“There has been some controversy over the Muslim Brotherhood reaction to the death of Osama Bin Laden. So I thought it’d be useful to translate their Arabic press release and explain what’s going on.” -Ibn Larry

Statement from the Muslim Brotherhood on the Assassination of Sheikh Osama Bin Laden (May 2, 2011)

The entire world and especially Muslims have experienced and been concerned by a malicious media campaign that conflates Islam with terrorism and describes Muslims as violent since connecting the events of September 11th to Al Qaeda.

Today, the American President announced that special forces from the American Marines successfully assassinated Osama Bin Laden, a woman, and children along with a number of companions. We now find ourselves facing a new situation.

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By Joshua Keating

“ABC scores the inevitable post-OBL interview with Gary Faulkner, the Colorado man who achieved international notoriety last year when he was arrested by Pakistani authorities trying to cross the Afghan border armed with only a samurai sword on a religious inspired quest to kill the al Qaeda leader. Faulkner response to the news is basically, “I loosened it”:

“I had a major hand and play in this wonderful thing, getting him out of the mountains and down to the valleys… Someone had to get him out of there. That’s where I came in,” Gary Faulkner of Greeley, Colorado, told ABC News. “I scared the squirrel out of his hole, he popped his head up and he got capped.

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“Arab reaction to the killing of Osama bin Laden is only in its infancy less than 48 hours after President Obama announced the event itself to the world. To draw conclusions about how the strike will impact US-Arab relations or the future of Islamist terrorist groups would be premature. However three major Arab media reactions have appeared thus far in response to the strike on Osama bin Laden.

1) Reaction is not monolithic. “The Arabs” have a diverse range of opinions on the strike, as do their editorialists.

2) Osama Bin Laden is widely seen as a symbol rather than a threat. Editorials across the political spectrum discuss Osama Bin Laden’s role as a symbol which the US used to prosecute the War on Terror. This is a critical difference from the Western media, who portray Bin Laden as a “terrorist mastermind.”

3) The strike evokes a fear of American power. Many editorials are cynical about the way in which the US used Osama Bin Laden as an excuse to prosecute the War on Terror. At the heart of this cynicism is a fear of the ease and impunity with which the US executed the strike.

The Arab media largely does not support Bin Laden, but they hesitate to commend the use of American power which was required to kill him. While necessary, the force used in the strike was something out of an action movie. For some Arabs, this hearkens back to the cowboy-ish rhetoric and policies of the Bush administration, evoking fear and a mistrust of the West.

http://thecamelsnose.blogspot.com/2011/05/bin-laden-arabic-editorials-post-2-of-2.html

“He died in his style of “Leader of the Mujahideen” in his luxury house, and not on the battlefield, or in Jihad…he died with his wife, and three individuals, the opposite of how he had betrayed our people, and the Muslim people whom he sent to die one after the next for years, he and the sheikhs of evil and terrorists.”
– Tareq al-Homayed

“Finally, Obama was victorious in this epic moment, which is what the previous president George Bush himself [had wanted]. But fortune came to Obama, whom the American far right accused of being “Half-Muslim” or a secret Muslim!”
– Mashary al-Zaidi

“It was strange when yesterday Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas movement, in response to the announcement of the death of Bin Laden, described him as a Mujahid and condemned his killing, since we had not heard before that jihad allows randomly killing civilians, explosions, and sabotage.”
– Ali Ibrahim

http://thecamelsnose.blogspot.com/2011/05/arab-editorial-roundup-post-1-of-2.html

“To clash with the Arab regimes is not an integral path in al-Qaeda’s program which turned from Jihad of the near enemy (systems) to the far enemy (the United States).”
– Yasser al-Za’atra

http://thecamelsnose.blogspot.com/2011/05/arab-editorial-roundup-post-1-of-2.html

“Even before [the assassination], he was not the key man in the organization because al-Qaeda operates on ideas, not on its structure. The first beneficiary will be President Obama who will be very much assisted by this in his election campaign to be re-elected for a second term!”
– Hilmi Asmar

“They did not stop Bin Laden for over ten years and his name became a symbol of the danger to America and the West, until the day came when the American “knights of windmills” [Don Quixote reference] killed Bin Laden, and they terrorized the American people with his name for over a decade…It saves the popularity of President Obama who enjoys popularity today at a level unreached by an American president. And the President’s popularity increased after the news of salvation from Bin Laden, which could prove the foundation for his reelection in a year and a half…”
– Rakan al-Mujali

http://thecamelsnose.blogspot.com/2011/05/arab-editorial-roundup-post-1-of-2.html

Below is a taste of the reactions from members of some of the major pro-jihadi forums:

Although bin Laden’s death is a large symbolic victory for the United States, one cannot forget that this fight is against an ideology – jihadism – that is bigger than one individual or an organization, which an online activist picked up on.

“Mashallah the whole nation is celebrating the death of one man. Shaykh Osama was a true lion.”

The celebrations in American cities of the news also drew jihadi scorn. “Just look at those beer-drinking, hog-eating, incestuous, red-necks, uncle sams, house negros…all celebrating outside the White House,” one commenter wrote. “It’s like a holiday for them. Really a sad bunch of people. I’m just waiting for the Chocolaty Muslims, Talafies [fake Salafi Muslims], and those borderline murtad[apostates]/moderates to join the ugly bandwagon of cheering this so-called victory.”

Another opined, looking down on Americans: “The celebrations are amusing. Cheer all you want kuffar, you only have a limited amount of time in this dunya [present world] in which to do it. And then you will see the reality of this life.”

Forum participants also warned Americans that they should be careful what they wish for: “please let them celebrate, they are celebrating their own end. Osama is in the heart of every Muslim, even those who don’t admit publicly … Oh Allah send them endless tornados to destroy their homes and earthquakes to crash them.”

Ultimately, though, some jihadis tried to bring sobriety to the jubilant conversations in the forum threads that Bin Laden was a true shahid (martyr). One stated: “Why can’t people admit [bin Laden] was killed? He is a human being, not a prophet. Another man will replace his shoes, it’s easy.” And it is apparent that for some, the fight is far from over. “We renew our pledge of allegiance with the Covenant and the first with the Lord to continue our path until the end,” he declared. “We will continue .. We will continue .. We will continue ..”

http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/05/02/the_bin_laden_aftermath_the_internet_jihadis_react

“US military warboffins claim that they have found one of the internet’s holiest grails – that of true, tagless searchable-video technology.

For most of us, searching a video archive is a chancy matter. The perfect piece of footage we want to see may well be in there, but the only chance of finding it is usually that a person has already seen it and attached suitable text for a search engine to index and find for us.

This is a particularly major snag for the US military and intelligence communities, whose fleets of drone aircraft, aerostat balloons, satellites etc produce a flood of full-motion surveillance video which is usually seen once by a human being at best – often not at all – before pouring away into the secret archives.

Hence the war-boffins of DARPA naturally sought to develop wonder-software which could work with the actual video itself and highlight “specific events or activities at specific locations or over a range of locations” or carry out “fast, content-based searches of existing video archives”.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/03/darpa_virat_works/