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Al-Zawahiri in New Video Message: Why Don’t Al-Azhar ‘Ulama Announce a General Strike, To Continue Until Siege on Gaza Is Lifted?
On November 28, 2008, the Al-Qaeda media company Al-Sahab posted a video interview it conducted recently with Al-Qaeda deputy leader Al-Zawahiri, in which Al-Zawhahiri called on the Egyptian people, officials, students and ‘ulama to pressure their government to lift the siege on Gaza by declaring a general strike.
In this strike, he said, students would not attend school and workers would not go to work. Al-Zawahiri also called upon the ‘ulama of Al-Azhar to be independent again and to lead the ummah against the “Zionist-Crusader campaign.”
He labels Al-Azhar “the lair of the lions” which produced scholars who lead the campaign against the British occupation -unlike scholars such Tantawi whom he labeled “the darkness of Al-Azhar” because they subjected themselves to the regime.
In the interview, Al-Zawahiri expressed his hope in the Egyptian people, saying: “The nation [i.e., Egypt] which produced people like… Khalid Al-Islambouli [i.e., the assassin of Sadat]… and Muhammad ‘Atta [one of the 19 9/11 hijackers], is [certainly] able to produce thousands more like them… and the people [i.e., Egyptians] who refuse to beg others for the freedom of their nation… are [certainly] ready to sacrifice themselves [in order to obtain it]…”
Al-Zawahiri attributed the U.S.'s current economic predicament to the 9/11 attacks; to capitalism, which he said was based on “practices such as usury and fraud”; and to what he defines as “the unjust policy followed by America and its allies against Muslims… and the hopeless Crusades waged by America and its allies.”
He added that the only way for America to reduce its economic losses was by stopping “the war on terror and their Crusade in Afghanistan and Iraq which [have caused them] a flood of losses…” and stressed that Muslims who invest their money in Western markets were transgressing Islamic law and should instead invest only in Islamic markets.
Posted at: 2008-11-28
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