Profile: Anwar al-Awlaki
Introduction
Posted: November 24, 2009
Updated: March 16, 2010
The aftermath of the Fort Hood shooting in Texas that left 13 people dead and 32 others wounded renewed public discussions about Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. born Muslim cleric living in Yemen, and his influence on American Muslim extremists.
On November 9, 2009, four days after the shooting, al-Awlaki posted an entry on his blog praising Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged gunman, as a "hero" who "did the right thing." He commended Hasan for taking action against "an army that is fighting against his own people."
 Al-Awlaki explained that the "heroic act of brother Nidal also shows the dilemma of the American Muslim community," and he urged American Muslims to leave America and the West, as he did in 2002. "It is becoming more and more difficult to hold on to Islam in an environment that is becoming more hostile towards Muslims."
Al-Awlaki reportedly exchanged over a dozen emails with Hasan beginning in December 2008. Authorities initially indicated that Hasan looked to al-Awlaki for "religious guidance" consistent with research he was conducting for his master's degree.
In a December 2009 interview with Arabic-language television news network Al Jazeera, al-Awlaki explained that he first met Hasan nine years earlier when he served as the imam at Dar Al Hijrah, a mosque in the Washington, D.C. area attended by Hasan. In their subsequent e-mail communications, Hasan asked al-Awlaki if a Muslim soldier serving in the American Army was allowed to kill his fellow soldiers, expressed his support of killing Israeli civilians and mentioned various justifications for "targeting the Jews with rockets."
Around the time al-Awlaki reportedly first had contact with Hasan, the radical cleric wrote a post on his blog justifying attacks against U.S. soldiers, specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the post he said, "The bullets of the fighters of Afghanistan and Iraq are a reflection of the feelings of the Muslims toward America."
A few months prior to the attack, al-Awlaki posted a similar message on his blog, a sermon titled "Fighting Against Government Armies in the Muslim World." In the sermon, he encouraged Muslims to fight against American soldiers, who are "the number one enemy of the ummah," or the Muslim nation. He continued, "Blessed are those who fight against them and blessed are those shuhada [martyrs] who are killed by them."
After the shooting, in an interview with a Yemeni journalist, al-Awlaki claimed that Hasan viewed him as a confidant, but insisted that he did not pressure him or encourage him to carry out an attack in the U.S. Al-Awlaki, however, said that he "blessed the act because it was against a military target. And the soldiers who were killed were not normal soldiers, but those who were trained and prepared to go to Afghanistan and Iraq."
In addition, al-Awlaki admitted in an interview that in the fall of 2009 he met in Yemen with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian man who attempted to detonate a bomb a transatlantic flight on Christmas Day in 2009. "I support what he did," al-Awlaki reportedly told a journalist, "as America supports Israel's killing of Palestinians, and its killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq."
Al-Awlaki has used his blog to spread his sermons, literature and other materials encouraging readers to carry out attacks against Western targets for several years. His materials have been found in possession of several convicted terrorists in Canada, Britain and the U.S. at the time of their arrest.
A Nigerian man who attempted to detonate a bomb on a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009 was also reportedly in possession of al-Awlaki's materials. In addition, a Yemeni official has reported that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab met with al-Awlaki sometime between September and December 2009 in Yemen. U.S. authorities have reportedly confirmed this claim, saying that Abdulmutallab admitted to their meeting in Yemen.
While al-Awlaki's sermons and literature primarily focus on condemning the West, he also reviles Israel and Jews. In one post on his blog, al-Awlaki claimed that the Jews "have a hidden agenda" and they have infiltrated every government in the world. He has also promoted the conspiracy theory that contends that Israelis may have been behind the September 11 terrorist attack.
Al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, is a former imam of mosques in Denver, San Diego and Falls Church, Virginia. Two of those mosques were attended by three of the September 11 hijackers. Al-Awlaki left the U.S. in 2002, after being questioned by the FBI about the September 11 terrorist attacks, and currently resides in Yemen. A statement released by the Yemeni government said that Al-Awlaki was killed during a December 2009 airstrike against Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. Friends and relatives, however, insist that he was unharmed in the attacks.
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