Messages To The World [Paperback]

Bruce Lawrence (the compiler) points out that while occasional fragments of bin Laden's words are cited, official pressures have ensured that, for the most part, his voice has been tacitly censured - as though too dangerous to hear. This collection of 24 items include interviews with Arab and Western journalists, handwritten letters, and video recordings.

Lawrence also helps one to understand why bin Laden is a heroic figure for millions of Muslims, including many with no sympathy for terrorism. This is based not just on his success in eluding Americans and their allies, but because his personal reputation for probity, austerity, dignity, and courage - contrasting starkly with the mismanagement, lavishness, and arrogance of most Arab regimes.

Bin Laden points out that his terrorism acts are only retaliation, and that the West has killed far larger numbers in the region within living memory - poison gas and strafing of Iraqi villages by Britain in the 1920s, crushing the Palestinian uprising of the 1930s, France's colonial war in algeria in the 1950s-60s, and deaths through malnutrition and disease of Iraqi children in the 1990s due to the U.N. sanctions. Bin Laden estimates 1.5 million were killed in the preceding - Lawrence estimates it as 300,000.

Bin Laden began his massive undertaking against the U.S. after seeing the mujahidin victory over the Red Army in Afghanistan, and the withdrawal of American forces from Somalia in '93. Unfortunately, bin Laden greatly underestimated the special circumstances associated with both - the U.S. and Pakistani support in Afghanistan, and the inconsequentialness of the U.S. landings in Somalia.

Bin Laden on 9/11 (10/21 interview): ". . . they have done this . . . in self-defense, defense of our brothers and sons in Palestine, and in order to free our holy sanctuaries." "the defeat of America . . . is easier for us . . . than the defeat of the Soviet Empire previously. We have already fought them . . . as in Somalia. We have not yet found a significant force of note." ". . . America, has lost its values and appeal . . . Freedom, Human Rights, and Equality . . . were revealed as a total mockery."

On Surviving Tora Bora: Bin Laden reports that bombing was around the clock, every second. There were about 300 mujahidin dug into 100 trenches, spread over one square mile in ten degree below zero temperatures - only about 18 were killed by the combination of ground and air attacks. Certainly this had to have been an easy opportunity for American ground forces if they had been deployed at that time, instead of outsourcing the job to Afghans!

Bin Laden also speaks of how Iraqis should resist the U.S., describing a guerilla campaign like that actually waged.

"Messages to the World" is essential to understanding bin Laden, America's "Public Enemy #1" - especially for counteracting the incomplete and misleading statements provided by our own government.

From the very first speech in this collection, I began to realize how little I knew about bin Laden's ideas--and yes, he has ideas--and how most of what I thought I knew was wrong. I had heard, repeatedly, that he was a relative latecomer to the Palestinian cause, that he had essentially declared solidarity with them merely to gain popularity in the larger Islamic world. That is not borne out by this book. In his very first speech, dated to 1994, bin Laden is already sounding the notes that reverberate throughout this collection: the entire Muslim world is under seige, from Afghanistan, to Palestine, to Iraq, to Chechnya and Bosnia; the humiliation (and emasculation) of Islam by the western world is the implicit goal. Now, clearly, one can quarrel with his analysis, but such a message has broad appeal. The editor and translator are to be commended for striking just the right balance here; they provide imformation, really crucial information, without taking immediate sides and without claiming a false neutrality either. As the editor has emphasized in his interviews about this book, to defeat bin Laden's ideas, "one must decode them, first." This book is an essential part of that decoding process. Perhaps the most salient interview is one granted by bin Laden to a Spanish Muslim. That man, who gives what is by far the most confrontational interview, questioning bin Laden's orthodoxy, among other things, was subsequently jailed for his trouble. That is perhaps the most fitting parable for this book: the very attempt to engage in a dialogue with this man and his ideas will be suspect to some. But it is the critical task before us, and the editor and translator are to be commended for enabling this dialogue, and for having done so with the moral seriousness it demands.

Osama Bin Laden's statements have been widely covered in TV and radio in bits and pieces; but they haven't been gathered together under one cover before; so to receive a unified presentation of all his admonitions, turn to Messages To The World: The Statements Of Osama Bin Laden. Statements issued in his name over the last ten years are here newly translated from the Arabic and annotated with a critical introduction by editor Lawrence, an Islamic scholar, which adds historical, political and religious context to the statements. Any who want insights on Bin Laden's thoughts and viewpoint must have Messages To The World.

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