After Saudi Crown Prince’s pledge to eliminate Brotherhood, Zawahri defends them
Al-Qaeda’s current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has appeared in a new recording in which he defends the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
The recording broadcasted by al-Sahab, the media arm of the extremist group and posted on social media, showed Zawahiri defending the group which has been classified as a terrorist organization by four countries that include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
His statement has been taken by observers as an important indication of the deep relations and continuous connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda over the years.
Zawahiri began his video with a part of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s 60 Minutes on CBS, in which the Saudi royal promised to eliminate what “remained of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideologies that invaded Saudi schools”.
The fact that Zawahiri defended the Muslim Brotherhood comes as no surprise. He had long described himself as a student for Sayyid Qutb, long considered the spiritual and intellectual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. As he asserted in his book “Knights under the Prophet’s Banner” that the ideas of Qutb and his call represent the beginning of the current “Jihadist Movement", of which the Egyptian Jihadi Movement was born from and which Zawahri first joined before later helping build the world’s largest extremist group through al-Qaeda.
Source: Al Arabiya