Heres what I experienced when I was around Awlaki - He was never anti taqleed - in fact he appeared to follow shafi fiqh, so I assume he was OK with hanafi fiqh as well. He did not consider practitioners of Tasssawuf to be within the fold of Islam. I was with a brother who was known to be a Qadri with bayat to a Sheikh. This brother asked Awlaki, who was the Imam of the masjid at the time, if he knew of any sisters that needed to be married. Awlaki replied "We only marry our daughters off to Muslims" - sounds a bit takfiri to me, and the brother felt the same way. He used to promote Zarabozos books - and was published by the same salafi publishing house - Al Baz publishing. He Openly opposed the tablighi brothers in our area - On Friday nights, the Tablighi masjid would hold a dinner and a bayaan, while Awlakis salafi masjid would do nothing. Then One Juma' Awlaki announced that they too would be having a dinner and a bayaan speaking about the unreliability of Fadhail Amal. He refused to let the tablighis do their tablighi thing in his masjid. Not being from the sub continent, I never really heard him say anything about the deobandis (most people outside the sub cont. dont care about deobandi/barlawis) - I was thinking about going to dar al mustafa when I was 17, and knowing that Awlaki was from Yemen, I wanted to ask him some questions about the Habaib - he replied "I try not to associate with any and all Mubtadis" - translation: Dar al Mustafa, Ba Alawis, the habaib are Mubtadis. This gives you a general idea of the positions he holds. If his mission is to fool the "average" Muslim into becoming Salafi - it seems to be working, because I know several brothers on this forum who are not salafi and who oppose salafism, but praise Awlaki and talk about how awesome he is.