Bin Laden's Statement

Sunday October 7, 2001

The nations of infidels have all united against Muslims. You American people - can you ask yourselves why [there is] all this hate against America and Israel?

The answer is clear and very simple, that America has committed so many crimes against the nations of Muslims.

America is the head of criminals by creating Israel - this continuous crime for 50 years.

The government which is besieging the people of Iraq and killing them.

Why [is] your government... supporting the rotten governments of our countries ?

What happened in the United States is a natural reaction to the ignorant policy of the United States.

If it continues with this policy, the sons of Islam will not stop their struggle. The American people have to know that what is happening to them now is the result of their support of this policy.

The war against Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden is a war on Islam.

This is a new battle, a great battle, similar to the great battles of Islam, like the conquest of Jerusalem.

I believe that there is only one God and there is no prophet but Mohammed.

America was hit by God in one of its softest spots. America is full of fear from its north to its south, from its west to its east. Thank God for that.

This is something, very little, of what we have tasted for decades. Since nearly 80 years we have been tasting this humility.

They [Americans] support the murder against the victims so God has given back to them what they deserve.

I say that the matter is very clear. That every Muslim after this and after what the officials in America stated, with the head of the infidels, Bush, they come out with their men and equipment and they even encourage countries calling themselves Muslims against us.

They come out to fight Islam in the name of fighting terrorism.

These events have split the whole world into two camps: the camps of belief and the camps of disbelief.

Every Muslim should support his religion and now the wind of change has blown up to the Arabian peninsula.

I say by God the great, America will never dream, not those who live in America will never taste security and safety unless we feel security and safety in our lands and in Palestine.

He forgot to mention his cia training and his immense wealth.





no war but the class war!

The following analysis of Bin Laden's statement, from the Guardian, seems to suggest that the above transcription of Bin Laden's statement (albeit also from the Guardian) is not quite complete, as it mentions passages not included above.



Rhetoric to arouse the Islamic world

Video speech was part of the overall plan

Julian Borger in Washington

Monday October 8, 2001

The Guardian

The video prepared by Osama bin Laden as a response to yesterday's air strikes was not an after-thought: it was an essential part of his strategy, almost as important as the September 11 terrorist attacks themselves.

His remarks, made with an assault rifle at his side and posterity in mind, are consistent with his long-standing aim of arousing an upheaval throughout the Islamic world, intended to drive the US out of the Middle East and topple pro-western Arab regimes.

Bin Laden believes himself to be a latterday embodiment of Saladin: a militarily gifted defender of the faith, willing to jettison Islam's tradition of peaceful reflection and do what is necessary to drive the infidels out of the holy shrines. To this son of a Saudi construction magnate, it is a historic settling of scores.

"Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more than 80 years of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated," he says on the tape.

The appeal to a common sense of Islamic identity is central to his propaganda war. In fact the faith is as divided as Christianity, between Sunni and Shi'ite and a range of sects within those two broad strains, such as Bin Laden's own Wahhabis.

The September 11 massacre was intended to provoke a response which killed Muslims and galvanised the Islamic world.

That response has now been delivered, and it is vital for Bin Laden to counter President George Bush's strenuous attempts to reassure the Arab world and other Islamic nations that it is not an attack aimed at them.

By all accounts Bin Laden knew and cared little about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict until recently. His first fight was against the atheistic Soviet Union in Afghanistan, in which the US was his ally. He turned against the Americans principally after US soldiers were sent to Saudi Arabia in 1990 in the build-up to the Gulf war: to him and his followers that amounted to an occupation of Muslim shrines. Their removal is central to his objectives.

But the issue is regarded as parochial in much of the Arab world. The US troops are not actually stationed at the shrines, and they were invited in by the Saudi royal family.

It was reportedly Ayman al-Zawahri, the leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad who was sitting alongside him on the video, who taught him to look further afield for support, and to widen his outlook to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and the sanctions against Iraq: the two most emotive issues on the world stage today in the eyes of most Arab Muslims.

Bin Laden goes out of his way to demonstrate his knowledge of these issues, at one point listing the sites of recent clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soldiers.

In his address, he taps a deep-rooted sense of frustration across the Arab world that in the double standards adopted by the western media dead Muslims count for less than dead westerners.

It is a complaint heard in every Arab capital in the world.

"A million innocent children are dying at this time as we speak, killed in Iraq without any guilt. We hear no denunciation. In these days, Israeli tanks rampage across Palestine, and we do not hear anyone raising his voice," Bin Laden said, striking at the gut-level sympathy evoked in many fellow Arabs by the victims in New York and Washington.

"But when the sword fell upon America after 80 years, hypocrisy raised its head up high bemoaning those killers."

The 80-year period arises elsewhere in the speech.

Its significance is not entirely clear, but it is probably a rough reference to the start of British-led direct intervention in the Arabian peninsula which was aimed at ousting the Ottoman empire at the time of the first world war.

In the eyes of many Arabs, the colonial powers, principally Britain, reneged on the promises of self-determination made by such Arabists as TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia).

Since then, it is argued, the imperialist baton has been handed from Britain to the US, which now plays the leading role in orchestrating events in pro-western nations like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

Bin Laden's rhetoric is calibrated to trigger an apocalyptic sense of the moment when the world will fall into camps, the believers and the infidels, and each person must choose his camp.

The ensuing battle, Bin Laden implies, will resolve once and for all the long-standing Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the suffering of the Iraqi people under sanctions.

It will also dispel the deep-seated sense of powerlessness afflicting the Arab world.

For those reasons, it will resonate deeply across the region.

I am not arab, i am caucasian, what i think about the terrorists attacks were going to happen sooner or later. The americans stick their noses were it doesn t belong, and it came back on them. But christ i know it s not cool what happened, but you americans killed somewhat 125 000 people wit hthe bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, so shut up about what happened to you. Get over it , "we will bring to justice" chut up every one, stop thinking that you are the best cause you re not, you are the dumbest and fattest people in the world. And just stop it, bomb them do whatever you want but fuck, stop being so egocentric caus no one cares about you.

The anonymous person who sent that last statement. Im sorry but you are speaking in pure anger. You want what happened to the americans to just disappear by the sounds of it, to it just to be shrugged off. What happened in Nagasaki and Hiroshima still has not been forgotten it is taught in all schools at least in my area and will probably taught for many years to come this is so that our WORLD does not follow the path of our mistakes. But personally i dont think that they should just shut up i may not live in america but i dont live that far away. Not only do i have many friends even that were invovled in the act. You think that this pain is limited to only the americas it has caused much pain all over the world. If they were to just let something of this significance to just occur and shut up as you say. Dont you think that this could only occur again especially if they know they can get away with it and no i am not just speaking about in america. This could happen anywhere. There were not even just americans in those buildings. I only hope that this tragedy and everything else ends soon.

I think what they believe is right, in the way that happen in WTC is a bad Karma to U.S. because of their agaist humanity.

U right imagine what they in Nagazaki And Hiroshima and millions of crime of aggression exploitation

and humiliation of many Third World country that it has suffer up to this now because of their imperialisting activity in this planet. I am Filipino and this message did not attack our fellow americans but regime of their government that cover whole world.