Onetime Al Qaeda loyalists now fault it

"We know that all of this matters to Al Qaeda and that its senior leadership is sensitive to the perceived legitimacy of both their actions and their ideology," Juan Carlos Zarate, the White House's deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism, said in a speech Wednesday at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "They care about their image because it has real-world effects on recruitment, donations and support in Muslim and religious communities for the Al Qaeda message."

Some counter-terrorism experts say they suspect that some criticism may have been planted on websites by Western intelligence agents, or lodged by imprisoned radicals who have been coerced.

But Zarate and others say the dissent is real and widespread.

"There has been a growing rejection of the Al Qaeda program and message," said Zarate, who added that the U.S. and its allies have encouraged the backlash by exploiting rifts between Al Qaeda and once-supportive Islamic fundamentalists objecting to its tactics.

U.S. officials cite a variety of evidence, including intelligence, Internet traffic, statements from Al Qaeda leaders, polling data and even songs by popular Pakistani and Indonesian musicians.

Prominent Saudi cleric Salman Awdah sent an open letter to Bin Laden in September in which he condemned violence against innocents and said Al Qaeda was hurting Muslim charities by its purported ties to them.

"Brother Osama, how much blood has been spilled?" wrote Awdah, who is believed to be independent of the Saudi government. "How many innocents among children, elderly, the weak and women have been killed and made homeless in the name of Al Qaeda?"

"Who benefits from turning countries like Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon or Saudi Arabia into places where fear spreads and no one can feel safe?"

In London this week, former extremists launched the Quilliam Foundation, an organization dedicated to discrediting Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists.

Zawahiri described his audio message as the first of several "open meetings" and answered complaints, many of them asking why Al Qaeda had killed innocents, including students on a passing bus who died in a bomb attack on the Algerian Constitutional Council in December.

"Excuse me, Mr. Zawahiri, but who is it who is killing with Your Excellency's blessing the innocents in Baghdad, Morocco and Algeria? Do you consider the killing of women and children to be jihad?" asked one questioner whom Zawahiri identified as a geography teacher.