Al Qaeda’s number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, recently conducted an online question and answer session on an Islamic web site. You can read Part One of the transcript here, courtesy of Laura Mansfield.
The questions are grouped by topic. The first and largest set of questions consisted of challenges to Zawahiri on al Qaeda’s killing of innocent people (i.e., Muslims). Zawahiri defended his organization stoutly, but it’s interesting to see that this is a hot topic in extremist circles.
One questioner took al Qaeda to task for not doing more on behalf of the Palestinians, which led Zawahiri to defend the organization’s record as a murderer of Jews:
As for the statement of the questioner,
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