1971-2011
Anwar al-Awlaki was born in 1971 in New Mexico, the children of Yemeni Immigrants. Al-Awlaki spend most of his childhood in Yemen, but returned to the United States in 1990 to attend university, where found a passion and talent for preaching while a student (Reuters 2009). From 1994 to 2002 he worked as an imam in various mosques across the country (Shane 2015). In the weeks and months after the 9/11 attacks, al-Awlaki, an Imam at one of the nation’s largest mosques, quickly became the most visible face of moderate, American Islam. The American media, struggling to explain Islam to their viewers, were draw to this young, charismatic, American-educated Imam with perfect English, who the New York Times called “A new Generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West” (Goodstein 2001). After discovering two of the 9/11 hijackers had frequented his sermons, He was interviewed by FBI agents, who concluded that he knew the men, but was likely unaware of their plot (Reuters 2009). Despite this, extensive FBI surveillance of him and his family continued (Shane 2015).
Upon discovering the existence of his FBI file and the fact that the agency was aware of his habit of soliciting prostitutes, al-Awlaki traveled to London with his family for a scheduled speaking engagement in 2002, and never returned to the United States (Shane 2015). After living for a brief time in the UK he reportedly returned to his childhood hometown in Yemen, where he would live for the rest of his life. (BBC News 2011).
While his actions outside of the United States are not as clearly documented, several facts are clear. Al-Awlaki continued to preach, often in sermons delivered via YouTube. His message became increasingly militant. When Inspire, the English-language online magazine published by al-Qaeda, first appeared in 2010, it contained a number of articles by al-Awlaki (Lemieux et al. 2014, 354-371). Evan Kohlmann, a prolific counterterrorism researcher has said “Al-Awlaki condenses the al-Qaeda philosophy in to digestible, well-written treatises. They may not tell people how to build a bomb or shoot a gun, but he tells them who to kill, and why, and stresses the urgency of the mission” (Shane 2009).
In 2010, the United States placed al-Awlaki on the ‘kill list’ of suspected terrorists against whom lethal force was authorized (al-Awlaki 2013). On September 30th, 2011. Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a Predator Drone missile in an unidentified location in rural Yemen (BBC News 2011).
After his death, al-Awlaki’s legacy has been twofold. As the first American citizen killed by his own government without conviction or trial, his case has become a hotbed of legal and moral debate. In 2014, a court ordered that the Department of Justice release the memorandum containing their legal justification for al-Awlaki’s killing. In this document, the D.O.J argued that the “United States is engaged in a non-international armed conflict with al-Qaida.”, and because of that, the international laws about who can be targeted and where do not apply in the same way. (American Journal of International Law 2014, 550-555) This memorandum, has been used as the legal justification for further targeting of U.S. citizens in drone strikes and military actions. The same attack that killed Anwar al-Awlaki also killed American citizen Samir Khan, al-Awlaki’s primary collaborator on Inspire, although the United States denies intentionally targeting him. (Mazzetti 2015), and two weeks later, Anwar al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki became the third American citizen killed by a drone strike in Yemen (al-Awlaki 2013).
Al-Awlaki’s death is legally contentious at best, but it also seems to have been ultimately ineffective. Viewed throughout the radical Islamist movement as a martyr, his message has lived on, primarily on YouTube, where some estimates say his sermons have been viewed as many as 20 million times (Shane, Perez-Pena and Breeden 2016). His messages have been linked to a majority of the Islamic terrorist attacks committed in the United States (Ghosh 2010). Nidal Malik Hassan, who killed 13 and at Fort Hood in 2009, had corresponded with al-Awlaki, as had Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. who attempted to Northwest Airlines Flight 253 later that year (Shane 2015). Death seems to have done nothing to stop his influence though, the perpetrators of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, 2015 San Bernardino attack and the 2016 Orlando Nightclub shooting were all followers of al-Awlaki’s sermons (Shane, Perez-Pena and Breeden 2016).
Anwar al-Awlaki is dead, killed by his own government, in a controversial action that has reshaped the discourse on government power and what is allowed in the name of ‘peace and security’. Yet his message lives on as strong as ever, as perhaps the first great martyr of the Internet era, where information can be spread across the globe instantly, and in ways that are very difficult for governments to control or even monitor, Anwar al-Awlaki’s message has found an immortality he himself could not. The debate his death created, and the violence his words inspired, have both profoundly affected the modern world, and they will continue to for years to come.
Grace Michael
Works Cited
“United States’ legal justification for drone strike on Anwar al-Awlaki released” American Journal of International Law 108.3 (July 2014): 550-555.
“Obituary: Anwar al-Awlaki” BBC News, September 30, 2011.
“FACTBOX – Who is Anwar al-Awlaki” Reuters, December 24, 2009.
Al-Awlaki, Nasser. “The Drone That Killed My Grandson” The New York Times, July 17, 2013.
Ghosh, Bobby. “How Dangerous is the Cleric Anwar al-Awlaki?” TIME Magazine, January 13, 2010.
Goodstein, Laurie. “A NATION CHALLENGED: THE AMERICAN MUSLIMS; Influential American Muslims Temper Their Tone” The New York Times, October 19, 2001.
Lemieux, Anthony, Jarret Brachman, Jason Levitt and Jay Wood. “Inspire Magazine: A Critical Analysis of its Significance and Potential Impact Through the Lens of the Information, Motivation, and Behavioral Skills Model.” Terrorism & Political Violence. Vol 26 Issue 2 (June 2014): 354-371.
Mazzetti, Mark. “Killing of Americans Deepens Debate Over Use of Drone Strikes” The New York Times, April 23, 2015.
Shane, Scott. “Born in the U.S. a Radical Cleric Inspires Terror” The New York Times, November 18, 2009.
Shane, Scott. “The Lessons of Anwar al-Awlaki” The New York Times, August 27, 2015.
Shane, Scott, Richer Perez-Pena and Aurelian Breeden “’In-Betweeners’ Are Part of a Rich Recruiting Pool for Jihadists” The New York Times, September 22, 2016.
Taylor, Adam. “The U.S. keeps killing Americans in drone stakes, mostly by accident” The Washington Post, April 23, 2015.
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