^
If there is a rift between Iraqi Al Qaeda and the rest it'll be for the same reason Zarqawi stopped following orders from central... Iraqi Al Qaeda can finance, arm, train, and recruit all on its own while the command in Pashtunistan is distant. The fact tha Iran has since the Syrian War cracked down on AQ transit through Persia has inevitably cut the International Salafi network in half, thereby allowing Iraqi AQ to draw up its own plans.
In intel and Jihadi circles there are rumors that whenever an AQ head like Zarqawi or OBL are caught or killed, it is often by intelligence provided to the enemy by Zawahiri and his loyalists. He has his fingers on the personal data, courier programs, and financial means of every leading AQ figure.
Baghdadi appears to be trying to cut out a Mashriqi Emirate, and he wants all the Euphrates under his writ. This has support from pan-Islamists, but defies the powerful locals, tribes etc and risks seeing AQ evicted. Zawahiri is too wise and experienced to allow this. It's critical that each of AQ's statelets are so firmly rooted that when they declare a union there is no possibility of indigenous mafia banding together to close their shariah courts and attempt disarming their Salafi fighters. Baghdadi must know that he hasn't consolidated Anbar, Diyala, or any part of Sunni Iraq save the countryside and a few neighborhoods in cities like Mosul. He must think that the profits and arms he can pull in al Sham will give him the power to eclipse the Sahwa at home.
Shameful. I hope Assad builds concentration camps for Sunni scum. The governments of the United States, the UK, and France share responsibility for this.
The executioner looks like an obese Amish or ZZ Top member.
^Wow. Sunni folks are somewhat lucky here in the sense that US-ZOG happens to be siding with the rebel cause and thus will not be eager to publicize this barbarity widely in the Western media. If "red state" Fox-News-viewing American Christians knew about this beheading, they would not take it lightly at all, as they've already been primed to believe that Muslims in general are a bunch of fanatical blood-thirsty savages. However Jewish controlled media are the tantamount opinion-forming organ in American society, and it doesn't serve their interests to play this killing up.
A quick Google news search shows primarily Catholic outlets picking up on this event. We'll see if that still stands in the next few hours.
It was Salafis that behead him. They don't have Western or GCC backing, but it can keep the West from backing the FSA if the Western public can't differentiate between Salafi Jihadists and ex-Baathist military defectors/opposition exiles. That's beneficial to the Salafis, as long as the FSA can't secure more backing from the West... it can not push secularism and it can not eclipse the Salafis in strength. That means when Assad's administration is finished in Sunni Syria, the West will have no strong puppet to contend for the throne.
Beheadings like this send the Christians packing, especially the affluent and educated who can immigrate on the quick, thus removing another pillar of the Assad regime.
It was a good decision by the Salafi wing of the rebellion.
^That's some cold-blooded calculus there. These Salafis make Hezbollah look like the Red Cross (or Red Crescent)*. I think I follow the logic, but isn't this level of polarization going to knock even a lot of moderate Sunnis on the opposite side of the fence? How do such Salafis plan to rule a relatively pluralistic place like Syria without basically exterminating everyone who doesn't sign up 101% with the program?
*IIRC the leader of Hezbollah predicted this sort of violence in a video posted earlier in the thread or on another thread. Worth watching, but I don't want to look for it right now.