WASHINGTON // Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri has denounced what he said was a dishonest propaganda campaign by rival extremists ISIL against his organisation.
He made his complaint in an audio message which was found and translated by US-based watchdog the SITE Intelligence Group.
In the message, the Egyptian extremist accuses ISIL leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi of slandering his group.
Al Qaeda, founded by the late Osama bin Laden, is battling ISIL – which sprang from Al Qaeda’s Iraqi faction – for leadership of a global so-called holy war. In his message, the 65-year-old Zawahiri complained that Al Baghdadi had alleged that Al Qaeda opposes sectarian attacks on Shiites and was prepared to work with Christian leaders.
“The liars insist upon their falsehood, to the extent that they claimed we do not denounce Shiites,” Al Zawahiri said, according to the translation of the message, which was released by Al Qaeda’s media arm.
Al Zawahiri denied he had said that Christians could be partners in the governance of a future Islamic caliphate, having only said that they could go about their affairs within it.
“What I have said is that they are partners in the land, such as agriculture, trade, and money, and we keep their privacy in it, in accordance with the laws of our Sharia,” he said.
And he insisted he had not called for Shiite Muslims to be spared, but had suggested focusing attacks on Shiite-led Iraqi forces and not on random atrocities against civilians.
“I had told them several times to stop explosions in markets, husseiniyats and mosques, and to concentrate on military, security and police forces and Shiite militiamen,” he said.
A husseiniyat is a Shiite place of worship and Shiite religious militias have given their backingto the Iraqi security forces, in their battle against ISIL.
But both ISIL and Al Qaeda have carried out hundreds of attacks on civilian targets, but some Al Qaeda propaganda has called for less indiscriminate tactics.
Al Zawahiri also denied Al Baghdadi’s charge that Al Qaeda had supported former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi.
The Al Qaeda leader, who took charge after Bin Laden was killed by US commandos in 2011, is thought to be somewhere in Pakistan’s unruly border region hiding from a global manhunt.
He communicates with the group’s remaining supporters through semi-regular video lectures, reiterating – as in his latest message – the need to target the United States.
* Agence France Presse
