Osama Bin Laden?s October 29, 2004 video prompted commentators to speculate that the religious jihadi was trying to recast himself as a statesmen and to re-characterize his holy war against ?Crusaders? as a more mundane struggle of aggression and retaliation (See Intel Report and WAR Report). In Ayman al-Zawahiri?s recent appearance, we find these same adjustments being reinforced by Bin Laden?s Number Two man.

It is all the more notable to hear a secular, revolutionary speech from Ayman al-Zawahiri than it is from Osama Bin Laden, as the Egyptian cleric is al-Qaeda?s (Group Profile) religious leader and the spiritual counterpart to the warrior, Osama. When the grandson of a former Sheikh of al-Azhar (Egypt?s highest religious position) and an active Islamist since the age of 15 eschews Koranic verses and holy sayings of the Prophet for an axiom penned by the secular Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawki, a receptive audience take it as confirmation of a sea-change in what used to be an extremist-Islamist ideological structure for al-Qaeda.