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In a first, militant group Al Qaeda has mentioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi in its new propaganda video. The nine-minute video, whose authenticity has not yet been established, shows the terrorist group’s South Asia head Maulana Asim Umar claiming many people, including Modi, and entities like French satire newspaper Charlie Hebdo and the World Bank, are “waging a war against Muslims”.
The video titled ‘From France to Bangladesh: The Dust Will Never Settle Down’ was posted on many online forums for jihadists on Saturday, according to SITE, a US website that monitors extremist groups.
“Through the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, drone attacks, Charlie Hebdo’s writings... and Narendra Modi’s speeches, which call for Muslims to be burnt alive — this is the same war,” Asim Umar said in the video.
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The video is believed to have been made and released by Al Qaeda’s own production house As Sahab. The militant group also claimed responsibility for the murder of US blogger Avijit Roy in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in February this year, besides some others in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Roy, an atheist writer and activist, was hacked to death with machetes on the streets of Dhaka as he was returning from a book fair with his wife.
“Like the companions of the Prophet who defended him with their lives,” Umar was quoted as having said in a statement released online on Sunday, “the mujahideen of Al Qaeda have despatched to hell many who blasphemed against God, and insulted the Prophet.”
The other ‘blasphemers’ who he claimed to have killed include Mohammad Shakil Auj, an Islamic scholar shot dead in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2014, and Rajib Haider, another blogger killed in a machete attack in Dhaka in 2013.
Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri had announced the creation of the South Asia branch, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, or AQIS, in September 2014.
According to reports, Al Qaeda is struggling to regain its dominance as the world’s largest terrorist group, especially in the wake of the newly formed Islamic State’s (IS) rise. IS has been reportedly attracting the youth from across the world, including the US, Canada, and India.
