He's back. "Part II" of Ayman al-Zawahiri's Q&A was released earlier today (the Clearinghouse has a link). There's no English transcript yet. However, the Combating Terrorism Center has just posted their analysis of "Part I" of Zawahiri's Q&A. It will give you a good idea of the content of the original.
Zawahiri has been in "teaching" mode for quite some time, and the Q&A style of this and his last As-Sahab product only continues this pattern. I'm not sure what motivated him to take on this role, but he obviously saw a need to publicly defend and develop Al Qaeda's teaching on a whole range of topics. This is perhaps the best way to maintain the immediacy and relevance of their movement.
The Q & A or dialog was a common form of philosophical and religious discourse in classical times. Early Christian apologists used it when countering pagan criticism, and it was "resurrected" during the Muslim conquest of eastern Christendom. Muslim apologists and dawahist borrowed it from their Christian antagonists, and it is still a common rhetorical tool used in dawah. Zawahiri's "interview" videos are just Q&A dialogs in another format.
I would caution Western analysts from reading too much into this. A life lead at the margins (ie. liminal) is one that is often seen as a struggle that you are always losing, a "long defeat." In that sense, as long as Zawahiri is alive he's going to lament that few true Muslims support the mujahideen's efforts (you can read the same laments in Azzam's work). He's going to challenge the positions of mainstream scholars like Qaradawi (Qutb did the same thing for the scholars of his time). And he's going to call young men to join his jihad by lamenting how few do so (this is a common refrain in practically every work of Salafist-jihadist apologetics).
Instead, it's probably best to see Zawahiri's new audio as yet another opportunity for him to teach. This is long-term strategic work. Zawahiri is building the ideological foundations for a new generation (or "house," a common use of the word in the Middle Ages) and every question thrown out at him gives him a new section of the house to build.
UPDATE: Come to think of it, looking at the bouncy .gif announcement, it's absolutely clear now that Dr. Z intends to "teach" his dawah with this Q&A. It's all in his hand gesture, so common among the dawah images seen in practically every "current" of the Salafist movement.
UPDATE 2: Click on the image to see it bounce.
Comments