Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri called upon jihadists across the globe to reject the Islamic State and instead support the Afghan Taliban in a video released Sunday.
Zawahiri said that ISIS and its so-called caliph leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi look to “split the ranks of the mujahideen,” a term used to describe jihadists. He encouraged the Islamic community to “rally around the emirate,” a reference to the Afghan Taliban, which refers to itself formally as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
The video address, titled “Be Not Divided Among Yourselves,” is the second in a series by Zawahiri called “Brief Messages to a Victorious Ummah,” the Arabic term for the global Muslim community. The first video attacked the Muslim Brotherhood, referring to them as “chickens.”
Zawahiri’s series appears to be an attempt to counter ISIS, which has been actively competing with al-Qaida as the premier global Islamic terrorist organization. While the two organizations share similar ideology, they have been active rivals since the rise of ISIS in 2014.
