Newsletter No. 989
News-Analysis
April 23, 2008

 

AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI RENEWS THE AL-QAIDA THREAT TOWARD JAPAN

On the 21st a new audiotape was posted on websites in which Al-Qaida’s Number Two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, responded to questions that had been posed to him by the media. Included in this were responses that Al-Zawahiri gave to questions from Kyodo News. Asked about Japan and if it was still an Al-Qaida target, Al-Zawahiri responded to this effect:

My answer is: Yes! We believe that any country that participated in the aggression on Muslims must be deterred… Japan provided the so-called assistance under the flag of the Crusader coalition as part of the propaganda for the Crusader forces invading the homelands of Islam. It did not provide this assistance through charitable organizations and thus it is participating in the Crusader campaign against the lands of Islam… Why did the Japanese start the aggression on us within the alliance of the Americans? ...If Japan had given up their arms, why did it send troops to our lands under the flag of the Crusader campaign? …Our Islamic faith incites us to resist despots and tyrants, even if they were the most powerful force on earth... Will Japan learn a lesson from this? I advise Japan to end its alliance with the United States, which has occupied, looted, humiliated, and bombed them with nukes.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura downplayed Al-Zawahiri’s remarks when responding to reporters: “I have heard that there was such a posting on websites. It is nothing new as there were similar postings before, so I believe it is not something to be so surprised about.” He then went on to suggest that the Japanese government needed to keep a closer eye on foreigners in the country and tighten domestic controls. He specifically mentioned that security for the July G-8 Summit would be enhanced even further.

For our earlier analysis of Ayman al-Zawahiri and Japan, please refer to Shingetsu Newsletter No. 97 from October 2005.

COMMENTARY

1) From Michael Laffan of Princeton University on April 23, 2008:

A question on translation here:

While I have often heard supposedly educated people (including ambassadors and presidents) pronounce nuclear as 'nukiller,' or speak casually of nukes, I have never come across an informal Arabic equivalent of the latter. While not seeking to deny the existence of Al-Qaida and their bombastic rhetoric about Zionist-Crusader alliances, this seems fishy to me, especially as Bin Ladin and Al-Zawahiri seem to go in for very formal language in their announcements. Is this something to do with the quote being a translation from a Japanese source?

2) From Michael Penn of the Shingetsu Institute on April 23, 2008:

Since Michael Laffan has raised a question about translation, I think it would be useful to clarify why that word 'nukes' appears in this Newsletter in an Arabic to English text. My own Arabic skills have deteriorated to the point that I can no longer do any of that translation myself. (In the early 1990s I probably could have, but my years in Japan have not been kind to my former Arabic language studies). The translation that appears in this Newsletter comes primarily from Kyodo News. Michael Laffan is therefore probably correct that the translator might be Japanese. In any case, the choice of the word 'nukes' was theirs.

If someone finds -- in this Newsletter or another one -- that our translations might not be optimal, we will always welcome corrections from the membership.