Full text: bin Laden's 'letter to America'
Online document: the full text of Osama bin
Laden's "letter to the American
people", reported in today's Observer.
The letter first appeared on the internet in
Arabic and has since been translated and
circulated by Islamists in Britain.
Observer Worldview
Sunday November 24, 2002
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most
Merciful, "Permission to fight (against
disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who
are fought against, because they have been
wronged and surely, Allah is Able to give them
(believers) victory" [Quran 22:39]
"Those who believe, fight in the Cause of
Allah, and those who disbelieve, fight in the
cause of Taghut (anything worshipped other than
Allah e.g. Satan). So fight you against the
friends of Satan; ever feeble is indeed the plot
of Satan."[Quran 4:76]
Some American writers have published articles
under the title 'On what basis are we fighting?'
These articles have generated a number of
responses, some of which adhered to the truth and
were based on Islamic Law, and others which have
not. Here we wanted to outline the truth - as an
explanation and warning - hoping for Allah's
reward, seeking success and support from Him.
While seeking Allah's help, we form our reply
based on two questions directed at the Americans:
(Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you?
Q2)What are we calling you to, and what do we
want from you?
As for the first question: Why are we fighting
and opposing you? The answer is very simple:
(1) Because you attacked us and continue to
attack us.
a) You attacked us in Palestine:
(i) Palestine, which has sunk under military
occupation for more than 80 years. The British
handed over Palestine, with your help and your
support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for
more than 50 years; years overflowing with
oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion,
destruction and devastation. The creation and
continuation of Israel is one of the greatest
crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals.
And of course there is no need to explain and
prove the degree of American support for Israel.
The creation of Israel is a crime which must be
erased. Each and every person whose hands have
become polluted in the contribution towards this
crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily.
(ii) It brings us both laughter and tears to
see that you have not yet tired of repeating your
fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical
right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in
the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this
alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is
one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated
fabrications in history. The people of Palestine
are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the
Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be
upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah
that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all
of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus
and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be
upon them all. If the followers of Moses have
been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah,
then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of
this.
When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove
out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned
to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets peace
be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical
right to Palestine cannot be raised against the
Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets
of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) - and
we make no distinction between them.
(iii) The blood pouring out of Palestine must
be equally revenged. You must know that the
Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are
not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned
alone.
(b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported
the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya,
the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and
the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon.
(c) Under your supervision, consent and
orders, the governments of our countries which
act as your agents, attack us on a daily basis;
(i) These governments prevent our people from
establishing the Islamic Shariah, using violence
and lies to do so.
(ii) These governments give us a taste of
humiliation, and places us in a large prison of
fear and subdual.
(iii) These governments steal our Ummah's
wealth and sell them to you at a paltry price.
(iv) These governments have surrendered to the
Jews, and handed them most of Palestine,
acknowledging the existence of their state over
the dismembered limbs of their own people.
(v) The removal of these governments is an
obligation upon us, and a necessary step to free
the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law
and to regain Palestine. And our fight against
these governments is not separate from out fight
against you.
(d) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry
prices because of you international influence and
military threats. This theft is indeed the
biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the
history of the world.
(e) Your forces occupy our countries; you
spread your military bases throughout them; you
corrupt our lands, and you besiege our
sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews
and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of
our treasures.
(f) You have starved the Muslims of Iraq,
where children die every day. It is a wonder that
more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as
a result of your sanctions, and you did not show
concern. Yet when 3000 of your people died, the
entire world rises and has not yet sat down.
(g) You have supported the Jews in their idea
that Jerusalem is their eternal capital, and
agreed to move your embassy there. With your help
and under your protection, the Israelis are
planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. Under the
protection of your weapons, Sharon entered the
Al-Aqsa mosque, to pollute it as a preparation to
capture and destroy it.
(2) These tragedies and calamities are only a
few examples of your oppression and aggression
against us. It is commanded by our religion and
intellect that the oppressed have a right to
return the aggression. Do not await anything from
us but Jihad, resistance and revenge. Is it in
any way rational to expect that after America has
attacked us for more than half a century, that we
will then leave her to live in security and
peace?!!
(3) You may then dispute that all the above
does not justify aggression against civilians,
for crimes they did not commit and offenses in
which they did not partake:
(a) This argument contradicts your continuous
repetition that America is the land of freedom,
and its leaders in this world. Therefore, the
American people are the ones who choose their
government by way of their own free will; a
choice which stems from their agreement to its
policies. Thus the American people have chosen,
consented to, and affirmed their support for the
Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the
occupation and usurpation of their land, and its
continuous killing, torture, punishment and
expulsion of the Palestinians. The American
people have the ability and choice to refuse the
policies of their Government and even to change
it if they want.
(b) The American people are the ones who pay
the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in
Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy
our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy
our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets
which ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax
dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to
attack us and penetrate our lands. So the
American people are the ones who fund the attacks
against us, and they are the ones who oversee the
expenditure of these monies in the way they wish,
through their elected candidates.
(c) Also the American army is part of the
American people. It is this very same people who
are shamelessly helping the Jews fight against
us.
(d) The American people are the ones who
employ both their men and their women in the
American Forces which attack us.
(e) This is why the American people cannot be
not innocent of all the crimes committed by the
Americans and Jews against us.
(f) Allah, the Almighty, legislated the
permission and the option to take revenge. Thus,
if we are attacked, then we have the right to
attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages
and towns, then we have the right to destroy
their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen our
wealth, then we have the right to destroy their
economy. And whoever has killed our civilians,
then we have the right to kill theirs.
The American Government and press still
refuses to answer the question:
Why did they attack us in New York and
Washington?
If Sharon is a man of peace in the eyes of
Bush, then we are also men of peace!!! America
does not understand the language of manners and
principles, so we are addressing it using the
language it understands.
(Q2) As for the second question that we want
to answer: What are we calling you to, and what
do we want from you?
(1) The first thing that we are calling you to
is Islam.
(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of
freedom from associating partners with Him, and
rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the
Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and
of the discarding of all the opinions, orders,
theories and religions which contradict with the
religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad
(peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all
the prophets, and makes no distinction between
them - peace be upon them all.
It is to this religion that we call you; the
seal of all the previous religions. It is the
religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the
best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour,
purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing
kindness to others, establishing justice between
them, granting them their rights, and defending
the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the
religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the
evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the
religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that
Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. And it
is the religion of unity and agreement on the
obedience to Allah, and total equality between
all people, without regarding their colour, sex,
or language.
(b) It is the religion whose book - the Quran
- will remained preserved and unchanged, after
the other Divine books and messages have been
changed. The Quran is the miracle until the Day
of Judgment. Allah has challenged anyone to bring
a book like the Quran or even ten verses like it.
(2) The second thing we call you to, is to
stop your oppression, lies, immorality and
debauchery that has spread among you.
(a) We call you to be a people of manners,
principles, honour, and purity; to reject the
immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality,
intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with
interest.
We call you to all of this that you may be
freed from that which you have become caught up
in; that you may be freed from the deceptive lies
that you are a great nation, that your leaders
spread amongst you to conceal from you the
despicable state to which you have reached.
(b) It is saddening to tell you that you are
the worst civilization witnessed by the history
of mankind:
(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling
by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and
Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will
and desire. You separate religion from your
policies, contradicting the pure nature which
affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your
Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question
posed to you: How is it possible for Allah the
Almighty to create His creation, grant them power
over all the creatures and land, grant them all
the amenities of life, and then deny them that
which they are most in need of: knowledge of the
laws which govern their lives?
(ii) You are the nation that permits Usury,
which has been forbidden by all the religions.
Yet you build your economy and investments on
Usury. As a result of this, in all its different
forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of
your economy, through which they have then taken
control of your media, and now control all
aspects of your life making you their servants
and achieving their aims at your expense;
precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you
against.
(iii) You are a nation that permits the
production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You
also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of
them, even though your nation is the largest
consumer of them.
(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of
immorality, and you consider them to be pillars
of personal freedom. You have continued to sink
down this abyss from level to level until incest
has spread amongst you, in the face of which
neither your sense of honour nor your laws
object.
Who can forget your President Clinton's
immoral acts committed in the official Oval
office? After that you did not even bring him to
account, other than that he 'made a mistake',
after which everything passed with no punishment.
Is there a worse kind of event for which your
name will go down in history and remembered by
nations?
(v) You are a nation that permits gambling in
its all forms. The companies practice this as
well, resulting in the investments becoming
active and the criminals becoming rich.
(vi) You are a nation that exploits women like
consumer products or advertising tools calling
upon customers to purchase them. You use women to
serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to
increase your profit margins. You then rant that
you support the liberation of women.
(vii) You are a nation that practices the
trade of sex in all its forms, directly and
indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments
are established on this, under the name of art,
entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other
deceptive names you attribute to it.
(viii) And because of all this, you have been
described in history as a nation that spreads
diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go
ahead and boast to the nations of man, that you
brought them AIDS as a Satanic American
Invention.
(xi) You have destroyed nature with your
industrial waste and gases more than any other
nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to
sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure
the profit of your greedy companies
and*industries.
(x) Your law is the law of the rich and
wealthy people, who hold sway in their political
parties, and fund their election campaigns with
their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who
control your policies, media and economy.
(xi) That which you are singled out for in the
history of mankind, is that you have used your
force to destroy mankind more than any other
nation in history; not to defend principles and
values, but to hasten to secure your interests
and profits. You who dropped a nuclear bomb on
Japan, even though Japan was ready to negotiate
an end to the war. How many acts of oppression,
tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O
callers to freedom?
(xii) Let us not forget one of your major
characteristics: your duality in both manners and
values; your hypocrisy in manners and principles.
All*manners, principles and values have two
scales: one for you and one for the others.
(a)The freedom and democracy that you call to
is for yourselves and for white race only; as for
the rest of the world, you impose upon them your
monstrous, destructive policies and Governments,
which you call the 'American friends'. Yet you
prevent them from establishing democracies. When
the Islamic party in Algeria wanted to practice
democracy and they won the election, you
unleashed your agents in the Algerian army onto
them, and to attack them with tanks and guns, to
imprison them and torture them - a new lesson
from the 'American book of democracy'!!!
(b)Your policy on prohibiting and forcibly
removing weapons of mass destruction to ensure
world peace: it only applies to those countries
which you do not permit to possess such weapons.
As for the countries you consent to, such as
Israel, then they are allowed to keep and use
such weapons to defend their security. Anyone
else who you suspect might be manufacturing or
keeping these kinds of weapons, you call them
criminals and you take military action against
them.
(c)You are the last ones to respect the
resolutions and policies of International Law,
yet you claim to want to selectively punish
anyone else who does the same. Israel has for
more than 50 years been pushing UN resolutions
and rules against the wall with the full support
of America.
(d)As for the war criminals which you censure
and form criminal courts for - you shamelessly
ask that your own are granted immunity!! However,
history will not forget the war crimes that you
committed against the Muslims and the rest of the
world; those you have killed in Japan,
Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon and Iraq will
remain a shame that you will never be able to
escape. It will suffice to remind you of your
latest war crimes in Afghanistan, in which
densely populated innocent civilian villages were
destroyed, bombs were dropped on mosques causing
the roof of the mosque to come crashing down on
the heads of the Muslims praying inside. You are
the ones who broke the agreement with the
Mujahideen when they left Qunduz, bombing them in
Jangi fort, and killing more than 1,000 of your
prisoners through suffocation and thirst. Allah
alone knows how many people have died by torture
at the hands of you and your agents. Your planes
remain in the Afghan skies, looking for anyone
remotely suspicious.
(e)You have claimed to be the vanguards of
Human Rights, and your Ministry of Foreign
affairs issues annual reports containing
statistics of those countries that violate any
Human Rights. However, all these things vanished
when the Mujahideen hit you, and you then
implemented the methods of the same documented
governments that you used to curse. In America,
you captured thousands the Muslims and Arabs,
took them into custody with neither reason, court
trial, nor even disclosing their names. You
issued newer, harsher laws.
What happens in Guatanamo is a historical
embarrassment to America and its values, and it
screams into your faces - you hypocrites,
"What is the value of your signature on any
agreement or treaty?"
(3) What we call you to thirdly is to take an
honest stance with yourselves - and I doubt you
will do so - to discover that you are a nation
without principles or manners, and that the
values and principles to you are something which
you merely demand from others, not that which you
yourself must adhere to.
(4) We also advise you to stop supporting
Israel, and to end your support of the Indians in
Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to
also cease supporting the Manila Government
against the Muslims in Southern Philippines.
(5) We also advise you to pack your luggage
and get out of our lands. We desire for your
goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not
force us to send you back as cargo in coffins.
(6) Sixthly, we call upon you to end your
support of the corrupt leaders in our countries.
Do not interfere in our politics and method of
education. Leave us alone, or else expect us in
New York and Washington.
(7) We also call you to deal with us and
interact with us on the basis of mutual interests
and benefits, rather than the policies of sub
dual, theft and occupation, and not to continue
your policy of supporting the Jews because this
will result in more disasters for you.
If you fail to respond to all these
conditions, then prepare for fight with the
Islamic Nation. The Nation of Monotheism, that
puts complete trust on Allah and fears none other
than Him. The Nation which is addressed by its
Quran with the words: "Do you fear them?
Allah has more right that you should fear Him if
you are believers. Fight against them so that
Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace
them and give you victory over them and heal the
breasts of believing people. And remove the anger
of their (believers') hearts. Allah accepts the
repentance of whom He wills. Allah is
All-Knowing, All-Wise." [Quran9:13-1]
The Nation of honour and respect:
"But honour, power and glory belong to
Allah, and to His Messenger (Muhammad- peace be
upon him) and to the believers." [Quran
63:8]
"So do not become weak (against your
enemy), nor be sad, and you will be*superior ( in
victory )if you are indeed (true) believers"
[Quran 3:139]
The Nation of Martyrdom; the Nation that
desires death more than you desire life:
"Think not of those who are killed in the
way of Allah as dead. Nay, they are alive with
their Lord, and they are being provided for. They
rejoice in what Allah has bestowed upon them from
His bounty and rejoice for the sake of those who
have not yet joined them, but are left behind
(not yet martyred) that on them no fear shall
come, nor shall they grieve. They rejoice in a
grace and a bounty from Allah, and that Allah
will not waste the reward of the believers."
[Quran 3:169-171]
The Nation of victory and success that Allah
has promised:
"It is He Who has sent His Messenger
(Muhammad peace be upon him) with guidance and
the religion of truth (Islam), to make it
victorious over all other religions even though
the Polytheists hate it." [Quran 61:9]
"Allah has decreed that 'Verily it is I
and My Messengers who shall be victorious.'
Verily Allah is All-Powerful, All-Mighty."
[Quran 58:21]
The Islamic Nation that was able to dismiss
and destroy the previous evil Empires like
yourself; the Nation that rejects your attacks,
wishes to remove your evils, and is prepared to
fight you. You are well aware that the Islamic
Nation, from the very core of its soul, despises
your haughtiness and arrogance.
If the Americans refuse to listen to our
advice and the goodness, guidance and
righteousness that we call them to, then be aware
that you will lose this Crusade Bush began, just
like the other previous Crusades in which you
were humiliated by the hands of the Mujahideen,
fleeing to your home in great silence and
disgrace. If the Americans do not respond, then
their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled
from Afghanistan to deal with their military
defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall,
and economic bankruptcy.
This is our message to the Americans, as an
answer to theirs. Do they now know why we fight
them and over which form of ignorance, by the
permission of Allah, we shall be victorious?
http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,845725,00.html
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