Al-Qaeda’s hypocrisy is mind-numbing, and entirely racist. Its activities in Iraq are not an “insurgency,” but rather ethnic and religious cleansing. Nonetheless, the terror group’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is trying his hand at managing public relations in the Muslim world – and he is failing miserably.

Today, he announced that he really didn’t mean to kill all those Muslims attending a wedding in Amman, Jordan last week — just Jews and Americans. But, also today, his followers murdered at least 80 Shiite Muslims by blowing up two mosques in Iraq. To paraphrase George Orwell, “are some Muslims more equal than others?”

First, the failure of al-Qaeda’s public relations campaign. From the BBC:

At least 100,000 people marched through Amman on Friday in the latest mass show of anger at the suicide attacks.

“Zarqawi, you coward, what brought you here?” shouted the marchers.

The two-hour march concluded with a rally in central Amman, where dignitaries and clergymen addressed the crowd, condemning Jordanian-born Zarqawi and his group.

Before the attacks, Zarqawi appeared to enjoy a certain sympathy in some sections of Jordanian opinion, the BBC’s Jim Muir says.

But the death of so many Jordanian civilians seems to have eroded that sympathy very sharply, our correspondent says, and this broadcast seems to be aimed at regaining that lost ground.

Now, how al-Qaeda really feels about its fellow Shiite Muslims:

People of discernment and knowledge among Muslims know the extent of danger to Islam of the Twelve’er school of Shiism. It is a religious school based on excess and falsehood whose function is to accuse the companions of Muhammad of heresy in a campaign against Islam, in order to free the way for a group of those who call for a dialogue in the name of the hidden mahdi who is in control of existence and infallible in what he does. Their prior history in cooperating with the enemies of Islam is consistent with their current reality of connivance with the Crusaders.

Finally, al-Qaeda’s Machiavellian solution for the Shiites (i.e., we’ll kill all of them when it becomes more convenient):

Indeed, questions will circulate among mujahedeen circles and their opinion makers about the correctness of this conflict with the Shia at this time. Is it something that is unavoidable? Or, is it something can be put off until the force of the mujahed movement in Iraq gets stronger? … And can the mujahedeen kill all of the Shia in Iraq? Has any Islamic state in history ever tried that?

Still think the appellations “militants” or “insurgents” apply to the terrorists?