Bin Laden aide hits out at France
An audiotape purported to be from Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri that aired on an Arabic television channel today criticised France’s decision to ban Islamic headscarves in schools as part of the West’s campaign against Islam.
“The decision of the French president to issue a law to prevent Muslim girls from covering their heads in schools is another example of the Crusader envy that the Westerners have against Muslims,” the voice said in the tape aired on the pan-Arab Al-Arabiya satellite channel.
“This envy boils in their hearts and overflows in their chests and they pass it on to the generations,” the voice said.
The Dubai-based al-Arabiya identified the voice on the tape as that of al-Zawahri.
An official at the station in Dubai said the tape was received today “just minutes before taking it to air”.
The al-Arabiya official said the voice was believed by the station to be that of al-Zawahiri because of analysts’ opinions, and mainly because of the source from which they received the tape, which he would not disclose.
Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian-born doctor, is thought to be in hiding along with the al-Qaida leader in the mountains of Afghanistan, somewhere along the rugged border with Pakistan.
The voice on the tape said the headscarf decision was part of the ongoing campaign against Islam.
“Banning the headscarves in France is in line with burning villages with its inhabitants in Afghanistan, bringing houses down on the heads of sleeping Palestinians, with killing children in Iraq and robbing their oil using false pretexts … (and) torturing them (Muslims) in the cells of Guantanamo,” the tape said.
French President Jacques Chirac’s government has moved to enact a law that aims to keep religion out of its schools.
Parliament’s lower house overwhelmingly passed a bill this month banning Islamic head scarves as well as other visible religious signs in secular schools.
The bill is expected to go before the French Senate early next month, where little opposition exists.
