Word: clerically
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...attempted Christmas Day bombing of a passenger jet over Detroit has persuaded the Obama Administration that al-Awlaki is a big-time bad guy. On Jan. 4, President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, told CNN, "Al-Awlaki is a problem ... He's not just a cleric. He is in fact trying to instigate terrorism." (See pictures of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab...
...pressed by the CIA, fired rockets into his home south of Sana'a. Al-Awlaki was not the principal target - the top leadership of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was thought to be meeting there - but U.S. officials were hoping the strike would also take out the cleric. He wasn't home...
...most of al-Awlaki's congregants. Many in San Diego remember him as a likable, articulate preacher with moderate views. Ahmad Ibrahim, president of the Muslim Student Association at the University of California at San Diego in 1999-2000, heard al-Awlaki speak on several occasions and says the cleric only occasionally addressed controversial topics like Palestinian suicide bombers. "He had the opinion that ... their mission was acceptable," Ibrahim says but adds, "I don't believe he ever proposed killing civilians." Another worshipper says the congregation wouldn't have tolerated extremist preaching. "[He wasn't] about speaking out against America...
...this time, however, intelligence agencies were looking closely at al-Awlaki's connections to the hijackers. At the home in Hamburg of Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni who was a leading figure in the 9/11 plot, German authorities found al-Awlaki's phone number. The FBI questioned the cleric but didn't have enough information to arrest him. In March 2002, he left the U.S. for Yemen. He made one final trip to the U.S. in October of that year and was briefly detained at New York City's JFK airport, but the FBI's attempt to arrest...
...Qaeda and jihad. It is his target audience. Al-Awlaki aims his sermons at young Muslims mostly living in the U.S. and Britain. This is a group he understands better than any other radical preacher. In his fluent English, he has become that rare specimen: the jihadist cleric who can communicate effortlessly with audiences in the West. His tone and his message can appear seductively conciliatory. Most of his sermons have nothing at all to do with radical ideology; they are simple translations from the Koran and stories about the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Al-Awlaki appeals to Muslim...