Al-Qaeda’s new video charges Modi, World Bank of war against Muslims

Al-Qaeda’s latest video titled ‘From France to Bangladesh: The Dust Will Never Settle Down’, has mentioned India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has said that a war has been going on against Muslims through Mr Modi’s utterances. The video has singled out the World Bank and IMF policies, drone attacks and French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s writings for anti-Muslim activities.

The nine-minute video, featuring Maulana Asim Umar, Al-Qaeda’s Indian Sub-continent chief (AQIS), owned up responsibility of several recent attacks, in which it killed six prominent writers and intellectuals in Pakistan and Bangladesh, including Bangladeshi blogger Avijit Roy, and three others – Oyasiqur Rahman Babu, Rajib Haider and AKM Shafiul Islam.

The video said that the group had recently eliminated several blasphemers of the prophet and insulters of the Islamic law. The AQIS also claimed that the group was also responsible for killing Muhammad Shakil Auj (who was the dean of Islamic Studies at the University of Karachi, in 2014) and Aniqa Naz.

The video further went on to claim that all the earlier executions were carried out by the different branches of Al-Qaeda, said to be operational in 40 different countries, on instructions of the group leader Shaykh Ayman al-Zawahiri. It said that all these executions were a part of their commitments to fulfill the “oath of Sheikh Osama bin Laden (may Allah have mercy on him).”

Umar said in the videos that several countries including France, Denmark, Bangladesh, Pakistan, enemies of prophet were slandering him with words which didn’t go down well with the followers of Allah. He also paid tribute to Sulaiman, a Bangladeshi brother as it called, who “was martyred in a drone strike in Khurasan by the same powers that expressed solidarity with the blasphemers by participating in the march in Paris.”

The Al-Qaeda chief al-Zawahiri had launched AQIS, with an agenda of “seeking to raise the flag of jihad, return Islamic rule, and imposing Sharia across the Indian subcontinent.”

Mr Modi has reacted sharply to the launch of this group by saying that Islamic militants were doing injustice to Indian Muslims. He had said that if anyone thought Indian Muslims would dance to their tunes, they were certainly delusional.

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