On October 19, Al-Kataib, which is the media wing of the Somali Al-Qaeda allied group Al-Shabab Al-Mujahideen, published a statement on one of the jihadi forums prohibiting Muslims from using their cell phones to wire funds.
The statement was published one day after Al-Kataib announced its return to the jihadi arena, after over two months of inactivity that it claimed was due to "some conditions that caused the connection between the [Al-Kataib] organization and the brothers responsible for publishing its statements to be lost."
The statement was published in both Arabic and English. Following are excerpts of the statement in English; the text is lightly edited for clarity:
"... Indeed, all praise is due to Allah, and peace and blessings upon the commander of the mujahideen, Muhammad, and upon his family and companions. As for what follows:
"In the era that we live in, financial transactions have greatly been expanded, communities and states have opened up to each other, faith and religious commitments have deteriorated, fraud surfaced and economic issues have re-emerged; [such as] stock markets and banking transactions, [along with the emerging of] economic principles, such as capitalism. Also, usury became widespread.
"In contrast to all this, the Muslims have turned away from the application of the Shari'a of Allah, including the Islamic economic system, and began to emulate the West in their financial transactions. The Islamic law, however, is there to safeguard the interests of the people and regulate their transactions for the preservation of their rights and the removal of injustice. Therefore, the Prophet...prohibited dishonesty in dealing with transactions, inflation of prices, ambiguous deals, and monopoly - just as the Prophet...has also forbidden consuming people's wealth unlawfully and the exploitation of their needs.
"The control that the Jews have over the financial system in the West and the spread of the so-called economic globalization is not hidden to anyone. It is well known that this system was set up in order to serve the Jewish state and Western interests in all parts of the world..."
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