BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Al-Qaida's second-in-command Tuesday threatened to punish France with "bombs and rockets" for barring Muslim women from wearing the veil in public schools.
An audio-tape by Ayman al-Zawahiri, broadcast by the Dubai-based al-Arabiya television and monitored in Beirut, said "France's law banning Muslim women from covering their heads in schools is yet a new indication of the extent of Zionist hatred the Westerners have towards Muslims."
Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian and right-hand man of al-Qaida's chief Osama bin Laden, said the French decision to ban the veil "should be dealt with by means of bombs and rockets."
He charged that the West considers freedom as sacred "whenever it allows them to rob the wealth of others, but the same freedom becomes terrorism if it is used to resist Western hegemony."
Al-Zawahiri also lashed out at Sheikh al-Azhar Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, Egypt's highest Sunni Muslim authority, who ruled the French decision to ban the veil was a domestic issue in which no one has the right to interfere.
He called for stepping up armed resistance against the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, the two countries Washington invaded within the past three years as part of its war against global terrorism.
