Al Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri is quickly learning that there are limits when it comes to propaganda — that demonization and characterization can badly backfire and create a public relations. fiasco, even for terrorists.

At issue: his denunciation of President Elect Barack Obama as a “house negro” who compares unfavorably to the late Malcolm X. His statement is now being denounced by some prominent American Muslims.

The root of it: despite what some conservative talk show hosts and Republicans suggested during the 2008 Presidential election campaign, Obama’s election will likely pose some problems now for Al Qaeda on several fronts.

The biggest chunk of bad news for al-Zawahiri comes in the form of a news story now carried across the globe about how some American Muslim groups are denouncing his comments on several grounds and are in effect telling him to butt out:

Spiritual leaders of New York’s African-American Muslim communities lashed out Friday at a purported al Qaeda message attacking President-elect Barack Obama and, using racist language, comparing him unfavorably to the late Malcolm X

The imams called the recorded comments from al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri “an insult” from people who have “historically been disconnected from the African-American community generally and Muslim African-Americans in particular.”

“We find it insulting when anyone speaks for our community instead of giving us the dignity and the honor of speaking for ourselves,” they said in a statement read during a news conference at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial, Educational and Cultural Center.

The al Qaeda statement, an 11-minute, 23-second audio message in Arabic with subtitles in English, appeared on the Internet on Wednesday. Its authenticity has not been confirmed.

What could be behind Al Qaeda’s number two man’s comments? Why would he play the race card? Perhaps it’s because of a fear that — the arguments of conservative talkers such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and some Republicans to the contrary — Obama’s election may pose some problems for Al Qaeda that aren’t military related ones.

A fact that many analysts don’t usually point to is the fact that during the 20th century, terrorist and separatist groups often would work to provoke government establishments to overreact or to at least show its angriest face through its leadership so it could use the reaction and imagery of angry victim governments to recruit more followers. The idea was that the reaction and image of the government/leader would then turn off some people who’d then either be more sympathetic to the violent organization or even join it.

The Washington Post’s Clarence Page suggests Al Qaeda was thrown off-balance by Obama’s election:

Having a last name that sounds like Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s first name has never been a political plus for Barack Obama. Could it now be a burden for Al Qaeda too?

It was a lot easier for the Islamist terror organization to frame the U.S. as a racist, anti-Muslim “crusader” nation before we elected a biracial American named Barack Hussein Obama to be our president.

That would help to explain why Al Qaeda’s first official response to Obama’s election features Ayman al-Zawahiri, the group’s No.2, denouncing Obama in a Web video as a “house slave” or “abeed al-beit” in Arabic. An English subtitle provided by Al Qaeda’s propaganda arm translates the term as “house Negro.” Actually, the Arabic phrase literally translates as “house slaves.”

Zawahiri compares Obama to Malcolm X, the assassinated black American Muslim leader who made the plantation reference to house slaves and house Negroes famous in the early 1960s to describe blacks who played along with white supremacy.

Page also reacts to Zawahiri’s dissing of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Obama this way:

To which I as an African-American respond—in a cleaned-up version of an old black community phrase—”Negro, please!”

It’s a little too glib for Al Qaeda’s No. 2 to honor Malcolm, an American, 43 years after his assassination when he is unable to speak for himself.

As a longtime student of his speeches and ghost-written autobiography, I don’t think he would appreciate being exploited by fugitive jihadi terrorists any more than he’d want his face on Ku Klux Klan bedsheets.

Such irony. Just as Obama has made it cool to play by the rules and challenge the system at its own game—and win!—along comes Zawahiri to challenge his negritude.

I might be a tad bit more impressed with Zawahiri’s indignation had I heard him similarly denounce the traffic in black African slaves that Arabs continue to conduct in Sudan and Persian Gulf states.

With most of the world, including much of the Arab and Islamic world, enthralled with Obama’s election victory, it’s no surprise that Al Qaeda feels compelled to assert itself back into world headlines. But their show is getting old, lame and increasingly irrelevant, even in the highly competitive Islamist terrorist world.

He also notes that for some strange reason killing thousands of Arabs and Muslims hasn’t endeared Al Qaeda to Arabs and Muslims.

The Boston Globe also notes Al Qaeda has been its biggest enemy in the Islamic world:

The humiliating truth is that Al Qaeda made itself despised in Iraq and was defeated there by other Muslims. The whole world saw Muslims in Iraq stop fighting the Americans so they could crush the Al Qaeda serpent in their midst.

To the American ear, the falsest note struck by Zawahiri came in this direct address to Obama: “And in you and in Colin Powell, Rice and your likes, the words of Malcolm X concerning ‘house negroes’ are confirmed.” This was not only a nasty, racist insult of Obama (the original Arabic called him a “house slave”); it showed a willful misunderstanding both of Obama’s mandate for the rehabilitation of America and of Malcolm’s rejection, near the end of his life, of the delusional, hate-based nihilism that Al Qaeda practices.

And public relations HAS mattered to the terrorist group, as documents captured in in Feb. 2006 showed:

Many documents show al-Qaeda leaders discussing the need for a successful public relations strategy. In June 2000, an operative named Abu Huthaifa writes a mentor that al-Qaeda needs to fix problems in its “informational and political efforts,” failings that are “killers of the movement.”

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is also criticized in some documents. One letter by operative Abd-al-Halim Adl in June 2002 challenges bin Laden’s leadership and blames him for the “misfortune and disaster” brought on by post-9/11 U.S. military actions.

Adl asks the recipient, identified only as Mukhtar, to urge bin Laden to change course and “stop all foreign actions, stop sending people to captivity, stop devising new operations.”

Part of Al Qaeda’s strategy has been to get its word out…on the cheap…for free.. by getting out out via the Internet.

But that’s a double edged sword if the message proves to be sanctimonious, hypocritical and racist — as Zawahiri’s was. Even worse when the factor conservative talk show hosts have been blasting and repeating ad nauseum (and still do) — Obama’s Muslim middle name — is now a source of great pride to Muslims, even though Obama is not a Muslim .

The Atlanta Constitution’s Editorial Page Editor Cynthia Tucker believes Obama’s election is a nightmare for Al Qaeda:

While it’s a bit irritating to have an atavistic mass murderer presume to dictate appropriate politics for a black American, Zawahiri’s diatribe is good news. In fact, it may be the best news we’ve gotten in the struggle against al-Qaida since the so-called Sunni awakening in Iraq. Zawahiri and his fellow jihadists are clearly worried both about the symbolic power of an Obama presidency and about the smarter strategy against terrorism that Obama has laid out.

The hamfisted tactics favored by George W. Bush, including his ill-fated invasion of Iraq, were a gift to al-Qaida and its recruiting efforts. They allowed bin Laden and Zawahiri to paint the U.S. government as an imperial power bent on a 21st-century crusade against Islam.

However, that’s a more difficult argument to make when the Oval Office is occupied by a black man whose Kenyan grandfather was Muslim and who played with Muslim friends during his childhood years in Indonesia.

“Obama’s election has taken the wind out of al-Qaida’s sails in much of the Islamic world because it demonstrates America’s renewed commitment to multiculturalism, human rights and international law,” former National Security Council staffer Richard Clarke said. “It also proves to many that democracy can work and overcome ethnic, sectarian or racial barriers.”

….During the campaign, several of John McCain’s supporters —- including the recently forgiven Joe Lieberman —- tried to argue that an Obama win would be a victory for terrorists. The neocons hyperventilated over Obama’s promise to draw down troops from Iraq, to talk to our enemies, to restore the rule of law. Even Obama’s correct pronunciation of Pakistan (Pah-kis-tahn) became something to snicker about, as if it were a sign of weakness.

Al-Qaida’s cheap taunts, on the other hand, suggest its minions see something to fear in the new president. They know he’ll fight both the propaganda war and the shooting war a lot better than Bush ever did.

The reason: Obama will be someone harder to demonize. And if they try to demonize him in the way Zawahiri did, it could once again boomerang.