Anwar al-Awlaki, the Infidel

[Editor’s note: I am extremely happy to present a new ad-hoc contributor. He should be known to most Jihadica readers: Brian Fishman is a former director of research at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center and the author of several landmark studies on al-Qaida in Iraq, several of which are available here. He brings us quite a story today.]   Since the awful shootings at Fort Hood, media attention has focused on MAJ Nidal Hasan’s relationship with Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born salafi preacher now in Yemen. Less well known, however, is that al-Awlaki was once declared kafir (infidel) by then London-based jihadi Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal. The Jamaica-born al-Faisal, himself a convert, was a key figure in late 1990s and early 2000s “Londonistan”; he was imprisoned in 2003 for soliciting murder and eventually deported from the UK in May 2007 for his links to 7/7 bomber Germaine Lindsey. Indeed it is al-Faisal, not al-Awlaki, who is the most prominent English-speaking jihadi preacher. The lesson here is certainly