'Dubious' Video of Al-Qaida Chief al-Zawahiri Released

Yesterday, Al-Qaeda released a 38:28-minute video of their chief Ayman al-Zawahiri entitled: "An Advice for the United Ummah concerning the reality of the United Nations." The speech is subtitled in English.

In the video, he attacks the UN and its agencies as instruments to override Shari'a law and therefore joining the organization means renunciation of Shari'a and recognizing Israel, since it is a UN member state.

Although he didn't mention the Taliban seems his most probably they are the intended target although he didn't mention them. In September, the terrorist group which is now ruling Afghanistan nominated @suhailshaheen1 as their ambassador to the UN.

Their relations with the UN have been controversial among jihadists with some calling on them to reject the international organisation  and any other "infidel states" such as China, Russian and Iran.

Al-Zawahiri stated that the UN is not an organization for international cooperation but rather an organization created to control the world and to impose on it an irreligious and immoral ideology that contradicts the Islamic Shariah.

"Accepting UN membership implies accepting adjudication by laws other than the Islamic Shariah and hence the total abandonment of the Shariah," he said.

"If a Muslim state were to recognize another Muslim state that gained freedom from the occupation of a UN member state, such as the recognition granted by the Islamic Emirate to the Mujahideen’s gov in Chechnya, this would be considered unlawful as per UN Charter," al-Zawahiri asserted, adding that "A state that signs the UN Charter agrees to unite its efforts with the disbelievers to fulfill these aims that conflict with the rulings of the Shariah,"

However there  were doubts about when the video was actually recorded as jihadism specialist and BBC Monitoring  Editorial Lead/Team Manager, Mina al-Lami, tweeted

The realese of the video could be an attempt to quell earlier reports that a-Zawahiri was alive but unwell