The collected speeches, interviews, web postings and other public statements of Osama Bin Laden provide reasons for his actions that, while morally and religiously questionable, could be accepted by people who shared his ideals. By examining the work “Messages to the World” we can gather more insight on Bin Laden and his reasoning behind his beliefs.
Bin Laden has an audience, and his words, as much as his actions, aim to convince others to embrace his view of the world. Without words Bin Laden's violence could not achieve its stated goals. Bin Laden does not claim to embrace violence for its own sake but rather, he claims he is fulfilling the twin duties of calling nonbelievers to Islam and defending the Muslim community from attack. For Bin Laden, actual violence is instrumental to his message. It is the interpretation of violence that is the very essence of his religious and political program. This reading goes into Bin Laden's development.
By 1997 Bin Laden had begun to abandon his deferential stance and assume for himself the role of "enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong," since Islamic scholars seemed incapable of fulfilling this traditional duty themselves. From here Bin Laden moved to try to replace the scholars, offering his own interpretations of Islamic texts and traditions. Bin Laden saves most of his criticism for Muslim leaders who he believes have corrupted Islam and serve as only figure heads for political interests. The Saudi regime comes in for special critique as causing acts of disobedience “worse than the sins and offenses that are contrary to Islam”. However Bin Laden goes on to argue that "the regime has gone so far as to be clearly beyond the pale of Islam, allying itself with infidel America and aiding it against Muslims, and making itself an equal to God by legislating on what is or is not permissible without consulting God". Statements like these against his own people make it no wonder that he had his Saudi citizenship stripped in 1994.
Following some other radicals, he frequently speaks of the war against Christians and Jews as an individual duty of every Muslim. But according to Islamic law, only defensive jihad is an individual duty; offensive jihad is a collective duty of the Muslim community, to be prosecuted only under the command of a responsible leader. It is understood that the law of jihad prohibits the killing of innocents but Bin Laden did not see the definition of innocents the same way.
Bin Laden denied targeted civilians, and in 1997 he condemned the United States government's hypocrisy in not calling the bombing of Hiroshima terrorism (Bergen, 2008). Over time, though, Bin Laden has come to endorse the targeting of civilians. For example, when asked in an interview whether the killing of civilians on Sept. 11 was justified, he argued that revenge killings of Americans were justified, and pointed out that Islamic law allows believers to attack invaders even when the enemy uses human shields. Bin Laden is explicit in his view that the current war is “fundamentally religious”; the enmity is “doctrinal”. His model for the restored Caliphate is revealed to be Taliban-governed Afghanistan (Bergen, 2008).
The writings of Bin Laden collected here show not only his rhetorical skills, but also trace his self delusions. One of these is that acts of terrorism against Americans bring an “enormous wave of joy and happiness” across the Islamic world. The second is that the defeat of the Soviet Union proves that the remaining superpower of the United States will meet a similar fate, as God wills. He shows no signs of remorse for the 9/11 victims, stating about the TwinTowers that, “It wasn’t a children’s school! Neither was it a residence” in contrast to what he sees as American and Israeli targeting of civilian Muslims.
The editor, Bruce Lawrence, believes that bin Laden’s terrorism is essentially a response to the West’s “much greater” terrorism. He quotes from Michael Mann: “Despite the religious rhetoric and the bloody means, bin Laden is a rational man. There is a simple reason why he attacked the US: American imperialism”. For Lawrence the equation is simple: remove this reason and bin Laden’s war will cease. We can see in this piece how Bin Laden’s views draw on and differ from other strands of radical Islamic thought. It also demonstrates how his arguments vary in degrees of consistency, and how his evasions concerning the true nature f his own group, and over his own role in terrorist attacks, have contributed to the negative perception of him by the public.
Bibliography
Bergen, Peter (2008). "Al Qaeda, the Organization: A Five-Year Forecast". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 618: 14–30. JSTOR 40375772.
Osama bin Laden, Messages to the World, p.23-30, 106-129, 133-8.
Hi Zoe,
ReplyDeleteI'm a little confused by this post. Like you I finished these readings recently. are you suggesting that as time goes on Osama Bin Laden becomes less consistent in his arguments justifying extreme violence in the world, and that a counter strategy to defeat his ideology is to dismantle his arguments? At one point one authors notes that he is "cherry picking" versus in the quar'an, and looking at the work of medieval scholars to justify his points and actions.