Periodical Review: Summary from the Jihadi Forums – The First Half of September 2012
This report summarizes notable events discussed on Jihadi Web forums during the first half of September 2012. Following are the main points covered in the report:
• Ayman Al-Zawahiri calls on mujahideen and Muslims to focus their efforts on liberating Palestine through da’wa [proselytizing] and jihad. Once Syria has become an Islamic state, he believes, it will serve as a base from which mujahideen can infiltrate Israel.
• In a video clip, Ayman Al-Zawahiri confirms the death of senior Al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahya Al-Libi, adding that his death will fuel jihad against the US and the West.
• Al-Qaeda issues a videotaped appeal by Jewish American Warren Weinstein, whom it abducted in Pakistan in August 2011, to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to mitigate for his release, as the US has failed in this.
• Al-Qaeda issues a video clip on the eleventh anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
• Following the release of the anti-Islamic movie, “Innocence of Muslims”, global jihad groups threaten Western, especially US, targets.
• The Islamic State of Iraq takes responsibility for a series of murderous attacks to avenge the execution of Sunni prisoners, in which more than 90 Iraqi soldiers met their deaths. The group promised that this was only the beginning.
• The Salafi-jihadist Coordinating Councils of Ansar Al-Sharia in Morocco is officially established on September 7, 2012. This is one more in a series of Islamist groups that, since the advent of the Arab Spring, have sprouted up in places where they had never before existed.
