Yes, I managed to find the first issue of al-Qaeda's "Inspire Magazine" on the Internet:
Did you know Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is banned in Germany (France, too, I think)? That censorship is a mistake. In truth, every high school student should be forced to read at least excerpts. The book isn't a book; it's a rampage. Nothing to be afraid of.
Ditto for al-Qaeda's magazine. I assume our government is the reason why it is so hard to track down (it took me about an hour). Outlawing the magazine, or making it damn near impossible to find, only makes it more attractive. It gives the magazine an outlaw (or more precisely, taboo) energy it does not have on its own. By which I mean "Inspire," when all is said and done, is singularly uninspiring.
The magazine is a textbook demonstration of middle class rebellion. Some examples:
"The dust will never settle down" is the title of an article by New Mexico-born al-Awlaki, who is on the U.S. most wanted list. My blog discussed him at length. (I suppressed it when several indicators suggested he might be tuning in). His "dust" metaphor refers to the hullabaloo surrounding the Danish cartoon.
Never settle down. Al-Awlaki obviously savors those words; he is repeating them from a sermon he gave. To quote "The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion," (p.185):
Middle class rebellion exalts … the world according to Heraclitus (540-480 BC). "One cannot step twice into the same river," he observed, "for the water into which you first stepped has flowed on." Some examples of rebellion's worship of movement for its own sake:
· "Goodbye to here," [French poet and middle class rebel archetype] Arthur Rimbaud waved, "no matter where."
· “Chance became our trademark,” Dadaist Hans Richter (1888-1976) recalled: "we followed it like a compass."
· [French poet] Lautréamont pronounced: "all is foam."
The special value that the rebel places on movement as a thing in itself is part of the greater value he accords to unity, to synthesis, to being with The One. It is a unity inside oneself and/or others, as well as in movement; it is a unity forever felt, forever just out of reach. Al-Qaeda's magazine poignantly phrases that yearning this way: "This effort, the effort of defending the Messenger of Allāh صلى الله عليه وسلم, should not be limited to a particular group of Muslims such as the mujāhidīn but should be the effort of the ummah, the entire ummah. This is an issue that should unite the efforts of the Muslims worldwide."
"The Source of Terrorism" (pp. 181-185) notes that the middle class rebel cultivates a number of specific contradictions, one of which is high morals/base practice:
"O Purity! Purity!" Rimbaud cried out: "When shall we go beyond the shores and the mountains, to salute the birth of the new work, and the new wisdom, the flight of tyrants and demons, the end of superstition, and be the first to adore Christmas on earth? The song of heaven, the marching peoples! Slaves, let us not curse life."
Christmas on earth for Rimbaud proved to be not always a silent night. "Give over everything to war, to vengeance, to terrors," he urged elsewhere:
Europe, Asia, America -- disappear!
Our avenging march has occupied everywhere,
all cities, countrysides! We will be overcome!
Volcanoes will blow up; the ocean will be hit...
Every respectable, middle class family man will steadfastly deny that he has any connection whatsoever with such an avenging march -- that there is the slightest link between the middle class and nihilistic terror. As a matter of record, it must be noted that among the most ardent admirers of Rimbaud was Saloth Sâr, a kindly petit professor of French literature during the 1950s. Saloth Sâr, alias Pol Pot.
[The anarchist leader] Mikhail Bakunin professed that he was seeking a "universal revolution" entirely out of moral principle, in order that "millions of deceived, enslaved, tormented and exploited human beings, liberated from all their directors and benefactors, official and officious, collective and individual, may breathe at last with complete freedom." To achieve the freeing of the tormented people of the world, Bakunin advised: "Poison, dagger, noose, etc. The revolution sanctifies all without distinction. The field lies open!"
Bakunin's poison, dagger, noose, "etc." find their echo in al-Qaeda's magazine: "We, by the will of Allāh will not back down from the defense of our beloved. We will fight for him, we will instigate, we will bomb and we will assassinate, and may our mothers be bereaved of us if we do not rise in his defense. It is the honor of the best of creation that is at stake and it is not much to set the world on fire for his sake."