From Al-Qaeda's Inspire Magazine (Spring 2011):

"Another line that is being pushed by Western leaders

is that because the protests in Egypt and Tunisia

were peaceful, they proved al Qaeda – which calls

for armed struggle – to be wrong. That is another

fallacy. Al Qaeda is not against regime changes

through protests but it is against the idea that the

change should be only through peaceful means

to the exclusion of the use of force. In fact Shaykh

Ayman al-Zawahiri spoke in support of the protests

that swept Egypt back in 2007 and he alluded to

the fact that even if the protests were peaceful,

the people need to prepare themselves militarily.

The accuracy of this view is proven by the turn of

events in Libya. If the protesters in Libya did not

have the flexibility to use force when needed, the

uprising would have been crushed."