Despite his importance as a senior Al-Qaeda spokesman, no detailed examination exists of Adam Yahiye Gadahn’s employment of fiqh al-jihad—that branch of Islamic jurisprudence regulating the lawful waging of jihad—to condemn or condone violence committed in the name of Al-Qaeda. This article first provides a detailed exposition of Gadahn’s sharia-based critique of affiliates’ conduct deemed by him in violation of Islamic law and involving the commission of major sins. Second, Gadahn’s conception of fiqh al-jihad is contextualized and contrasted with the comprehensive fiqh al-jihad-based critiques produced by respected militant Islamist scholars. A key finding here is that Gadahn (unlike these scholars) illicitly truncates the application of fiqh al-jihad with the result that he demands sharia-compliance when criticizing intra-Islamist violence yet ignores sharia-compliance when targeting America and Americans. Third, reasons are considered for this incoherent application of fiqh al-jihad and attempted Islamic legalization of anti-American mass casualty terrorist attacks. Finally, the discussion concludes with implications for counter-Al-Qaeda strategy.

Adam Gadahn's Abbottabad letter offers a rare opportunity to examine how this Al Qaeda Senior Leadership (AQSL) media operative and spokesman conceptualizes and executes media warfare. In this article, I first introduce, depict, and employ the author's Terrorist Quadrangle Analysis (TQA) as a useful heuristic for conceptualizing and representing the four interrelated components of the AQSL terrorist enterprise: political objectives, media warfare, terrorist attacks, and strategic objectives. This TQA construct is then employed to conceptualize Gadahn's media warfare acumen. Gadahn is shown to be an adept communications warfare operative who conscientiously disaggregates and evaluates key target audiences, messengers, messaging, and media. Gadahn's vehement critique of select “jihadi” groups, in particular Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP), al-Shabaab, and the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), is then described. Key here is how and why Gadahn denounces their indiscriminate, murderous terrorist attacks on Muslim non-combatant civilians and other protected persons as effectively subverting his intended AQSL media warfare strategy and undermining AQSL strategic and religio-political objectives. A concluding section briefly summarizes these chief findings, offers select implications for scholarship and counter-AQSL messaging strategy, and identifies study limitations.