Abū Talḥah al-Amrīkī

Mention in the Washington Post

Posted on November 2, 2010 by Aaron Y. Zelin

In today’s Washington Post, Tara Bahrampour writes about Zachary Chesser (aka Abū Talḥah al-Amrīkī) and his usage of the internet as a tool to communicate his ideas and as a force that led him down the path to a more extreme radicalization process. The piece also highlights the interview I conducted with Chesser (via email) two weeks prior to his arrest.
Since that interview, the readership of this blog per month has increased six-fold. I just want to thank all of my dedicated readers from the past and welcome any new readers who first discovered this site through the WaPo article.
Also, I would like to reiterate that this blog is for academic purposes as well as a primary resource tool for undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and journalists. I do not endorse any of the global jihadist primary source material that are posted on this site.

Exclusive Interview with Abū Talḥah al-Amrīkī of Revolution Muslim

Posted on July 13, 2010 by Aaron Y. Zelin

UPDATE: It has been reported today, July 21, that Abū Talḥah al-Amrīkī was arrested on July 10. For more on the arrest see the Washington Post story. Here is a brief excerpt:

[He] was stopped July 10 after he was placed on the no-fly list and denied aboard a commercial flight from New York City to Uganda, U.S. authorities said.
Chesser allegedly told agents that he twice attempted to travel to Somalia to join al-Shabab, an extremist Islamic insurgency group that has tried to topple Somalia’s weak internationally backed government and that the State Department designated as a terrorist group in February 2008.

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NOTE: This interview came about as a result of the dialogue between IbnSiqilli (Christopher Anzalone, graduate student at Indiana University) and Abū Talḥah al-Amrīkī in the comments section of an earlier post about Taqī ad-Dīn Ibn Taymīyyah, one of the most prominent and respected figures in the broad sweep of Islamic intellectual history. After a while, IbnSiqilli, who maintains the blog Views from the Occident, and I thought it would be worthwhile to conduct an interview with Abū Talḥah al-Amrīkī on a variety of topics. Therefore, I would like to thank IbnSiqilli and Dr. Jytte Klausen, who served on my master’s thesis defense committee at Brandeis University, for contributing some of the questions I asked Abū Talḥah al-Amrīkī. For those who do not know, Abū Talḥah al-Amrīkī was the individual who caused much of the controversy surrounding South Park’s 200th episode this past spring dealing with Muhammad and censorship. This interview was originally conducted through e-mail on June 29. I hope you enjoy the interview below and comments are welcomed!
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Click here for a safe PDF copy of the interview: Interview with Abū Talḥah al-Amrīkī