“Jihad” is a song by American thrash metal band Slayer. It appears on the band’s 2006 studio album Christ Illusion. The song portrays the imagined viewpoint of a terrorist who has participated in the September 11, 2001 attacks. The climax of the song features spoken text taken from a motivational letter left behind by Mohamed Atta.
About Jihad (song) in brief
“Jihad” is a song by the American thrash metal band Slayer. It appears on the band’s 2006 studio album Christ Illusion. The song portrays the imagined viewpoint of a terrorist who has participated in the September 11, 2001 attacks. The climax of the song features spoken text taken from a motivational letter left behind by Mohamed Atta, who was named by the FBI as the head suicide terrorist of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center. It received a mixed reception in the music press, and reviews generally focused on the lyrics’ controversial subject matter. ABC-TV’s Broadcast Standards and Practices Department censored the song during Slayer’s first US network television appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on January 19, 2007. Only the opening minute was broadcast over the show’s credits, thus omitting 40% of the lyrics. It was made available for streaming on June 26, 2006, via the Spanish website Rafaabasa.com. It is one of two tracks on Christ Illusion to be released as a single, the other being ‘Eyes of the Insane’ —alongside fellow tracks ‘Cult’ and ‘Flesh Storm’ The song was written by guitarist Jeff Hanneman; the lyrics were co-authored with vocalist Tom Araya.
It has been compared to Slayer’s 1986 track ‘Angel of Death’, which similarly caused outrage at the time of its release. The band has defended the song, saying that it has the ‘coolest angle’ on the album and is ‘not political at all’ It has also been criticised for being too similar to Steve Earle’s track ‘John Walker’s Blues’, written from the perspective of a Taliban member captured during the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan. In an interview, guitarist Kerry King said that the band was not attempting to promote the terrorists’ perspective of the war, nor their ideological beliefs, although he expected others to assume Slayer was doing so. He also said that Slayer felt they had to present an alternative viewpoint.
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