September 10, 2003
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
On its newly reactivated website, al-Qaida features a book warning the terrorist network's May attack in Riyadh was the "opening shot" in a jihad campaign against the Arabian Peninsula and its "heretical" regimes.
Editor's note: The al-Qaida site may have been shut down again - there was no response shortly after this story was published in WND
Photo: Al-Qaida website details jihad against U.S. and its allies
The book asserts the real ruler over the Muslim countries of the Middle East is "Crusader America," which has subjected Muslim leaders to itself as a district ruler is subject to a king, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based monitor.
"Anyone who fights [the Muslim regimes] is in effect fighting the one who has given them authority and made them rulers over the Muslims," says the preface to the book, "The Raid of the 11th of Rabi' Al-Awwal – The Eastern Riyadh Operation and Our War on America and Its Agents."
The book names Muslim regimes as legitimate targets for jihad, according to Islamic law, such as the Pervez Musharraf government in Pakistan, the King Fahd government in Saudi Arabia and the Ali Abdallah Saleh regime in Yemen.
These governments "and the Americans are identical, both in their war on [Islam] and in the extent to which they are a target for the Mujahiddeen," or holy warriors, the book says.
The author also regards Israel as a nation under U.S. rule, but distinguishes it from the others.
"The breasts of the Jews – Allah's curses upon them – are filled with an arrogance that is not present in others, and therefore they have not settled for the kind of covert colonialism that satisfies the Crusader countries," the book says. "Likewise, their occupation of Muslim Palestine stems from the belief that they cannot give it up, or else they would be apostates from their Judaism, exactly like the Arab rulers were apostates from Islam to which they belonged … ."
Al-Qaida's website had disappeared from the Internet, MEMRI said, after the killing of its director, Sheikh Yousef Al-Ayyeri, in early June in Saudi Arabia.
The preface of the book explains the May 12 suicide attack on Western residential housing complexes in Riyadh "was but the opening shot, Allah willing, and the Mujahiddeen had a need for this detailed communiqué to present the reasons for the jihad activity in the Arabian Peninsula and to remove some of the religious and military problems regarding it."
The book calls the 20th century the era of direct colonialism but says a shift took place when the "colonialist states" began to reel under attacks of holy warriors.
"At this point, Zionism intervened, [suggesting] that they would protect the colonialists' interests and rescue them from the complicated situation in which they found themselves," the book says.
The author asserts the "Zionist media and the collaborating media" have distorted the Palestinian conflict and neutralized non-Arab Muslims by calling it "the Arab issue."
But the Palestinian Authority also comes under harsh criticism.
"The establishment of the Palestinian state wrested the issue even from [the hands of] the countries of confrontation, and made it an issue of the Palestinian state and its treacherous government, headed by the vilest of agents ever in history – Yasser Arafat, who will get what he deserves from Allah … ."
The book contends the "feeble armies" of these Muslim nations are unable to stand up to American "aggression."
"The sensitivity of [Saudi Arabia as the land of the two holy places] requires it to have a powerful army," the book says, but Saudi Arabia has "squandered money it could have spend on its defense, and therefore, "when the country felt endangered by Saddam the rulers simply announced that the army was incapable of defending the country and brought in, in an act that was a precedent of its kind, the American Crusader armies in fortified bases, on the pretext of defending the country … ."
The books says jihad is the solution.
"Even if the religion [of Islam] were not stirring the Muslims to fight America, their crimes would be enough to arouse in [Muslims] the courage and gallantry to retaliate," the book says. [For] the Muslim countries in this situation – jihad is what they need more than anything else, except food and water. Jihad is ... a commandment that applies personally to every Muslim."
The book says while there may be disagreement about which group is more worthy to wage jihad against – the "apostate traitor agents," the Arab governments, or the "colonialist enemy" America – "there need be no disagreement that jihad is the solution for dealing with both of them."
Anyone who cannot join al-Qaida, the book says, is not exempt from jihad, but must do "everything possible to search for jihad" as he would "search for a medical specialist for a dread disease for someone dear to him."
Explaining to those who ask why Riyadh was attacked, the book notes Islamic religious texts "command fighting all polytheists," quoting Allah in the Quran, who says, "When the four months in which fighting is forbidden have passed, fight the polytheists everywhere you find them … ."
"We found the Americans in Riyadh, and killed them in Riyadh," the book says.
Al-Qaida's strategy in its "war with America" is to expand the "battle arena," according to the author.
"This strategy has priceless advantages; the enemy who had only his country to defend realized that he now must defend his enormous interests in every country."
The book concedes the strategy might cause some damage to Muslims but says "this happens all the time, and in every jihad."
"The Afghans suffered long years of war because they stood up to the communist invasion that sought to conquer, among other things, the land of the two holy places, and that even managed to set foot in the southern Arabian Peninsula by means of the communist country in Southern Yemen that is now extinct," the book says.
The May 12 attack in Riyadh "reminded the Americans that they cannot dream of security before the Muslims in Palestine experience it, and before all Crusader countries leave the peninsula of the Prophet Muhammad."
The book laments the Saudis agreed to allow the American complexes "in the land of the two holy places" to be part of the U.S., thus permitting "religious freedom" on Saudi soil.
"There are churches there, bars, dance clubs, mixed swimming pools, and all sorts of heresy," it says. "They are not subject to [Islamic] religious law; furthermore, they are not subject to the sovereignty of the [Saudi] government itself. The police and security forces do not enter there, and neither does the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice," the Saudi religious police.
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