WHO IS ABU ZAR AL-BURMI?

AND, WHY IS HE SUCH A DANGER FOR MYANMAR,

ESPECIALLY NOW, AFTER THE AFGHANISTAN FIASCO
By Rick Heizman, October 21, 2021

ABU ZAR AL-BURMI:

BACKGROUND, SKILLS, LEADERSHIP

Abu Zar al-Burmi (also known as Abu Zarr al-Burmi,

Abu Dhar al-Burmi, Abu Zar Azzam, and even Abu
Zarr al-Pakistani) is a citizen or resident of Pakistan
and is of ‘Rohingya’ Muslim descent - details are
sketchy, but it is believed that his father came from
Arakan. He was educated in Pakistan, became an
Islamic cleric and teacher at an Islamic school in
Karachi.

Al-Burmi is believed to have made contact with jihadists in the mid 2000s and later linked up
with militant elements in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions. He is perhaps best known
for being the former leading mufti of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). He has also
been a prominent member of the Turkistan Islamic Party, and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)
also known as the Pakistani Taliban. Loyal to his origins al-Burmi is very sympathetic and
supportive of the ‘Rohingya’ cause.

Al-Burmi is skilled with languages and is known to speak Arabic, Urdu, Bengali, and Uzbek,
and combined with his standing as an Islamic scholar he ascended rather quickly within the
regional jihadist leaderships.

Abu Zar al-Burmi first entered the jihadist scene in Pakistan as a replacement for a jihadist
leader who perished in a U.S. drone strike in 2010. He went on to become the IMU’s (Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan) leading mufti and was featured prominently in videos of the IMU,
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the Uighur-led Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP). He traveled
throughout Pakistan giving sermons to tribal members. Al-Burmi’s role as a liaison between
the Uzbek-speaking IMU and the Urdu-speaking TTP was essential - and as a ‘muhajir’, or
migrant, by ancestry, al-Burmi could legitimately represent other groups from near and far.
Al-Burmi has been described as an example of ‘Jihadi globalization’- a Pakistani-educated
cleric of Burmese/Rohingya origin, preaching the need for international Jihad, in fluent
Arabic, Urdu, Bengali, and Uzbek languages.

As a spiritual leader and authoritative voice for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan he
guided them to form an alliance with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan leadership. However, he then
made a deadly error. The IMU top leader pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) in 2015
— a clear violation of the organization’s historical alliance with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Al-
Burmi initially supported this decision and operated for a time under the IS umbrella. In
response to the betrayal, Taliban militants savagely hunted down and killed scores of IMU
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members. Al-Burmi went underground, staying silent for over a year. Rather than killing Abu
Zar the Taliban seemed to use the tactic of publicly showing his “rehabilitation” by
denouncing ISIS and joining the Imam Buhari Brigade (IBB) which was another Uzbek group
but a rival to the IMU. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) even included Abu Zar’s
‘apologies’ for supporting ISIS in its newsletter after Abu Zar’s two videos with IBB in
October 2016.

Rehabilitating al-Burmi served the interests of

the Taliban and al-Qaeda, because al-Burmi
was a very valuable asset. It also sent a
message to ISIS members that as ISIS was
being defeated (in Mosul and Raqqa at that
time) they could join or rejoin al-Qaeda and
continue the jihad without consequences.
Moreover, al-Qaeda leadership was trying to
elevate its al-Qaeda in the Indian
Subcontinent (AQIS) branch (focused on
Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and
Rakhine State of Myanmar) - and Abu Zar al-Burmi’s Rohingya heritage would be a big boost
for AQIS planning and strategy.

Al-Burmi resurfaced in 2016 appearing in a series of videos released by the Imam Buhari
Brigade (IBB), Turkistan Islamic Party, and a newly founded jihadist group in Myanmar -
Harakah al-Yaqin, later renamed Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). He criticized IS
denounced the organization. Ultimately the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda, and their allies
allowed al-Burmi back into their coalition and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) even
featured his apology in their newsletter. Al-Burmi has since continued his involvement in
media production but has kept a comparatively lower profile - presumably for his personal
safety.

ABU ZAR AL-BURMI: HIS FOCUS ON ARAKAN, BURMA (MYANMAR)

(I highlighted the words ‘Burma’, ‘Buddhists’, ‘Arakan’ in red, and some comments of mine in blue)

Al-Burmi is keen on establishing a Sharia State not only in Pakistan, but worldwide. In a
German-language video release by IMU for example he talks about the historic region of
al-Hind - the Arabic term for greater India.

He claims:

• “At the time of the Prophet Muhammad, nine lands were part of Al-Hind. Sri Lanka,
Maledives, Pakistan, Nepal, Kashmir, Bhutan, Baharat, Burma and Bangladesh.”

Al-Burmi’s ideology demands that these countries must be Islamicized, or returned to the
rule of Islam and must join to form an Islamic Caliphate ruled by Shariah Law.

On Nov. 28, 2012, Abu Zar al-Burmi, issued one of the most blatant calls for Muslims to
wage jihad in Burma. Excerts from a speech of his titled, ‘A Lost Nation’ - featuring
ridiculously convoluted claims, history, and ‘facts’:

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• “Rise O servants of Allah to help your brothers
and sisters!,” Azzam proclaimed. “Rise to save
your sons and daughters! Do your best in jihad, O
guardians of creed and [monotheism], against the
enemies of Allah the idolatrous Buddhists, and
target the most important installations of Burma,
China, and Germany [using ‘Germany’ to actually
mean ‘Western Countries’] and their interests and
the interests of the United Nations, which
supports these massacres and this genocide in
Arakan.”

• “Burma is an ‘Indian’ state and Islam entered Burma through the Arab traders during
the first half of the seventh century after Hijra (the migration or journey of Muhammad
and his followers from Mecca to Medina, in the year 622). The Muslims in this land are
of Arab, Maghrebi, Persian, and Turkish and Bengali origin. The Muslims of Arakan are
called ‘Rohingya’.” (They never called themselves ‘Rohingya’, nor did anyone else) “The
first Islamic kingdom in Arakan was established by Suleiman Shah in 784 A.H.(1445)
they continued to rule Arakan for four centuries before the Buddhist Burmese occupied
the kingdom in 1784.” (Arakan was never ruled by Muslims, in any manner).

• “Muslim brothers, in June 2012, a great massacre occurred in Burma in the province of
Arakan but only a few Muslims realize the extent of this tragedy that occurred to the
Muslims. Killings, displacement, bloodshed, violations of honors and destruction. So we
say to them and to all Muslims that the only solution for this tragedy is jihad.”

• “The main cause of this massacre was the rape of a woman from the Buddhists who
converted to Islam, the Buddhist monks raped this Muslim woman and killed her and
then accused the Muslims of that. And the pagan Buddhists found a way to calm their
hatred, when in just two weeks they killed more than 20,000 Muslims and injured more
than 58,000, while 1500 families were displaced from their homes and around 500 cities
and villages were burned.” (A Buddhist women was brutally raped and slaughtered by
Muslim men, and that happens far too frequently. Turning those facts around and
blaming the Buddhist monks is disgusting and despicable. And, the ensuing violence at
that time was planned and instigated by the Bengali ‘Rohingya’ Muslims. Most real
estimates of the casualties were several hundred people total for both Buddhists and
Muslims.)

• “O’ Muslims, this is the land of Muslims and it was conquered by our fathers and
forefathers by their good manners and beautiful characteristics, they were the first to
inhabit it and ruled with what Allah has revealed.”

All of these absurd and ridiculous claims easily and unquestionably become solid facts in
the minds of the Muslim World, and easily stir up the call for jihad to annihilate the
Rakhine Buddhists, the Burmese Buddhists, and all Buddhists of the world.

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CONDEMNATION AND CALL FOR ATTACKS ON CHINA AND ITS ALLIES

Condemnation of China has recently become more common by jihadists and their social
media, as well as by Western social justice warriors who are largely ignorant and arrogant of
the situation, history, and dynamics of the Uighur Muslims in ‘Xinjiang’, or ‘East Turkistan’, in
the westernmost part of China. Al-Burmi is one of the chief voices who has spoken about and
illuminated the Uighur cause (and victimhood) for over 10 years, and he has made it a priority
to consistently criticize, threaten, and call for attacks on China and its allies. The emergence
of al-Burmi as a prominent anti-Chinese jihadist leader in Pakistan has led to Xinjiang and the
Uighur - as well as China’s foreign policy and growing international influence and clout - to
gain more attention among jihadists.

However, al-Burmi is creating the ultimate victimhood

of the Uighur, which has also been naively accepted
by the Western virtue signaling activists who don’t
know, and don’t even want to know, the history, the
indoctrination of the Uighur into extremist Islamic
ideology, and the mass terrorist attacks against
innocent Chinese people.

Al-Burmi has called China the new superpower and predicted it would become the next
number one enemy of Islam, as the power of the US declines under the Biden presidency.
He warned, “Mujahidin should know that the coming enemy of the Ummah [Arabic = the
global community of all Muslim believers] is China, which is developing its weapons day after
day to fight the Muslims.” In a video message titled ‘Let’s Disturb China’ al-Burmi referred to
the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as “a victory for the Taliban movement in the region”
and now “our next target will be China.”

For al-Burmi, Chinese aggression against Islam begins at home and extends out into the
international arena. He views China as an occupier of Xinjiang and supporter of illegitimate,
hostile, and repressive state governments abroad. In a video released through the Turkistan
Islamic Party’s media outlet Sawt al-Islam he said:

“I was asked what you know about eastern Turkistan. I answered that it is part of our Ummah
(Islamic nation) and the people living there are our brothers and sisters. Thus how can our
Muslim fighters not know our brothers and sisters who are living in an oppressed land? I
came from Burma and we were oppressed by the Buddhists and Chinese too. I very well
know what our brothers and sisters are facing … We are not Uighurs, Pakistanis or Burmese
in principle, but we are Muslims inside out.”

Abu Zar al-Burmi displays a strong connection to Pakistan and Myanmar’s Rakhine (Arakan)
region. He accordingly regards the internal political affairs of these countries as issues of
particular concern. His rhetoric emphasizes sovereignty, Islamic unity, and the imperative
need to expel malign external actors and their corrupting influence from Muslim lands.

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 Abu Zar al-Burmi deems China complicit in the suffering inflicted
upon Myanmar’s minority Rohingya Muslim community, an ethnic
and religious group he himself belongs to. Al-Burmi has even
gone so far as to allege the atrocities are part of a targeted
Chinese plot to remove the Rohingya from regions containing oil
resources. In a sermon titled “A Lost Nation” he scorned the
governments of “Burma, China and Germany … for supporting
massacres and mass killings [of Rohingyas] in Arakan.” He
expressed his sorrow saying, “We are heartbroken by the
massacre…committed by a pagan Buddhist enemy which is the
infidel, aggressive, oppressive, licentious state of Burma with support of China.”

The Uyghur were formally Buddhists of various desert Kingdoms whom were then brutally
slaughtered or converted at the hands of invading Turkic Muslims during the Islamization
and Turkification of Xinjiang. After being converted to Islam, the Uyghur Muslims have failed
to retain memory of their ancestral Buddhist legacy (or more likely have intentionally erased
their heritage from their own history) and do not believe that they were the ones who built
the many significant Buddhist ruins and monuments in their area. The stated goals of the
Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) include establishing an independent Islamic Sharia state
called ‘East Turkestan’ in Xinjiang. One of their chief grievances against China is that China
implemented female and male equality.

ANTI-CHINA SPEECH

On February 24, 2014, the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) released a video-recorded message
titled ‘We Are Coming O Buddhists.’ The message is presented by al-Burmi, who extols the
acts of jihadis coming from Xinjiang, China (Eastern Turkestan) and calls upon Muslims to
support them with money and men. Addressing the “Chinese and Buddhists,” he warns them
of dire punishment for their crimes against Muslims and Islam, and says that killing them and
shedding their blood is “good.”

• “Oh! Turkey Republic of Muslim people, we are a country connected by Islamic solidarity.
I tell you, those Chinese Buddhists, their small eyes, flat noses …
Judgment day will not come, until we attack them.
Judgment day will not come, until we slaughter them.
Judgment day will not come, until our war with them.
In the name of Allah we will do what is good for you –
in fact, killing and slaughtering you is a good thing.
We are Muslims, and you are the enemy, Oh!
To Kill you, to spill your blood, to cut off your heads, these are good things.
We will kill and slaughter you with a vengeance. We will cut you apart, piece by piece.
May Allah curse you, and all like you.
We are people who love death as you love wine and woman of the country.
We want to kill the Buddhists of the East and the West.
Killing and slaughtering you is a good thing.”
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AL-BURMI’S GLORIFICATION OF BOSTON MARATHON TERRORIST BOMBERS

Two Chechen Muslim terrorists, brothers Dzhokhar

Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted two
homemade bombs, at the annual Boston Marathon
in 2013, near the finish line of the race, killing 3
people and injuring hundreds of others, including 17
who lost limbs in a major Islamic terrorist incident on
US soil.

Abu Zar al-Burmi saw the Tsarnaev brothers as a

model of the kind of jihad fighters that the next
generation of Muslims should be raised to emulate.

Al-Burmi wrote: "This city of Boston, where Iblis [Satan] practices, is the city from which the
movement to liberate America from Great Britain began. In the very house of unbelief, two
Chechen brothers destroyed the infidels' fortresses on April 16, 2013. During the [ensuing]
search [by the authorities for the perpetrators], the elder brother died as a martyr in the field
of glory and honor, Allah willing. The younger brother, Dzokhar, remained, and told his dear
nation: 'We did this operation as revenge for what America does in Palestine, Iraq, and
Afghanistan.' He didn't mention his homeland Chechnya, since this jihad is a jihad of [an
entire] nation, not [a campaign] for the liberation of a single land.... The Muslims' lands are
one and their honor is one.”

Al-Burmi continued, “I saw Dzokhar's photo, the photo of a handsome young man in the
prime of his youth. I thought to myself: Years ago, he was a child, and he saw the tragedies
and catastrophes befall his beloved ummah, one after another. His older brother raised him
on jihad and martyrdom-seeking. So, years later, he grew up to be a lion who demolished the
fortresses of the infidels and massacred them, rocking the throne of the greatest tyrant on
earth.”

Al-Burmi summarized, ”Yes, this

should be our model. In the very
house of unbelief and
misguidedness, in the city of Boston,
the city of American universities that
spread poison around the world –
this is where Dzhokhar was raised; in
an environment that ridicules and
denies faith, Dzhokhar and his
brother carried out an attack that
pleases the believers and makes us
content. By his act, he said to us:
‘This is what you should do, oh
pearls [the name Dzhokhar is
derived from the Arabic jawhar,
meaning pearl] of Muhammad, and
weep not.’ Weeping is unbefitting for
men.”

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AL-BURMI AND ALL OTHER ISLAMIC TERRORISTS ARE EMBOLDENED
AND BELIEVE THEY CAN NOW WIN THE JIHADS AROUND THE WORLD

After US president Biden’s appalling fiasco in Afghanistan in August and September 2021,
particularly the largest abandonment of top-quality modern weapons in world history, Abu
Zar al-Burmi, and all Islamic terrorist leaders and groups are incredulous, emboldened, and
eager to fight and terrorize again. With al-Burmi’s position, status, and authority in various
terror groups - particularly the Taliban - it is certain that he is smuggling major weapons
shipments to ARSA, and other Mujahid groups, to launch Jihad again, and conquer the land
coveted by the Bengali ‘Rohingya’ Muslims.

The ARSA/Mujahid militants do not even need super sophisticated weapons - they just need
many more weapons - assault rifles, hand grenades, RPGs, mortars, communication
devices, drones, and plenty of ammo. The Muslims greatly outnumber any amount of
Tatmadaw (Burmese Army) troops that can be sent there - especially at this time, when the
Tatmadaw is under assault from every direction by nationwide resistance to the disastrous
coup of February 1, 2021, and suffering huge amounts of casualties and desertions, while
morale and leadership are failing disastrously. In 2017, ARSA launched unprecedented
attacks with 150,000 - 200,000 assailants, most of them being village men and boys with
knives, swords and clubs, supporting the much fewer armed militants. Imagine if 150,000 -
200,000 militants were all armed with assault rifles and lots of ammo. Despite their lack of, or
inadequate training, that many could do a lot of harm - especially when indoctrinated with
Islamic Jihad ideology.

It would be enough to completely change the battlefield dynamics. There is no doubt that the
ARSA/Mujahid terrorists would be able to crush the Tatmadaw in northern Rakhine State, as
well as probably defeat or severely damage the Arakan Army (AA).

This is the greatest danger that Myanmar is and will be facing.

The Bengali ‘Rohingya’ Muslims are now ecstatically emboldened and they will absolutely
launch a major Jihad again. They have no need to pretend to want to be part of the nation of
Myanmar. They know that weapons are coming and they can overwhelm any forces that
oppose them, and as they would say, ‘Inshallah!’ (If Allah wills it).

by Rick Heizman, October 21, 2021

arakanrakhinetruth.com