A Chat with Ayman Al-Zawahiri April 3, 2008

The Washington Post today reposted the transcript of a webchat with Ayman Al-Zawahiri, one of the world’s most media-exposed terrorists, known for his being in cahoots with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda affiliates in Iraq and elsewhere.

In his chat session, al-Zawahiri is challenged by one person, who says he “challenges [al-Qaeda] to do that in Tel Aviv”, referring to the bombings in Algiers, which claimed the lives of up to 60 people. The organization blamed for the attack was the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which according to the BBC is “now known as al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb.”

Exasperated at the implication that “al-Qaeda has to do everything”, Mr. al-Zawahiri’s replied to his challenger by saying:

“Hasn’t the questioner heard that [al-Qaeda] struck the Jews in Jerba, Tunisia, and struck the Israeli tourists in Mombasa, Kenya, in their hotel, then fired two missiles at the El Al airliner carrying a number of them?”

The rest of the session is also notable, but this particular quote shows — to this man, killing Israeli tourists in their hotels in Kenya is a noble act. How are Israeli tourists “enemies of Islam”?

Unless he, of course, means to imply that all Jews are enemies of Islam — a case which, given the Qur’an’s speaking of “appointed festivals” for varying peoples of the world, seems to be textually flawed at best — in which case, he has effectively said the same thing as Hezbollah’s Nasrallah: every kippa-covered head is a target around the world.

Al-Zawahiri ends his chat by saying that even if Osama bin Laden is not ill as media has reported, he one day “must die”, but “All-h’s religion will remain until All-h inherits the earth.”

My main question is: why, to these people, is mass murder what All-h wants?