Trump Features in Militant Recruitment Video

al-Shabab video is aimed at US audience
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 2, 2016 6:47 AM CST
Trump Features in Militant Recruitment Video
Donald Trump speaks at a campaign stop in Hilton Head Island, SC, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015.   (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)

Donald Trump's call for a "complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the US has made it into a jihadist recruitment video. The video released Friday by Somalian al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab focuses on racial issues in the US and features video of Trump's speech sandwiched between old clips of militant leader Anwar al-Awlaki warning that the US would turn against its Muslim citizens, reports Reuters. "Yesterday, America was a land of slavery, segregation, lynching, and Ku Klux Klan, and tomorrow, it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps," says al-Awlaki, an American citizen who was killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen.

The video, which cites recent police shootings in the US, urges African-Americans to convert to Islam and fight either overseas or at home, reports the New York Times, which notes that this appears to be the first time Trump has featured in a militant video, despite what Hillary Clinton claimed during a debate last month. ISIS and al-Qaeda are rivals, but the recruitment video linked to the latter group has been gaining traction among ISIS-linked groups online, CBS reports. (Authorities say an American convert to Islam planned an ISIS-inspired New Year's Eve attack on a bar in western New York.)

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