Deal
with us on the basis of mutual interests and benefits,
rather than the policies of subdual, theft and occupation.
OSAMA
BIN LADEN, NOVEMBER 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]
Letter
to the American People:
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:
#1:
Why are we fighting and opposing you?
#2:
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 Islam, 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 our 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.
#2:
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, 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
others.
(A)
The freedom and democracy that you encourage 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 subdual, 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?
LOUISVILLE & LOS ANGELES / Contact: