Al-Zawahri Calls Barack Obama a "House Negro"

Ayman al-Zawahri, the Al Qaeda number two leader, used a racist slur against President Elect Barack Obama, translated as "house negro." Al-Zawahri's insult of Barack Obama is likely to enhance his stature in the United States, however.

The Arabic term Al-Zawahri used, abeed al-beit, is literally translated as "house slave." The actual meaning is a little more pungent, using quite another term that begins with the letter "N" and thus is considered a crude, racist epithet when uttered in English. Al-Zawahri also used the term to refer to former Secretary of State Colin Powell and current Secretary of State Condi Rice.

The term "house negro" is sometimes used by some to refer to an African American who cravenly does the bidding of whites. The Al-Zawahri message used footage of an old speech by Malcolm X in which the 1960s militant explained the term. Ironically Malcolm X broke with the National of Islam, now run by Louis Farrakhan, converted to true Islam, and then was assassinated in 1965, likely on orders of the then Nation of Islam leader Elijah Mohammed. Unlike Al-Zawahri and his Al Qaeda cohorts, Malcolm X came to regard Islam as a religion of true, universal brotherhood.

Al-Zawahri's use of a crude racist slur translated as "house negro" clearly shows Al Qaeda's anger at President Elect Barack Obama's rhetorical support for Israel during the campaign as well as his promise to step of the campaign to eradicate Al Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan. But the use of the term translated as "house negro" a very likely a blunder by Al-Zawahri.

One problem that Barack Obama has is the suspicion on the part of many Americans that he would tend to take a soft line on the War on Terror and Middle Eastern issues in general. The fear is that he will bring back the strategy of the Clinton era of approaching the terror threat more as a law enforcement challenge than as a war, paying too much attention to the civil rights of terrorists and not enough to destroying them. People also fear (or hope depending on their point of view) that Barack Obama will tilt too far toward the Palestinians in attempting to resolve the Middle Eastern conflict.

But Al-Zawahri's use of a crude racist slur translated as "house negro" ia likely to anger not only African Americans, but others who might otherwise not be inclined to support Barack Obama. If Al-Zawahri's purpose was to undermine American resolve to fight the War on Terror, he could not have picked a worse way to do it.

Source: Al-Qaida No. 2 insults Obama with racial epithet, Maamoun Youssef and Lee Keath, AP, November 19th, 2008