FOR THE YEMEN POST

Anwar Aulaqi tells details of his relationship with Nidal Hasan, saying that the first letter he received, was asking about the religious rule of killing a Muslim soldier who serves in the U.S. Army.
After the events of September 11, 2001, Nidal Hasan was planning and preparing for the biggest operation inside the U.S., which was carried out in the fifth of last November, killing 13 officers and soldiers, and wounding more than thirty others. Four months before Major Nidal implemented his operation, he was in contact with Anwar Aulaqi, a Yemeni-American cleric, asking him about the legitimacy of his operation and about his role as a Muslim person in the U.S. military.
Aulaqi’s tapes sales in the U.S. and Western countries have exceeded, five million tapes, according to the distribution company. It added that he kept addressing the audience in the West, via his website and he opened rooms for presenting sermons and answering direct questions. Below is the interview.
Sheikh Anwar, what is your relationship with Nidal, and when did it start?
Brother Nidal, I ask Allah to protect him, was praying in my Mosque, when I was the cleric of Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center.

When was the first meeting between the both of you?
Some nine years ago when I was the cleric of Dar Al-Hijra in Washington, DC, which is the largest Islamic center in America.

Reports revealed that your relations were more than that?
Brother Nidal was also contacting me via e-mail over the past year.

When did Nidal’s first email contact start?
The first message I received from him was on 17, December 2008.

Who began contacting the other, you or him?
He started contacting me.

What was he looking for?
He was asking whether killing American officers and soldiers is legitimate or not.

He asked you nearly a year before implementing the operation?
Yes, I am surprised where were the U.S. security agencies, which claimed one day that they are able to read cars and vehicles plate’s numbers from up in space, anywhere in the world.

What did he want from you overall?
His messages were asking about the Islamic rule of killing a Muslim soldier, who served in the U.S. Army.
And in other letters he explained his view of killing Israeli civilians and was in favor of this, he mentioned the legal and factual justifications for targeting Jews with rockets. Later, there were some of his letters that asked for a way he can transfer some funds to us, to contribute on charity works.

There are other signs of your relation with him like how you blessed his attack three days after he implemented the operation?
The operation done by Hasan was heroic, and I tried to articulate my opinion on what happened because many of the Islamic organizations and preachers in the West condemned the operation.

Why did you bless Hasan’s work?
Because the goal was targeted by him, and it was a military target inside the United States, there is no dispute about it. Also, those are not ordinary soldiers, but they were equipped and prepared to start fighting and killing the vulnerable Muslims and commit crimes in Afghanistan.
How can I and other preachers remain silent after hearing some of the forensic condemnation of his operation? If the ‘’controversial issue’’ is the operations that kill non-combatants; now by which argument they oppose the operation, which is purely against a military target.

How can you support what he has done, he betrayed his homeland the U.S?
More importantly than that, he does not betray his religion. “Working in the U.S. military to fight Muslims is a betrayal to Islam’’. ‘’America today is the Pharaoh of yesterday, it is the enemy of Islam’’. A Muslim is not permitted to work in the U.S. military, unless he intends to follow the footsteps of our brother Nidal. Allegiance in Islam is to God (Allah), His Messenger (PBUH) and the faithful believers, not for a handful of land and dust they call ‘’homeland’’. An American- Muslim’s loyalty is to the Muslim nation, not for America. Hasan has proved that, through his blessed operation; may God richly reward him.

Are you directly related to the incident?
I did not advise Hasan, but he was recruited by the U.S. by its crimes and its injustice; this is what America does not want to admit. Yes, I might have a role in the “intellectual guidance’’ to him, but not more than that.