Reconstituted as Islam Policy and now under the sole leadership of Abdullah Muhammad, RM is trying to project a more serious intellectual image, contrasting with the provocative rhetoric it came to be associated with in the past. As part RM's rebranding efforts, Abdullah Muhammad is teaching a free online 10-week academic-style course titled "Shariah Compliant Economics: Paradigm Shift or Neo-imperialism." Most of the topics that will be discussed during the course concern either the Islamic approach to finance or Western capitalism and imperialism. The last lecture promises to "identify the potential Islamic Economics has for transforming banking, finance, and development globally."
Despite the image change and aspiration of making an impact on policy in Muslim-majority countries, RM under the leadership of Abdullah Muhammad is still motivated by a highly xenophobic world view. Abdullah Muhammad continues to refer to Abdullah al-Faisal as an authority and RM's Web site promotes other agitators for violence and Al Qaeda supporters such as Abu Hamza al-Masri. RM also continues to agitate in support for violence, as was evident in a statement it made in support of the physical assault sustained by CNN reporter Anderson Cooper while covering demonstrations in Cairo. (Abdullah Muhammad has a personal grudge against Cooper because of a story Cooper did on RM.) On February 2, 2011, RM posted a video of the attack on its Web site and commented: "The time is now, Anderson Cooper is an enemy of Islam, a propagator of the dawa of the Devil. We implore the Egyptians to run him out of dodge by any means necessary…"
Abdullah Muhammad has a long history of justifying violence against anyone he views as an enemy of Islam. He maintains that Muslims should hate Israel and anyone supporting Israel. In a statement he read during RM's protest of the 2010 Salute to Israel Parade, he condemned Israel as a "genocidal neo-Zio-Nazi terrorist state," and added: "we gather here to express our animosity and hatred for not only the state of Israel but all those that support it with self, wealth, word or weapons." He went on to quote a Muslim text, saying, "the Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews and when the Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, the stones and the trees will then say: 'oh [Muslims] there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."
According to Abdullah Muhammad, violence is an essential part of Islam, particularly when it concerns dealing with Israel. At the 2010 Salute to Israel Parade, he condemned Muslims who advocate for non-violent resistance and peace, arguing that while such Muslims neglect the tenets of their faith, "today…the justification for aggression and violence against the Jews of Israel is beginning to be understood by a large portion of humanity."
During an impromptu January 23, 2009, speech that Abdullah Muhammad gave while manning RM's information table, which was set up on a midtown Manhattan street, he stated that the September 11 attacks were directed at legitimate "military targets." In this speech, posted on RM's YouTube channel, Abdullah Muhammad explained that the World Trade Center was the "home of the economic power house that has kept the Muslims enslaved since the end of World War Two."
Abdullah Muhammad has appeared in several RM and Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS) events with Mohamed Mahmood Alessa and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, two New Jersey men who have been arrested on terror-related charges. In RM's video of the its protest at the 2010 Salute to Israel Parade in New York, Alessa is seen standing next to Abdullah Muhammad while he reads RM's condemnation of Israel. In another instance, on December 28, 2008, Abdullah Muhammad and Almonte appeared together at an ITS protest outside the Israeli consulate in New York. Standing next to Abdullah Muhammad, Almonte held a sign that read "Death to all (zionist) juice."
Until his move to Morocco, Abdullah Muhammad was mostly active in New York, but on March 20, 2010, he traveled to DC where both RM and ITS held protests, which coincided with an antiwar rally in front of the White House. RM's protest was also attended by Alessa and Zachary Chesser, a Virginia man who was arrested and charged in July 2010 for attempting to travel to Somalia to fight with the terrorist group Al Shabaab. During the protest, Abdullah Muhammad gave a speech in which he said that if President Obama were to be "judged…according to his deeds, then under international law he would hang from a noose in this very square today."
Abdullah Muhammad has contributed to Jihad Recollections, an online English language magazine that was created by a collaboration of online terrorist sympathizers but discontinued after September 2009. In the inaugural issue, released in April 2009 and purporting to be "the first English Jihad magazine," Abdullah Muhammad expressed support for Al Qaeda, writing that the September 11 terrorist attacks "…were, for the most part, positive and the results even better than expected." He also called on like-minded Muslims to "exploit these results and advance the jihad... It is time to begin to think about the necessary next steps that must predicate the conquering of Rome." On January 28, 2011, RM reposted a fuller version of the Jihad Recollection article to Islam Policy's Scribd page.
