The Hit List: Nine Infidels in the Crosshairs

A few weeks ago Al Qaeda published the first issue of a glossy magazine called Inspire. Anwar al-Awlaki — the fugitive Yemeni-American imam who provided spiritual guidance to the Lap Bomber and the Killer Shrink of Fort Hood, among others — is reported to be the brains behind the new publication.

The cover of the magazine features a hit list of nine enemies of Islam who deserve death:

Molly Norris: the American cartoonist who originated the idea for “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day”, and later apologized for her disrespect of Islam.

Carsten Juste: the former editor-in-chief of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published the infamous Mohammed cartoons.

Flemming Rose: the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, who commissioned the Mohammed cartoons in September 2005.

Kurt Westergaard: the Danish cartoonist who drew the most iconic and widely-known of the Mohammed cartoons, the “Turban Bomb”.

Lars Vilks: the Swedish artist who enraged Muslim sentiments with a series of drawings depicting “The Prophet as a Roundabout Dog”.

Ulf Johansson (misspelled by Inspire): the editor of Nerikes Allehanda, the Swedish regional newspaper that was the first mainstream media outlet to publish one of Lars Vilks’ “Modoggies”.

Salman Rushdie: the Pakistani-British novelist who published The Satanic Verses and thereby earned himself a death fatwa from the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: a Somali-born apostate from Islam who served in the Dutch parliament and is now an author and anti-Islamic activist in the United States.

Geert Wilders (misspelled by Inspire): an anti-Islamization Dutch parliamentarian and the leader of the most popular party in the Netherlands, who caused international controversy by producing the movie Fitna in 2008.

Notice that all of the targeted people are artists and writers who speak the truth about radical Islam and/or mock it. Not all of them entered the fray deliberately; Molly Norris, for example, had no idea what she was getting into. At the other extreme is Lars Vilks, who deliberately set about testing the limits of what could be done in Sweden’s art world, with full knowledge of the likely result.

Inspire is obviously aimed at Muslims or Muslim sympathizers in the West. The Muslim Brotherhood’s game plan involves threatening, suing, ostracizing, intimidating, and — if necessary — exterminating all prominent people who create works of art that are considered defamatory of Islam. The jihadis are applying the same strategy simultaeously all over the West, from Brisbane to Berkeley, from Helsinki to Houston.

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article from De Telegraaf about the threat from Inspire as it applies to Geert Wilders:

Wilders threatened in Al Qaeda glossy

by Bart Olmer

Geert Wilders has again been threatened with death by Al Qaeda. The PVV politician, along with others, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is mentioned on a “hit list” in the Muslim terrorists’ glossy magazine “Inspire”.^[1]

The English-language magazine was probably published by Anwar al-Awlaki, a leading Al Qaeda member in Yemen, and focuses on radical Muslims in Europe and North America, including among other things a manual for the do-it-yourself making of bombs at home. Anwar Al-Awlaki is viewed as a principal for the [failed] bomb attack on the flight from Schiphol to Detroit by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Hit list

Wilders’ name, albeit with the misspelled name “Girt”, appears in the professional-looking magazine on a “hit list,” above a picture of a golden gun and under the text “The dust will never settle.” On this page, also the names of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, author Salman Rushdie and others are mentioned. ^[2]

In reaction, Wilders said he was shocked by the threat. “It is no mean feat to be mentioned in an Al Qaeda magazine with a gun underneath. This is awful. It of course is obviously not meant to send flowers, but to hurt people.”

The heavily protected PVV leader is worried about his safety. Earlier this month the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf revealed that undercover officers from the Special Security Missions Brigade (BSB), a special unit of the Royal Military Police, had recently managed to smuggle a gun into the Wilders’ office, within the offices of the protected PVV group in the Parliament Buildings in the Hague. “All the more reason to be vigilant,” Wilders said. “I assume that security has become more alert now.” Of the four BSB tests, to check the security in the parliament buildings, two succeeded. Meanwhile, the security has been tightened.

Notes:

[1]		The entire magazine is online (pdf, text, etc) here.