Black Americans Recruited by Al-Qaeda
First and foremost a disclaimer: this information did not come from a reputable source. The scare about Al-Qaeda recruiting African Americans as suicide bombers looks to me like a conservative attempt at further fracturing people of color, demonizing Blacks and Muslims, and instigating fear. However, that being said, I think it brings up some very interesting issues for us to discuss here on Blackademics, regardless of the underlying implications or political motives behind the story’s origin. Read the entire article entitled, Blacks recruited for terror by al-Qaida: Pitch to African Americans invokes ‘martyr’ Malcolm X.
This article, which comes from the conservative blog at World Daily News, claims that the most recent translation of Osama Bin Laden’s ‘mixtapes,’ calls upon Blacks in the United States to join Al-Qaeda, referencing none other than the former spokesperson of Nation of Islam, Malcolm X. I found the title of the article to be problematic because they question brother Malcolm’s martyrdom by putting the word martyr in quotations. Malcolm X was a courageous freedom fighter who believed in equality, by any means necessary and died for his beliefs (If you need to refresh your memory on Malcolm X, take a look at our post from his 82nd birthday).
This doctrine of fighting for freedom by any means, including violence if necessary, was also the doctrine of the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, as well as the rebellions of the enslaved. How were the uprisings of Nat Turner or John Brown, (two men who were considered terrorists at the time) different from the armed struggles against imperialism that Al Qaeda has instigated? Some would argue that the ‘war-zones’ of Philadelphia and Baltimore are just as life threatening as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. How do we negotiate terms like ‘freedom,’ ‘democracy,’ and ‘terrorist’ in the context of American imperialism? On the flipside, why would Bin Laden try to affiliate himself with African Americans? With Colin Powell and Condi Rice on his heels doesn’t he understand that our interests aren’t the same?
Published on May 29, 2007 at 10:22 am.
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Filed under news/politics, inter-minority relations, radical politics.
