A screenshot from the Winter 2014 issue of Inspire magazine
The latest issue of al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine includes notes referencing the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, and suggests that a March gas explosion that leveled two Harlem apartment buildings may have not been an accident.
The Winter 2014 issue — an “open source jihad special” — is largely devoted to lauding recent “lone mujahid” attacks and encouraging future lone wolves, as the U.S. government calls them, to try a new al-Qaeda recipe for a bomb they claim can fool airport security.
The slick publication from Al-Malahem Media, the media arm of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, features a jetliner on the cover plowing through stormy clouds, with the headline “Neurotmesis: Cutting the nerves and isolating the head” — stressing that the “main goal” of 9/11 was “economy hemorrhage.”
The Ferguson message comes on a catch-all “Mujahid’s Notes” page, which contains random musings on attacks and news headlines.
“I can’t breath. Don’t Shoot. A toy gun. – If I am Afro-American living in Ferguson … I’d rather be labelled a terrorist,” reads one note, singled out in red font among other black-font notes.
“Ferguson: killed for being killed. – Gaza: killed for willing to kill. -US Soldier: killed for being killers,” reads another note.
Another note features a picture that appears to be from the protests – showing a sign that reads “Don’t shoot I’m just a young black man walking” — and a quote from the movie Malcolm X: “You’re not an American. You are the victim of America! You didn’t have a choice coming here. He didn’t say: Black man, black woman, come over and help me build America. He said, N-r, get in the boat. I’m taking you over there to help me build America. Being born here does not make you an American. I am not an American, you are not American. You’re one of the 22 million black people…who are victims of America. …Ain’t no democracy there. We’ve never seen democracy. All we’ve seen is hypocrisy. We don’t see any American dream. We’ve experienced only the American nightmare.”
A few pages later: “If American policemen kill their own people for just being young black men, imagine what they have done with Muslims in Afghānistān and Irāq?”
The “Mujahid Notes” page features a photo of Zale Thompson wielding a hatchet before attacking a group of NYPD officers in Queens in October. One officer was struck in the head and another in the arm before Thompson was shot dead. Thompson, 32, was a recent convert to Islam.
“Mujahid’s Creed,” the al-Qaeda magazine titles his photo.
The page lists attacks including Alton Nolen beheading a co-worker in Oklahoma and Ali Muhammad Brown, who was given probation in 2004 after being busted by the FBI for trying to fundraise for foreign fighters and killed four this year.
Notched into the list of these and other attacks is a photo of the deadly Harlem explosion, blamed on an old gas main by the city.
“Do research,” reads the accompanying note. “Case study: Harlem gas explosion. Reference: Inspire Issue 4 [05].”
That Winter 2010 issue included an article from the bombmaker — the “AQ Chef” — on how to destroy buildings with minimal suspicion.
The article explains in detail how to rent an apartment on a lower corner of a building to maximize the chance that the building will fall, how to use a lamp with a clock circuit to ignite leaking gas, and how to cause a gas leak. “Try to have the explosion appear as an accident,” the 2010 article stated.
The newest issue was so recently composed that it includes President Obama’s prisoner swap with Cuba before he left for Christmas break.
The magazine hails Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hassan as conducting an “inghimaasi” attack — “immersing oneself deep into enemy lines to inflict damage or attain Shahada” — and lauds the lone jihadists as “scattered Mujahideen” whose effects can be powerful enough to “surpass that of the first legion,” or rank-and-file members of terrorist organizations.
The issue features an extensive tutorial on airline security steps and how to evade them, with a step-by-step recipe to construct a “hidden bomb” of potassium chlorate from boiled-down matchsticks and black seed encased in a plastic water bottle cloaked in silicone. It gives a recipe using eggshells to get the acetone needed for the detonator, then suggests making a “good cheese and tomato frittata” for breakfast out of the eggs after bomb-making.
As specific air targets, the magazine single outs American Airlines, United, Delta, Continental, British Airways, Easy Jet, and Air France. It also suggests assassinating high-profile economic targets such as Bill Gates.
Trying to make sure that lone jihadists claim responsibility for an attack, Inspire advocates writing a timed email “before departure in such the email is sent a day or two after you have carried out the operation. The timing service is available in the net. Write down who you are and what your motives are.”
The magazine also features Obama next to verses of “Humpty Dumpty” with the words “a cold diss” at the bottom of the page.
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