Al-Qaida video features Trump
Group in Somalia uses call to ban Muslims as recruitment tool.
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Al-Qaida’s East African affiliate has released a recruitment video targeting American blacks and Muslims that includes a clip of presidential candidate Donald Trump calling for Muslims to be banned from entering the United States.
The 51-minute video by the Somalia-based al-Shabab militant group presents the U.S. as a country of institutionalized racial discrimination against blacks that also persecutes Muslims. The video presents radical Islam as the solution.
The clip of Trump on the campaign trail consists of his infamous proposal for the “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” to protect the country.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had earlier claimed that the Islamic State group, another extremist organization, was using such quotes to recruit followers, prompting Trump to call her a “liar.”
The video released by alShabab appeared to be the first time that Trump was featured in jihadi recruitment material.
Representatives for the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment Friday.
The quotes from Trump are bracketed by a recorded speech from Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, one of the most prominent English-language recruiters for al-Qaida, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011, warning that the U.S. would turn against its Muslims.
The video was released Friday on Twitter, according to the SITE Intel monitoring group, and tells the story of several Americans from Minnesota who joined al-Shabab and were killed in the fighting in Somalia, holding them up as examples.
Using footage from recent racial conflicts in the U.S. as well as historic quotes from Malcolm X, the video lays out the argument that blacks and Muslims will always face discrimination in the U.S. and should join jihadi movements to fight back.
Citing “historical injustices” against African-Americans, including police brutality and racial profiling, the video urged them to convert to Islam and engage in jihad at home or abroad.
Using footage of Awlaki, the video also said the United States was gripped by a “malignant hatred” of Islam. It warned American Muslims that “there are ominous clouds gathering in your horizon.”
“Yesterday, America was a land of slavery, segregation, lynching and Ku Klux Klan, and tomorrow, it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps,” Awlaki said in the footage.
Al-Shabab is fighting the internationally-backed Somali government. It was pushed out of Mogadishu in 2011 with the help of African Union troops, but has carried out numerous guerrilla attacks in Somalia and the countries that contributed troops.
Trump, who is leading in polls in the race to be the Republican candidate in next year’s presidential election, has been rebuked by both Democratic and Republican candidates for his December proposal to ban Muslims.
Clinton’s campaign declined to comment on the video.
Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser in President Barack Obama’s administration, said he won’t comment on any particular presidential candidate’s remarks, but the administration has long warned that terrorist organizations will take advantage of any notion that the U.S. is at war with Islam.
Rhodes said he would hope that Americans send a message that rejects the notion that the U.S. and Islam are at war, and instead emphasize the contributions of Muslim-Americans.
“We’re at war with terrorists. We’re not at war with Islam,” Rhodes said. “The terrorists want us to act like we’re at war with Islam. That’s how they recruit people.”