The Somali al Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabaab released a new recruitment video online on Friday featuring inflammatory sound bites from 2016 Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.
Clocking in at nearly 52 minutes, the propaganda-heavy video features footage of Trump's controversial comments about Muslims—including his desire to create a database for all Muslims living in America and establishing a surveillance system for mosques. The video has been making the rounds on online channels run by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), as CBS News first reported.
In the wake of the San Bernardino shootings, Trump said that as president he would institute "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on."
Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in 2011 and was the first United States citizen targeted and killed by a U.S. drone strike, also appears in the video, waxing on America's fraught racial history. In the clip, al-Awlaki pleads for "Muslims of the West" to stay alert. "Yesterday, America was a land of slavery, segregation, lynching, and Ku Klux Klan," he says. "And tomorrow it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps."
Following Trump's comments, the video cuts back to al-Awlaki, who says: "The West will eventually turn away from its Muslim citizens."
The video was released shortly after Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton's comments in the most recent Democratic debate, suggesting that Trump's incendiary remarks about Muslims could and would be used to recruit jihadis in the future.
"He is becoming ISIS's best recruiter," Clinton said. "They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists." Trump guffawed at the comment, and called it "just another Hillary lie."
As Clinton predicted, this new recruitment video indeed features Trump's remarks as a recruiting tactic.
The clip also contains footage of contentious recent U.S. police shootings, including conflicts in Ferguson and Baltimore, are also features soundbites from 1960s-era civil rights activist Malcolm X, presumably in an attempt to recruit young black Americans.
Trump did not immediately respond to a request by Newsweek for comment about the Al-Shabaab video.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Paula Mejia is a reporter and culture writer. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The A.V. Club, Pitchfork, ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
