Islamist extremists say they hope Trump win will sow division in the U.S.
Several radical Islamist extremists say they are thrilled with Donald Trump's victory, and hope it ushers in an era of chaos for the United States.
Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a senior al Qaeda member, used Twitter to share his thoughts on the win, The Guardian reports. "Trump reveals the real mentality of the Americans and their racism toward Muslims and Arabs and everything," he said. "He only reveals what his predecessors have kept hidden." A Syrian radical named Abdullah al-Muhaisny, believed by the U.S. to have a connection to al Qaeda, tweeted that Trump's win is an "important step toward the victory of the Sunnis. We have long tried to explain that the fight is not against terrorism, but against the Sunnis, and the mujahideen are just the frontline. The American strategy will not change much, what has changed is that the war is open and not secret, and that is a good thing."
Trump will set the path for "bloody battles and great chaos," al-Muhaisny said, and he is hoping that Trump's "exclusion and crushing opponents" will cause a greater divide in the U.S. Trump's words may soon even be used as propaganda — the head of the Twitter account of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the former wing of al Qaeda in Syria, said now, "we will no longer need videos explaining the West's plots. We will only need to retweet what Trump says."
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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