San Bernardino attacks latest example of Anwar al-Awlaki’s deadly legacy
Enrique
Marquez was first exposed to the ideas of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2007 by
Syed Rizwan Farook, his next-door neighbor in San Bernardino, Calif. The
new convert to Islam spent hours at Farook’s home listening to Awlaki’s
lectures and reading Inspire magazine, the al-Qaida publication in
English that Awlaki founded.
By
2011, Marquez was plotting to attack a local community college with
Farook, according to the criminal complaint in the case. Earlier this
month, Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, attacked Farook’s workplace,
killing 14 people — using assault rifles Marquez bought for them.
Marquez
and Farook are just the latest in a long line of U.S. terror plotters
who were influenced by the ideas and teachings of Awlaki, an American
Muslim cleric who left the U.S. in 2002 and subsequently rose to the top
ranks of al-Qaida. Awlaki was killed in a CIA-led drone strike five
years ago in Yemen, but his teachings continue to proliferate online.
The Boston Marathon bombing, the attack on military personnel in
Chattanooga, Tenn., the attempted shooting at a “Draw Muhammad” cartoon
contest in Garland, Texas, and several other plots all featured young
men who watched and identified with Awlaki online, after his death.
(Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tweeted before the marathon attack a link to Awlaki’s lectures.
“You will gain an unbelievable amount of knowledge,” he wrote.) Awlaki
has also influenced attackers abroad, including at least one of the
terrorists behind the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.
Why
have so many fallen under the sway of Awlaki? It is in part because he
was a well-respected and popular scholar of Islam long before he turned
radical and joined al-Qaida. He was the imam at a prominent mosque in
Falls Church, Va., for years. His boxed CD lectures on the history of
Islam and its prophets were a hit among devout English-speaking Muslims.
“He
became popular when he was a legitimate preacher of mainstream Islam
and a scholar of sorts, a popularizer,” said Scott Shane, a New York
Times reporter who wrote a book about Awlaki called “Objective Troy.”
“His status as a respectable voice was well-established, and then he
gradually evolved into a spokesman for al-Qaida.”
Once
Awlaki’s lectures turned to jihad, he kept the cool,
reasonable-sounding tone he used in the past to talk about what makes a
good marriage or the history of the prophets of Islam. His past lent
legitimacy to his radical teachings that it was every Muslim’s duty to
wage jihad.
Most of Awlaki’s videos are also in English, which makes him
seem more familiar to Western listeners. His charismatic Internet
sermons, idiomatic English and intuitive grasp of American culture made
him a uniquely seductive figure for those susceptible to radicalization.
“Not
only could he speak English, but he’s American and he understands
American culture,” Steve Stalinsky, the executive director of the Middle
East Media Research Institute think tank, said. “He was easily
relatable.”
Interestingly,
Awlaki’s legacy has not diminished with the rise of ISIS and the
somewhat quieter profile of al-Qaida. In many U.S. ISIS cases, the dead
cleric is “lurking in the background,” according to Shane.
One of the
Garland, Texas, attackers, Elton Simpson, was in touch with an ISIS
recruiter online, but his Twitter avatar photo was of Awlaki. The other,
Nadir Hamid Soofi, had given his mother a boxed set of Awlaki CDs
before the attempted May 2015 attack.
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