The following first appeared in the London Telegraph and I saw it in the Sydney Morning Herald under the headline "Bin Laden, without the filters" and written by Francis Harris. Hopefully it shows what constitutes bin Laden's world view and makes people realize that an Al Qaeda victory would not be healthy.
By Francis Harris
Osama bin Laden wants the United States to convert to Islam, ditch its constitution, abolish banks, jail homosexuals, bar women from appearing in the press and sign the Kyoto climate change treaty.
The first complete collection of the Saudi's statements, published on Thursday by Verso, portrays a world in which Islam's enemies will take the first steps towards salvation by embracing the "religion of all the prophets".
Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden is billed as the first accurate compendium of the terrorist leader's words, threats and ruminations from 1994 to 2004.
Its editors have rooted out many statements which they identified as forgeries and retranslated to correct "horrendous" errors.
Bin Laden's terms for America's surrender appeared after the September 2001 suicide attacks.
Alcoholic drink and gambling would be barred and there would be an end to women's photos in newspapers or advertising. Any woman serving "passengers, visitors and strangers" would also be out of a job.
The West must "stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you" and has become the "worst civilisation witnessed in the history of mankind".
Verso said it expected criticism for publishing the thoughts of a terrorist, but "the idea is to have an annotated, scholarly collection of bin Laden's words", Gavin Browning from Verso said.
"Until now, his words have only been available in poor translations or soundbites." Mr Browning emphasised that publishing bin Laden's views did not imply approval of them by the publishers.
The book's introduction is written by Professor Bruce Lawrence, who teaches Islamic studies at Duke University, in North Carolina, and describes the terrorist as "one of the best prose writers in Arabic". Many past translations of the words of the head of al-Qaeda had been "horrendous" and often wrong, he said.
In the book the terrorist responsible for killing 3000 civilians in September 2001 says that killing the innocent is wrong. In bin Laden's world a global conflict is under way between the umma, or Muslim community, and unbelievers.
1 comment:
To know the true intentions and modivations of the terrorists' leaders is a critical component to maintaining our ability to remain resolute in our goals to achieve success in Iraq. When we lose sight of why we are really there people begin to question the price we are paying in lives and dollars. More and more people are either losing sight of this, or believe the price is to high, or don't realize the extremely high price we will pay if we don't succeed.
For a facinating historical perspective, I recommend a book called: Jefferson's War: America's First War on Terror, 1801-1805 by Joseph Wheelan. Though I am only about a quarter of the way through the audio book, if gives a very interesting history of past "jihads" and how the Barbary pirates of the 17 and 1800's were their day's Islamic terrorists.
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