Editor’s note: Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin is an online, subscription intelligence news service from the creator of WorldNetDaily.com – a journalist who has been developing sources around the world for the last 25 years.
The Arabic message accompanying the video images of the beheading of 26-year-old Nick Berg by terrorists in Iraq is being described by a translator and expert in Islam and the Quran as a “how-to” training tape for the murder of non-Muslims by other terrorists around the globe, Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin reports.
Whether President Bush is right and the assassin and speaker is al-Qaida ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Joel Cohen, with a master’s degree in Semitic languages from Princeton University and a student of the Quran at the University of Chicago, translated and analyzed the speech delivered following the killing – explaining it is a call for similar acts of slaughter against infidels. The grisly film included a statement, signed off with Zarqawi’s name.
The CIA last week said Zarqawi was probably the one who beheaded Berg.
“The author of the text makes reference to the ‘patience’ of slaughtering,” Cohen tells G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence newsletter published by the founder of WorldNetDaily. “Nick Berg is just an example.”
While parts of the video of the gruesome murder of the American radio tower contractor have been broadcast internationally, strangely the Arabic message accompanying it has not been scrutinized by the Western media. While many have heard Berg introduce himself and his family, fewer have heard the longer, Arabic-language message from the killers.
Cohen points out that, surprisingly, the message has little to do with Berg.
“The author goes at great pains to convince the Ummah (the body of Muslim believers) that the time for negotiations with unbelievers is over,” explains Cohen, who adds the address was carefully crafted rather than delivered impromptu.
He believes the author of the text is an imam or scholar or someone who studied in a maddrassa.
“Are you not fed up with the jihad of the conferences and the battles of giving sermons?” the speaker said. “Has the time not come for you to lift the sword with which the master of the messengers was sent?”
Cohen believes this reference to Islamic conferences is ridiculing the notion that holy war can be waged with sermons and teachings alone.
“He uses this as a pun,” suggests Cohen. “Jihad is supposed to be for the purpose of killing the non-believers and the scholars are using it simply to kill their own ideas. The battles of giving sermons is another pun: The scholars are putting the battle in words when it needs to be in real life in their hands.”
Cohen continues: “This is a full call to arms: Lift the sword. The ‘master of the messengers’ refers to Allah, that is, in the writers mind all the messengers of the past were given the ability to fight the non believers and so to the Ummah has it today.”
“And we hope, that you will not place yourself in a dilemma (after seeing) what we will do, as you usually do to please the American,” continues the Arabic speaker in the tape..
Cohen believes he is clearly offering direction about the way of jihad today – through the example of beheading Berg.
The author introduces his soliloquy by demonstrating he is not nationalistic in his approach, but rather honoring Islam, says Cohen. It is a religious salutation – one designed to show he sees himself as a champion of Allah.
He cites Surah Al Tawbah 9.5 of the Quran, a verse dealing with the battle between the Mushriq (non-believers or pagans) and the Ansar (believers), says Cohen. He is addressing only the Ummah, the body of Muslim believers. It is not a message for non-Muslims.
“What is about to be shown is for their benefit,” Cohen explains.
It is a message of rejoicing, glad tidings and jubilation, not one of anger, he says.
“The tide has turned, and like the battle of Badr, where Muslims were outnumbered, Allah has given them victory,” he says. “Two reasons are given for this rejoicing: The daylight has now come forth, and the winds of victory have come upon them.”
All the glory is given to Allah in the message, Cohen says. The victory is at hand was predestined. The author of the message, he says, is aware that some in the Islamic world are uncomfortable with seeing pictures of Muslims tie bodies around cars and dragging them through the streets of Fallujah.
“The author wishes to comfort those fears and explain that this all was planned in advance and that instead of being uncomfortable, people should rejoice,” he says.
The speaker also directly addresses young people in the maddrassas who are watching the jihad across the world – simply studying Islam on the sidelines and not joining in the killing.
“And how can a free Muslim sleep close-eyed whilst seeing Islaam being slaughtered, and he sees the bleeding of honour, and the images of shame, and the news of satanic abuse on the people of Islam, men and women, in the prison of Abu Ghraib,” he says.
To the writer, what is happening across the world is that Islam itself is under attack, Cohen says. The pictures are simply a part of that attack.
“So where is the jealousy, and where is the zeal, and where is the anger for the religion of Allah?” the speaker asks. “And where is the jealousy over the honor of the Muslims, and where is the revenge taken for the honor of the Muslim males and females in the prisons of the crusaders.”
He implores the elders and the teachers to recognize that the real energy of jihad and Islam is within the youth.
“Has the time not come for you to learn from them the meanings of tawwakul (reliance on Allah), and to seek guidance from their actions lessons in sacrifice and forbearance, until when will you remain like the women, not knowing better than to wail, and not knowing a path except the path of screaming and crying?” exhorts the speaker.
Interestingly, the speaker references United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and Arab League Secretary General Amr Musa.
“So this (scholar) appeals to the free-men of this world, and the other seeks tawwasul (help) from Kofi Annan, and a third calls for help from Amr Musa, and a fourth calls for peaceful demonstrations,” relates the speaker in the tape.
But these all these scholars are all mistaken, explains Cohen. They must not have read Surah 8.35, which is a call to arms. His solution, therefore, is to encourage the scholars to go back to the Quran, which calls for the rising up of the youth and the Ummah to fight and kill.
The speaker describes what is about to happen – the beheading of Berg – as an act of supreme mercy.
“Those who are about to do this act are not savages, but actually are merciful,” says Cohen. The example is what happened at the battle of Badr, where the prisoners were all slaughtered – killed with patience.
The Great Battle of Badr took place on the 17th of Ramadan, two years after the Hijra, says Cohen. This was the first battle that the believers ever engaged in with the disbelievers, and it is, by far, the most famous and most renown. What to do with the prisoners was a major issue for Muhammed and comes out in 8.67-68 in the Quran: “It is not for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war (and free them with ransom) until he had made a great slaughter (among his enemies) in the land. You desire the good of this world (i.e. the money of ransom for freeing the captives), but Allah desires (for you) the Hereafter. And Allah is Allmighty, All Wise. Were it not a previous ordainment from Allah, a severe torment would have touched you for what you took.”
Prisoners of war constituted a problem awaiting resolution because it was a new phenomenon in the history of Islam. Muhammad consulted Abu Bakr and Umar bin Al-Khattab as to what he should do with the prisoners. Abu Bakr suggested that he should ransom them, explaining this by saying: “They are after all our relatives, and this money would give us strength against the disbelievers, moreover, Allah could guide them to Islaam.” Umar advised killing them, saying, “They are the leaders of Kufr (disbelief).”
The Prophet preferred Abu Bakr’s suggestion to that of Umar’s. The following day, Umar called on Muhammad and Abu Bakr to see them weeping. He showed extreme astonishment and inquired about the situation so that he might weep if it was worth weeping, or else he would feign weeping.
“As for you O dog of the Romans Bush, then have tidings of what will displease you, and await with the assistance of Allah for hard days, and you will regret – you, and your soldiers – on the day you set on the soil of Iraq,” the speaker continues.
President Bush is seen as the leader of the Romans, a veiled reference to the Christian concept that the Romans killed Jesus of Nazareth with the help of the Jewish authorities. The usage of this phrase in an Arabic environment is most likely due to the popularity of the “Passion of the Christ” movie, via which the authors may be suggesting that Bush, like the Romans, are led by Jews, and that Islam is now being sacrificed, says Cohen.
The speaker also addresses another world leader – Pakistani President Pervis Musharaf:
“And another message for the treacherous stooge, Pervis Musharaf, then we say to him: We are in the highest of desires, awaiting your soldiers. For by Allah, we will seek them before the Americans, and will avenge for the blood of our brothers in Waana and other than it.”
Having attempted negotiation – the exchange of Berg for prisoners at Abu Graib – the speaker states the only way left is to kill. Thus, the only payment now that is valid is blood.
“So kill the mushrikeen (unbelievers), wherever you see them, take them, and sanction them, and await them at every place,” says the speaker.
Cohen concludes: “I believe people need to be warned of this danger. Obviously Nicholos Berg was not.”
At least one U.S. military intelligence source agrees with Cohen. He says the lesson of the Berg murder is simple: If you are about to be captured by Islamist terrorists resist at all costs.
“Not even one more American should be killed in this manner,” he says. “Better to die fighting back than to be another example.”
He cited a report in WorldNetDaily from September 2002 about an al-Qaida training video discovered in Afghanistan. Analysts who viewed the tape and shared it with law-enforcement personnel around the U.S. concluded that Osama bin Laden’s terrorists are not only planning attacks with weapons of mass destruction but are preparing to kill Americans with drive-by shootings and home break-ins, through ambushes of law-enforcement officers and targeted assassinations on golf courses.
They plan kidnappings in the U.S., too, warn the experts. But they will not be seeking ransoms. Analysts point out that all scenarios involving prisoners and hostages ended in execution. None included plans for negotiated settlements for escape by terrorists.
“They plan to kill the prisoners and die in place,” wrote John Holschen of Insights Training Center, who produced a report on the tape for military and law-enforcement officials.
The Berg video narration climaxes with the citation of Surah al Tawba 9.5, points out Cohen.
“This is very important because that ayat does not have to do necessarily with prisoners,” he says. “In the mind of the writer of this document, it’s simply a call to kill all non-Muslims and those they perceive challenge Islam. By concluding with this ayat, he wants the Ummah to know that Nick Berg is not being killed simply because he is a prisoner. He is being killed because he is not a Muslim.”
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