November 24, 2002
Osama bin Laden's 'letter
to America'
(The letter first appeared on the internet in Arabic and has
since been translated and circulated by Islamists in Britain.)
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 1,00 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? |