An al Qaeda affiliate has apparently released a new recruitment video, telling Muslims in America that the country has a long history of racism and discrimination and will turn on its Muslim community.
The video purportedly by Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab uses historic civil rights era footage of firebrand Malcolm X and audio of 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump to label the United States a racist society.
In the wake of the San Bernardino, California, shootings last month, Trump said he wanted “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
The video runs this line, bleeping out the word “hell.”
Before that, Trump had called for surveillance of mosques and said he was open to establishing a database for all Muslims living in the country.
The video includes recent footage of police shootings and violence against African Americans in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore — and claims that this is what is in store for American Muslims.
CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity of the video.
“Look, there’s a problem. I bring it up,” Trump said Sunday on CBS’ Face The Nation. Asked if he’s concerned his words are being used to recruit terrorists, Trump said, “They use other people, too. What am I going to do? I have to say what I have to say.”
Throughout the video, excerpts of previous video messages from the late radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki are played predicting persecution of Muslims in the United States.
Al-Awlaki was U.S.-born and raised and revered as a powerful motivator in terrorist operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
He was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011, in Yemen.
Clinton claim
Last month, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claimed that Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric was providing fodder for Islamist terror group ISIS to use in its propaganda. ISIS and al Qaeda are rivals.
At a December 19 debate with two rivals for the Democratic nomination, she said ISIS is “going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.”
However, that claim has never been proven.
Asked about the video on Saturday, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters that “any indication that supports the notion that the U.S. is at war with Islam will be taken advantage of by terrorist organizations.”
“We are at war with terrorists. We are not at war with Islam,” he said, adding that the U.S. needs “to defeat this narrative that allows them to recruit people.”