Hip-hop Jihad

2-8-2004 The Observer, Guardian Unlimited network

It's rap, jihad-style. A music video with blood-curdling images, fronted by a young British Muslim rapper brandishing a gun and a Koran is the latest hit in radical Islamic circles. 

The rap song is called 'Dirty Kuffar' - Arabic for dirty non-believer - and it praises Osama bin Laden and the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. 

The video has recently been posted on the British website run by the Islamic extremist Mohammed al-Massari, the UK-based Saudi Arabian dissident who has lived in Britain since 1994. Al-Massari claims that the video has been selling in large quantities at mosques to the younger generation and is in heavy demand overseas. 

The rapper fronting the video calls himself Sheikh Terra and the Soul Salah Crew - a take on the rap group So Solid Crew. 'Salah' is Arabic for faith. 

The song starts with images of US marines in Iraq cheering as one of them shoots a wounded Iraqi lying on the floor. At the end of the video, it features shots of the hijacked planes flying into the Twin Towers with sounds of the rappers laughing. There is then a list of 56 countries they claim have been the 'victims of American aggression' since 1945. 

The four-minute rap is essentially a repeated diatribe against the 'dirty non-believers' Tony Blair and George Bush, urging listeners to 'throw them on the fire'. 

One of the most brutal images shows a jihadist fighter in Chechnya riddling a captured Russian soldier with a Kalashnikov. Another image labels Pakistan president General Pervez Musharraf a traitor and shows photographs of Colin Powell and Condeleezza Rice with the words 'still slaves' superimposed across their bodies.