Talk:Ayman al-Zawahiri

Alive...

He was not killed in the bombing and he has a new tape out: http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/world/13748692.htm -- cheers, —This user has left wikipedia 18:41 2006-01-30

No such valid link. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.111.41.243 (talk) 22:02, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Involvement in 9/11

What is his involvement in 911? It seems like a fundamental thing that needs to be addressed in the article. Has he ever admitted to staging the attacks? Is there any evidence of his involvement? Is it even alledged that he was involved? ect. 68.188.25.170 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:37, 17 June 2011 (UTC).

Looks like there is no evidence about his involvement in 9/11.

Bergen, Peter L. (2021). The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 92. ISBN 978-1-9821-7052-3.

In fact, there is no evidence that Zawahiri had a role in the planning of any of al-Qaeda’s major anti-American attacks against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, and 9/11 itself.

--Jo1971 (talk) 19:39, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Just some author's opinion, way out of the mainstream sources. 50.111.41.243 (talk) 22:04, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Egyptian Islamic Jihad Merger

In 1998, al-Zawahiri formally merged the Egyptian Islamic Jihad into al-Qaeda. This seems to be wrong. All others are writing this happened in June 2001.

Bergen, Peter (2021). The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 142. ISBN 978-1-9821-7052-3.

Bin Laden formally merged Zawahiri’s Jihad Group into al-Qaeda in June 2001.

Wright, Lawrence (2006). The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 Powers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 336. ISBN 0-375-41486-X.

The end came in June 2001, when al-Qaeda absorbed al-Jihad, creating an entity formally called Qaeda al-Jihad.

Hamid, Mustafa; Farrall, Leah (2015). The Arabs at War in Afghanistan. London: Hurst & Company. p. 278. ISBN 978-1-84904-420-2.

In the summer of 2001, Tanzim al-Jihad merged with al-Qaeda after lengthy negotiations, which ultimately caused a split in Tanzim al-Jihad.

--Jo1971 (talk) 22:24, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

You are correct, and the source cited at the end of that paragraph does not mention the merger. So I have changed the date and added (somewhat arbitrarily) Bergen as a source. The section is now out of chronological order, and that should be fixed. GA-RT-22 (talk) 19:04, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Haqqani's house

I can't find that it says Haqqani owned the house in either of the cited sources. Can someone verify that it says this? Maybe provide a quote?

“ ... reportedly in a house owned by Sirajuddin Haqqani, a senior official in the Taliban government. ”

— Preceding unsigned comment added by GA-RT-22 (talk • contribs) 16:53, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

References

A theologian?

How can he be considered a theologian? what exactly has he achieved as an Alim? Do he passed any Islamic education? Who gave him Ijazah? Ruwaym (talk) 17:20, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

"Theologian" was added in this edit eleven years ago with no explanation and no source cited. I haven't read the whole article to see if it's supported, but the word "theologian" doesn't appear. It should be either supported or removed. GA-RT-22 (talk) 18:40, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

It's been added back in. I'm going to remove it. GA-RT-22 (talk) 14:31, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree with you that he is not a theologian and that the reference is not enough to confirm the claim. I'll let the removal. 3skandar (talk) 15:55, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Lead re-write

The lead still needs a re-write, and I'm going to restore the tag. The two examples I gave have been (almost) addressed. But it's still too short. And it still contains things that aren't in the article, like "Theologian" (see corresponding section on this talk page). It's so short I think the best thing would be to throw it away and write a new one. Hence the maintenance tag. GA-RT-22 (talk) 18:39, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

I replaced the tag with 'lead too short'. Ultimately, if it inaccurately calls him a theologian, it's not a problem with the lead. I do agree the lead is pretty rough though. I took that out and just call him a "jihadist and terrorist" which is what he's known for. If you think this is wrong, stupid, or other, please let me know. Cheers! ‡ El cid, el campeador ^talk 20:40, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

@3skandar: - thank you for your major improvements. ‡ El cid, el campeador ^talk 14:50, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

The lead looks much better now, but it again has the problem that it doesn't actually summarize the article. For exmaple it says he co-founded al-Qaeda, but that doesn't appear anywhere in the article. It says he left Egypt in 1984 to fight in Afghanistan, and again that doesn't appear anywhere in the article that I can find. GA-RT-22 (talk) 14:59, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

The article itself is a mess that needs fixing.PrisonerB (talk) 15:11, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Questionable sources being added

@Rauisuchian: Why are you so eager to add two new sources to the Russia section? We already have perfectly good sources here. The two you are trying to add are both of questionable reliability. WP:RSP says, "The Spectator primarily consists of opinion pieces and these should be judged by WP:RSOPINION, WP:RSEDITORIAL, and WP:NEWSBLOG" and "There is no consensus on the reliability of Insider". The Insider source is an opinion piece and we shouldn't be using it at all without attributing it to its author.

We don't normally need additional sources unless there is some question as to the reliability of the sources already cited. I haven't checked, but do you have some reason to think the sources we already have are unreliable or that they don't support the material? If so, you should be questioning those sources, not piling new ones on top. GA-RT-22 (talk) 13:22, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

The previous/current sources are good and reliable. I just thought that for the one with a dead link (archived) some additional ones could back them up from potential deletions by editors that want to minimize that section of the article. The existing ones are good, but I would support attributing the authors of the more recently added articles if desired. The Spectator and Insider are mixed point of view/no consensus on the perennial sources board, and usable in certain contexts. The articles themselves are unusually thoroughly researched and cited articles for that type of publication. The Spectator article is short and is just relaying secondary sources without extra opinion. The Insider article has a long references list and multiple attributions. They are used only to back up the existing content and not change it. -- Rauisuchian (talk) 01:25, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Ayman al-Zawahiri's role within al-Qaeda and was he the "brain" behind bin Laden?

According to reports by a former al-Qaeda member, al-Zawahiri worked in the al-Qaeda organization since its inception and was a senior member of the group's shura council. He was often described as a "lieutenant" to Osama bin Laden, though bin Laden's chosen biographer has referred to him as the "real brains" of al-Qaeda.

Two claims in this sentence which are highly contested. First, was Zawahiri member of al-Qaeda since its inception? Peter Bergen writes otherwise:
Bergen, Peter (2021). The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-9821-7052-3.

Despite later claims that Ayman al-Zawahiri was critical to the formation of al-Qaeda, there is no evidence that he was present at any of the two days of marathon meetings where the formation of al-Qaeda was discussed. Nor was Zawahiri given any role in the group as a result of those meetings. This shouldn’t have been surprising; al-Qaeda saw itself as a military organization and Zawahiri was no warrior.

He was formally named as bin Laden's deputy only in 2004 (already in the article).
Lahoud, Nelly. (2022). The Bin Laden Papers. How the Abbottabad Raid Revealed the Truth about al-Qaeda, Its Leader and His Family. New Haven (CT): Yale University Press. p. 80. ISBN 978-0-300-26063-2.

Usama may have designated Ayman as his deputy when the two of them “disappeared out of necessity” in late 2001. But it is more likely that Usama was inspired by the media’s designation, because it was not until late 2004 that he officially named Ayman as his deputy to his associates.

Second, was Zawahiri the "brain" behind bin Laden? This is a view mainly promoted by Lawrence Wright in his book The Looming Tower and in his article The Man Behind Bin Laden. Again, Peter Bergen disagres with this view. Sorry for the lengthy quote but I guess it's important for the portayal of Zawahiri. He summarizes his arguments from his bin Laden biografie in his op-ed Charisma-free al-Zawahiri was running al-Qaeda into the ground.

Bergen, Peter (2021). The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 67. ISBN 978-1-9821-7052-3.

There is no evidence that bin Laden’s key strategic decision to target the American “head of the snake” had any input from the Egyptian militant Ayman al-Zawahiri, despite later claims that Zawahiri was really the “brains” behind bin Laden. Indeed, bin Laden did not involve Zawahiri in the planning of his major operations, including the 9/11 attacks. The troika who founded and ran al-Qaeda was bin Laden at the apex and his two key military commanders, Abu Ubayda and Abu Hafs the Egyptian, both of whom had been on bin Laden’s payroll since the beginning of 1987. They were bin Laden’s men, not Zawahiri’s. Meanwhile, Zawahiri’s obsessive goal was overthrowing the “near enemy” Egyptian regime, a subject that bin Laden evinced very little interest in and that he rarely discussed in his public statements. Instead, the majority of bin Laden’s statements focused on what he described as American and Jewish aggression against Muslims, while his second-most-important topic was his criticism of the Saudi government, in particular for its alliance with the United States.

p. 92

The urtext for the view that Zawahiri wielded Svengali-like influence over bin Laden was Lawrence Wright’s story in The New Yorker, “The Man Behind Bin Laden,” published a year after the 9/11 attacks. The article asserted that “according to officials in the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., Zawahiri has been responsible for much of the planning of the terrorist operations against the United States.” In fact, there is no evidence that Zawahiri had a role in the planning of any of al-Qaeda’s major anti-American attacks against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, and 9/11 itself. Wright went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his 2006 book, The Looming Tower, a book that has many strengths, but that also inflated Zawahiri’s role in bin Laden’s anti-American jihad. Wright did, however, note in The Looming Tower that when Zawahiri merged his small group into al-Qaeda in June 2001, it “was bin Laden’s organization, not Zawahiri’s.” I had also overestimated Zawahiri’s importance to bin Laden’s thinking in my 2001 book, Holy War, Inc. After examining all of the evidence, I have since concluded that Zawahiri was a marginal figure when it came to influencing bin Laden’s views, and he played only a minor role in the actions of al-Qaeda in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks. This view is also shared by Michael Scheuer, who led the bin Laden unit at CIA from 1996 to 1999; by Daniel Coleman, the FBI agent who investigated bin Laden for six years before 9/11; and by the Egyptian dissident Montasser al-Zayyat, who spent years in prison in Egypt with Zawahiri. Zayyat explained, “Osama bin Laden had an appreciable impact on Zawahiri, though the conventional wisdom holds the opposite to be the case. Bin Laden advised Zawahiri to stop armed operations in Egypt and to ally with him against their common enemies: the United States and Israel.” This was also the conclusion of Noman Benotman, a former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who knew both bin Laden and Zawahiri, who said it was bin Laden who told Zawahiri, “Forget about the ‘near enemy’ [the Egyptian government]. The main enemy is the Americans because they dominate the whole area and they’re supporting these Arab regimes.” Abu Walid al-Misri, an Egyptian living in Afghanistan who knew both bin Laden and Zawahiri well, also says that Zawahiri played only a minor role in al-Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks.

Michael Scheuer disagrees, too, and calls it the The Riyadh Narrative.
Scheuer, Michael (2011). Osama Bin Laden. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 12–15. ISBN 978-0-19-973866-3.

As absurd as this narrative is—bin Laden, as we shall see, altered al-Zawahiri much more than vice versa—it was bought by many in the West, although nowhere so completely as in The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

Thomas Hegghammer also contests this view.
Hegghammer, Thomas (2020). The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad. Cambridge University Press. pp. 358–360. ISBN 978-0-521-76595-4.

Many have argued that Egyptians played an important role in the emergence of al-Qaida. Hasan al-Surayhi, for example, said that “the idea of al Qaeda is an Egyptian one by the Islamic Jihad group led by Abu-Ubaidah al Banjshiri and Abu-Hafs.”170 In fact, we can speak of a whole narrative theme – that of the “evil Egyptians” – that runs through much of the secondary literature. Put simply, the narrative is that Egyptians were the real brains behind al-Qaida, that they radicalized and manipulated Bin Ladin, and that they hated Azzam so much that they may have ordered his assassination. The central villains in the story are Ayman al-Zawahiri and Sayyid Imam al-Sharif (Dr. Fadl), leading figures in Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
[...]
The Egyptian role in the formation of al-Qaida was smaller than the standard narrative suggests. On the one hand, some Egyptians, especially Abu Ubayda al-Banshiri and Abu Hafs al-Masri, were undoubtedly in the core group of people who established al-Qaida.
[...]
Moreover, attention may have been given to the wrong Egyptians. Judging by the documentary evidence, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Dr. Fadl were less prominent figures in the Afghan Arab community than the secondary literature suggests. As a matter of fact, there is almost no trace of them in the written sources from the late 1980s and early 1990s.

--Jo1971 (talk) 20:02, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Definite article or not?

We use both "al-Zawahiri" and "Zawahiri". I think we should pick one and stick to it. I can't find any guidance in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Arabic so I don't know which is preferred. GA-RT-22 (talk) 01:07, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Not a scientific method but from my informal survey it seems like most include Al- . This includes the featured article Hasan al-Kharrat and good article Khalil al-Wazir. So I vote inclusion. ‡ El cid, el campeador ^talk 01:23, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, wherever the "al-" bit is part of the common name, it should normally not be dropped. Persianate versions of Arabic names often do drop the definite article (e.g. Omar Khayyam, Persian version of the originally Arabic name Umar al-Khayyam), but only if the Persianate version also is the common name (the article name) should this be done throughout. It may further be useful to know that "al-" is always written lower case (also in proper names), with the only exception being when it is the first word in a full sentence (one containing a subject and a verb). ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 01:56, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Ok I made this change. It was more extensive than I expected. Please check my work. GA-RT-22 (talk) 02:13, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

My ctrl+f proofreading did not find any mistakes! Nice work. ‡ El cid, el campeador ^talk 13:48, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 September 2022

Under the image of al-Zawahiri in 2001, his name is spelled incorrectly. Change "Zawahri" to "Zawahiri". Powwu (talk) 07:21, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Aidan9382 _(talk) 09:34, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

"Ayman al-Zawahiri (Arabic: أيمن الظواهري, romanized: ʾAyman al-Ẓawāhirī; 19 June 1951 – 31 July 2022) as an Egyptian-born militant"

Excellent English right there in the vet first phrase. 5.173.88.70 (talk) 09:39, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Also, really, no mention of the word "terrorist" anywhere in the lead summary? 5.173.88.70 (talk) 09:41, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Coming back to life

So, when is this article going to be updated with his what, 6th death? Apeholder (talk) 01:30, 29 August 2024 (UTC)