian, in order to climb the rungs of leadership in America," he said.

Mr Obama was not an "honourable black American" like Malcolm X, he said, but an "abeed al-beit" - a word that translates as house slave but was rendered "house negro" in the message's English subtitles....
Of course, Al Qaeda is notorius for such saber rattling, this time blatantly illustrating the low esteem in which Arab Moslems hold blacks, who have traditionally been viewed in Islam as slaves by dint of race (i.e., not Arabs). Nothing new there. Al-Zawahiri's statement also adds fuel to the question as to whether or nor Barack Hussein Obama, once a Moslem because of his father's having been born into Islam, is a Moslem by default or even a secret Moslem who is falsely claiming to be a Christian. Not that Al Qaeda isn't capable of waging a propaganda war.

Does the message have more significance?

Dr. Walid Phares, terrorism expert and the author of Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America, The War of Ideas, and The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad, obviously thinks so....

Read the rest at Always On Watch.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

This just goes to show you that your brand of Islam is better than the brand of Islam the extremists practice. Oh, by the way... why are there so many brands of Christianity? Religion is a freekin' joke, and millions of people around the world are realizing it... and they are dropping the whole notion of following some invisible man in the clouds for good, and choosing coexistence, over warfare. Move on you morons, and drop religion.

midnight rider said...

To Al Qaida & co. it is all about religion and imposing their law derivde from their religion globally, a global caliphate. To deny or believe otherwise is naive and dangerous. To Islam there is no church and state, there is only Islam and it is all the same. I'm a Christian and proud to be so. Call me a moron, it bothers me no more than when Bill Maher does.

Always On Watch said...

Dan,
There are so many brands of Christianity because modern Christians don't go sawing off heads when another denomination starts up. Freedom of choice! We Christians can freely change denominations or leave the church entirely without getting mowed down.

This just goes to show you that your brand of Islam is better than the brand of Islam the extremists practice.

Huh? Dr. Phares is not a Moslem, and neither am I.

As for Move on you morons, and drop religion, try saying that in any Islamic nation, particularly one with a Wahhabist bent.

And fat chance of jihadists wanting co-existence. They repudiate it.

Always On Watch said...

John,
Religion is just the mask that Al Qaeda wears because it makes their cultural war easier to sell to poor, illiterate Muslims.

I don't think so. You're discounting too much their religious zealotry. The prospect of eternal life is also part of the picture. And determining what the real Islam is too.

Certainly, tens of millions of Muslims reject these clowns in Al Qaeda.

Not exactly. Tens of millions of Moslems accept the idea or the dream of the caliphate as the will of Allah and take various measures to advance that idea, some of which aren't militant.