Al Qaeda Leader Running Syria Says America is the Real “Terrorist”

“What is the definition of terrorism or a terrorist?”

by Daniel Greenfield | July 7, 2025

Abu Muhammad al-Jolani. Photo by Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikipedia

Qatar’s Islamist regime showed off its global power at its ‘Doha’ summit attracting everyone from Bill Gates to Tucker Carlson to current Syrian leader and former Al Qaeda leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

The former terrorist leader who had a $5 million reward on his head when he was going by Al-Jolani was asked by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour about his terrorist past.

And Ahmed al-Sharaa predictably replied that it’s really hard to define what a terrorist is and that America, the UK and Israel are the real terrorists.

“What is the definition of terrorism or a terrorist?” Al-Sharaa, who had been originally backed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the original caliph of ISIS, asked. “Saying that I was a terrorist and judging me as a terrorist is politicized.”

“Judging people as terrorists needs to be proven,” the head of a terror group that massacred numerous civilians argued. “There’s been 25 years of us hearing this word in the world, but there’s a lot of confusion in understanding the word terrorist. Terrorists, in my opinion, are those that kill innocent people, children and women. And that use illegitimate means to harm people.”

And if there’s one thing that Al Qaeda and ISIS were known for, it was their firm refusal to ever harm innocent people, children and women.

Ahmed al-Sharaa then claimed that the term ‘terrorist’ would be better applied to the non-Muslim countries targeted by Islamic terrorists.

“The number of victims in Gaza … most of them are innocent,” Al-Shara said, referring to the dead terrorists in his fellow Muslim Brotherhood terrorist groups. “We saw wars in Afghanistan, in Iraq, all of those that were killed were innocent – and it is the killers that describe others as terrorists.”

The last part is true. We’ve got an Al Qaeda terrorist now trying to flip the definition of terrorists to mean the United States and those countries resisting Islamic terrorism.

Al-Shara argues that most of the terrorists killed in Gaza were innocent, and apparently “all of those that were killed were innocent” in Afghanistan and Iraq. Including presumably Al Qaeda.

This does show real appreciation by Ahmed al-Sharaa for the way President Trump honored him by inviting him to the White House.

“Now, on a personal level, I have never harmed a civilian, I fought on several fronts and I fought for more than 20 years, with honour,” Al-Sharaa falsely claimed. “People now know that this description is not accurate, that is why I am no longer listed as a terrorist by the Security Council.”

Whatever his ‘personal’ level is, he headed a terrorist organization responsible for killing plenty of civilians. The only reason he was delisted by the Security Council was because Turkey’s Islamist regime helped him seize power, at which point he was no longer a terrorist leader, he was now the leader of a terrorist state.

Can anyone please help this man define ‘terrorism’?