Al-Qaeda: what Wikipedia removed
Al-Qaeda is the pan-Islamist militant organization behind the 1998 US embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing, and the September 11 attacks. Through 2020 the opening listed examples of its sectarian attacks in Iraq, including the Yazidi community bombings, the Sadr City bombings, the Ashoura Massacre and the April 2007 Baghdad bombings. Today the word is nowhere in the article, count zero. A reader arriving now learns of the organization’s founding and its US and allied targets, and not that Wikipedia once named the Ashoura Massacre among its sectarian attacks.
The word “massacre” appeared 1 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 2015. Today it appears nowhere in the article at all, references included. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.
The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot
Section titled “The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot”| word | 2005 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 6 October 2023 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| massacre | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| terror | 3 | 6 | 18 | 13 | 15 | 19 |
| militant | 2 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| islamist | 2 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 7 |
| jihad | 0 | 2 | 8 | 9 | 22 | 27 |
| martyr | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.
What was taken out
Section titled “What was taken out”- The description of al-Qaeda as a multinational, stateless, Islamist, extremist, Wahhabi jihadist group is gone from the opening.
- The sentence stating al-Qaeda’s terrorist organization designation by the United Nations Security Council is gone from the opening.
- The sentence describing al-Qaeda’s attacks on targets it considers kafir is gone from the opening.
- The sentence on al-Qaeda factions fighting each other during the Syrian civil war is gone from the opening.
- An earlier version of the sentence on al-Qaeda’s attacks on civilian and military targets was reworded into the current sentence naming the embassy bombings, USS Cole, and September 11.
- The reference to the United States launching the War on Terror in response to al-Qaeda’s attacks is gone from the opening.
How it opened then, and now
Section titled “How it opened then, and now”2005 (revision 17977787):
Osama bin Laden File:Zawahiri.jpg Ayman al-Zawahiri Al-Qaeda ( Template:Lang-ar - al-Qā’idah , “the foundation” or “the base”) is the name given to a worldwide network and alliance of militant Islamist organizations. Originally built around the cadre of Saudi-funded Arab fighters who flocked to join the mujahideen resistance movement against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan , it seeks to establish, via military and terrorist tactics, a radical form of Islamist ideology to supplant both current regimes in the Middle East and eventually Western society as a whole. The group places itself in confrontation with the United States , because the U.S. and other liberal democracies stand between …
2025 (revision 1296680165):
Pan-Islamic Sunni Jihadist organization (established 1988) For other uses, see Al-Qaeda (disambiguation) . Al-Qaeda , is a pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic caliphate . Its membership is mostly composed of Arabs but also includes people from other ethnic groups. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian, economic and military targets of the U.S. and its allies; such as the 1998 US embassy bombings , the USS Cole bombing , and the September 11 attacks . The organization was founded in a series of meetings held in Peshawar during 1988, attend…
Related
Section titled “Related”- The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
- The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
- Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
- The live article on Wikipedia
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