Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden

322 Pages·2005·17.99 MB·English

by  Osama bin Laden, Bruce B. Lawrence

$16.95/£10.99/$24CAN
DESPITE THE SATURATION OF GLOBAL
.
media coverage, Osama bin Laden’s own writings have
been curiously absent from analysis of the “war on
terror.” Over the last ten years, bin Laden has issued
a series of carefully tailored public statements, from
letters and faxes to video recordings and interviews with
Western and Arab journalists. These texts supply
evidence crucial to an understanding of the bizarre mix
of Quranic scholarship, CIA training, punctual
interventions in Gulf politics and messianic anti¬
imperialism that has formed the programmatic core of
al-Qaeda.
In bringing together the various statements issued
under bin Laden’s name over the last decade, this
volume forms part of a growing discourse that seeks
to demythologize the terrorist network. Newly trans¬
lated from the Arabic, and annotated with a critical
introduction by Islamic scholar Bruce Lawrence, this
collection places the statements in their religious,
historical, and political context. It shows how bin
Laden's views draw on and differ from other strands
of radical Islamic thought; it also demonstrates how
his arguments vary in degrees of consistency, and how
his evasions concerning the true nature and extent of
his own group, and over his own role in terrorist
attacks, have contributed to the perpetuation of his
personal mythology.
BEL-TIB NON-FICTION
958, 1048092 Bin Laden
2005
Bin Laden, Osama, 1957-
Messages to the world :
the statements of Osama
Bin Laden
MESSAGES TO THE WORLD
DATE DUE
\R 2 0 2008
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Brodart Co. Cat. #55 137 001 Printed in USA
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2018 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/messagestoworldsOObinl
MESSAGES TO THE WORLD
THE STATEMENTS OF OSAMA BIN LADEN
♦
- -
Edited and Introduced by
BRUCE LAWRENCE
Translated by
JAMES HOWARTH
v
VERSO
London • New York
First published by Verso 2005
Introduction © Bruce Lawrence 2005
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the editor and translator have been asserted
13579 10 8642
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Typeset in Bembo
Printed in the USA by Quebecor World, Fairfield
CONTENTS
Editor’s acknowledgments
vii
Translator’s note ix
Introduction by Bruce Lawrence xi
I FROM SUDAN 1994-1995
1 THE BETRAYAL OF PALESTINE 3
2 THE INVASION OF ARABIA 15
II IN KHURASAN 1996-1998
3 DECLARATION OF JIHAD 23
4 THE SAUDI REGIME 31
5 FROM SOMALIA TO AFGHANISTAN 44
6 THE WORLD ISLAMIC FRONT 58
III TOWARDS 9/11 1998-2001
7 A MUSLIM BOMB 65
8 UNDER MULLAH OMAR 95
9 TO OUR BROTHERS IN PAKISTAN 100
10 THE WINDS OF FAITH 103
11 TERROR FOR TERROR
106
CONTENTS
IV WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 2001-2002
12 CRUSADER WARS 133
13 THE EXAMPLE OF VIETNAM » 139
14 NINETEEN STUDENTS 145
15 TO THE PEOPLE OF AFGHANISTAN 158
16 TO THE AMERICANS 160
17 TO THE ALLIES OF AMERICA 173
V WAR IN IRAQ 2003-2004
18 TO THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ 179
19 AMONG A BAND OF KNIGHTS 186
20 QUAGMIRES OF THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES 207
21 RESIST THE NEW ROME 212
22 TO THE PEOPLES OF EUROPE 233
23 THE TOWERS OF LEBANON 237
24 DEPOSE THE TYRANTS 245
Further reading 277
Index 279
vi
EDITOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The labor of many went into the making of this volume. Dr Miriam Cooke
read through most of the longer statements with me and offered invaluable
insight into the rhetorical nuances of Osama bin Laden’s often archaic Arabic.
Also providing help tracking down the cascade of Qur’anic and hadith references
in the messages was Kevin Fogg, a recent graduate of Duke University. Another
Duke resource was Dr Ebrahim Moosa. A trained religious scholar and an
authority on Islamic law, he commented on juridical aspects of bin Laden’s
persona, and also read drafts of the Introduction. Finally, Dr Flagg Miller, a
linguistic anthropologist, gave permission to cite his unpublished talk on Osama
bin Laden’s use of Arabic speech forms in audiocassettes.
Dr Khaled Hamid and Tammy Elmansoury provided invaluable help in
tracking down Arabic transcripts of bin Laden’s speeches, as did the staff at the
Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. Statement 5 is
reproduced by kind permission of CNN.
To all of these individuals I am grateful, though none of them bears responsi¬
bility for the final form of these statements, the headnotes introducing them, or
the Introduction to the book as a whole. I remain the person of record in the
challenging but critical endeavor to bring Osama bin Laden’s actual statements
into the conversations and considerations of a wider English-speaking public.