Somalia’s al Shabaab jihadist group has featured Donald Trump in one of its recruitment videos, according to a monitor of extremist propaganda.
The al Qaeda-affiliated group’s production used an excerpt from the Republican White House front-runner’s speech last month calling for a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslims entering the U.S.
The 51-minute video, which is aimed at African Americans and Muslims, depicts the US as a country of institutionalised prejudice against blacks and Islam.
It uses footage from recent racial conflicts in the US as well as historic quotes from Malcolm X.
The video concludes that blacks and Muslims will always face discrimination in the US and should therefore fight back with jihad.
It uses the Trump soundbite preceded by a speech from US-born radical imam Anwar al Awlaki calling on Muslims in America to “flee the oppressive Western atmosphere for the lands of Islam”.
Al-Awlaki, who Washington alleges was a senior al Qaeda operative, was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen in September 2011.
“Yesterday, America was a land of slavery, segregation, lynching and Ku Klux Klan, and tomorrow, it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps,” Awlaki says in the video, which was filmed before his death.
The footage also shows African-American men protesting and in jail, apparently performing Islamic prayer rituals.
It was uploaded to Twitter on Friday by the Al Kataib Media Foundation, which often publishes the group’s material, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.
In his 7 December speech, Mr Trump proposed barring Muslims from entering the US until the authorities were “able to determine and understand this problem” of Islamist violence, following the killing of 14 people by a radicalised couple in California.
Last month, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Mr Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric was a gift to jihadist propaganda.
Al Shabaab is fighting the internationally backed Somali government.
The insurgents were driven out of Mogadishu in 2011 with the help of African Union troops.
Credit: Sky News
