American Muslims Told to Leave Major U.S. Cities

By Catherine Donaldson-Evans

Published November 05, 2003

FoxNews.com

An Al Qaeda (search) Web site is running a warning issued to Muslims to leave Washington, D.C., New York City and Los Angeles because of implied imminent terrorist attacks, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Titled "A Warning to Muslims in America," the directive was issued by the previously unknown "Islamic Bayan Movement" and first ran on the Global Islamic Media Web site on Monday, according to MEMRI, which translated the communiqué.

It has since been published on the Al Qaeda-run site Al Faroq (search), a MEMRI release said. The Global Islamic Media site has published several messages from Jihad groups around the world in recent months.

As of Tuesday, there had been no increase in the Pentagon's yellow terror alert status. Yellow represents an "elevated" status on the five-point chart.
"Our Muslim brothers in America, we ask you to immediately leave the following cities: Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles," reads the communiqué, which frequently quotes the Quran.
"We are serious in our warning," the message states. "The next few days will prove to you the truth of this warning … To the oppressive rulers of America we say: Expect our terms following the first strike of Allah's believing soldiers [Quran, Chapter 59, Verse 2-3]."
The directive claims that U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan "are the only ones who know the bitter truth" about the situation overseas.
"How would they not when they see every day dozens of casualties from among their friends, the soldiers who die and nobody, even not their stupid rulers, is sorry for them," the communiqué states. "Then they hear the lies and distortion their rulers [tell] their people and the peoples of the world regarding the number of their dead …"
The communiqué refers to the "sufferings" of Muslims, saying they are victims of oppression, imprisonment and murder.
It ends with another verse from the Quran [Chapter 9, Verse 14]: "Fight them: Allah will punish them at your hands, and will humiliate them, and will help you to overcome them, and will relieve the minds of the believers."
In conjunction with the memo, Al Qaeda's Al Faroq posted a photo of the Chinook helicopter shot down on Sunday with a caption in Arabic that reads: "We shall bring down and destroy the values of the Hubal of this generation." Fifteen Americans died in the helicopter attack.
Hubal was a pre-Islamic-era Meccan idol used by Muslims to symbolize the U.S., according to MEMRI.

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