Osama bin Laden BIOGRAPHY(page10)

rights, environmental, and anti-abortion movements, may also pose

a signifi cant threat, and can not be overlooked. Additionally, the new

millennium is an important apocalyptic milestone for many religious or

extremist cults. Many terrorist groups, both traditional and “new,” have

privatized their practices through a few standard business techniques

(fund-raising, use of technology, etc.)

APPENDIX 137


Also new today is the proliferation of knowledge and technology

among many criminal, terrorist, and narcotics groups. Many of these

groups are building skills in state-of-the-art communications, and weaponry.

They are achieving new global links and support from one another

in cooperative ways. While infl icting mass casualties have never been

prohibitive, the barriers to their use seem to be falling. Twenty years ago,

intelligence specialists viewed proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

primarily through the lens of nation states seeking the ultimate

weapon. Chemical and biological weaponry was only a minuscule afterthought

of the whole nuclear problem.

One of the outcomes of the globalization of economies and technologies,

the phenomenon that President Bush termed the “New World

Order” is the relatively new linking and intermingling of disparate crime

and narcotics organizations with terrorists. Analysts have been dismayed

to fi nd that even the most notorious crime groups with global reach,

such as the Italian Mafi a, the Russian Mafi as, the Nigerian criminal enterprises,

the Chinese triads, the Colombian and Mexican cartels, and

the Japanese Yakuza, are developing new working relationships. They

are developing cooperative arrangements, and networking with one another

and with insurgent and terrorist organizations to take advantage

of one another’s strengths and to make inroads into previously denied

regions.

This has allowed terrorists a new means to raise money as well as provide

them with a marketplace to purchase sophisticated weaponry and

other high tech equipment. This cooperation, for example, has long been

seen among Colombian drug lords and Italian crime groups in exploiting

the West European drug market, but now is seen in New York City

and in Eastern Europe with drug and fi nancial crime networks linking

Russian and Italian groups.

As organized crime groups become increasingly international in the

scope of their activities, they are also less constrained by national boundaries.

The new lowering of political and economic barriers allows them

to establish new operational bases in commercial and banking centers

around the globe. The willingness and capability of these groups to move

into new areas and cooperate with local groups is unprecedented, magnifying

the threats to stability and even governability.

138 APPENDIX

All of these transnational groups are becoming more professional

criminals, both in their business and fi nancial practices and in the application

of technology. Many of them use state-of-the-art communications

security that is better than some nation’s security forces can crack.

Document 7

The Report of the 9/11 Commission , released in 2004, presented the fullest

picture of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda the U.S. government had made

public. The following excerpts describe the Commission’s conclusions

about bin Laden and his worldview. The report is available at http://www.

9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf.

2.2 BIN LADIN’S APPEAL IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD It is the story

of eccentric and violent ideas sprouting in the fertile ground of political

and social turmoil. It is the story of an organization poised to seize

its historical moment. How did Bin Ladin — with his call for the indiscriminate

killing of Americans — win thousands of followers and some

degree of approval from millions more? The history, culture, and body

of beliefs from which Bin Ladin has shaped and spread his message are

largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of Islam’s past

greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider themselves

the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and religious

allusions to the holy Qur’an and some of its interpreters. He appeals to

people disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and

globalization. His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources—

Islam, history, and the region’s political and economic malaise. He also

stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim

world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi

Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the

Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and he

protested U.S. support of Israel.

ISLAM

Islam (a word that literally means “surrender to the will of God”) arose

in Arabia with what Muslims believe are a series of revelations to the

Prophet Mohammed from the one and only God, the God of Abraham

APPENDIX 139

and of Jesus. These revelations, conveyed by the angel Gabriel, are recorded

in the Qur’an. Muslims believe that these revelations, given to

the greatest and last of a chain of prophets stretching from Abraham

through Jesus, complete God’s message to humanity. The Hadith, which

recount Mohammed’s sayings and deeds as recorded by his contemporaries,

are another fundamental source.A third key element is the Sharia,

the code of law derived from the Qur’an and the Hadith. Islam is divided

into two main branches, Sunni and Shia. Soon after the Prophet’s death,

the question of choosing a new leader, or caliph, for the Muslim community,

or Ummah, arose. Initially, his successors could be drawn from

the Prophet’s contemporaries, but with time, this was no longer possible.

Those who became the Shia held that any leader of the Ummah must be

a direct descendant of the Prophet; those who became the Sunni argued

that lineal descent was not required if the candidate met other standards

of faith and knowledge. After bloody struggles, the Sunni became

(and remain) the majority sect. (The Shia are dominant in Iran.) The

Caliphate — the institutionalized leadership of the Ummah — thus was a

Sunni institution that continued until 1924, fi rst under Arab and eventually

under Ottoman Turkish control. Many Muslims look back at the

century after the revelations to the Prophet Mohammed as a golden age.

Its memory is strongest among the Arabs. What happened then — the

spread of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula throughout the Middle East,

North Africa, and even into Europe within less than a century — seemed,

and seems, miraculous. Nostalgia for Islam’s past glory remains a powerful

force.

Islam is both a faith and a code of conduct for all aspects of life. For

many Muslims, a good government would be one guided by the moral principles

of their faith. This does not necessarily translate into a desire for

clerical rule and the abolition of a secular state. It does mean that some

Muslims tend to be uncomfortable with distinctions between religion and

state, though Muslim rulers throughout history have readily separated the

two. To extremists, however, such divisions, as well as the existence of

parliaments and legislation, only prove these rulers to be false Muslims

usurping God’s authority over all aspects of life. Periodically, the Islamic

world has seen surges of what, for want of a better term, is often labeled

“fundamentalism.” Denouncing waywardness among the faithful, some

clerics have appealed for a return to observance of the literal teachings

140 APPENDIX

of the Qur’an and Hadith. One scholar from the fourteenth century from

whom Bin Ladin selectively quotes, Ibn Taimiyyah, condemned both corrupt

rulers and the clerics who failed to criticize them. He urged Muslims

to read the Qur’an and the Hadith for themselves, not to depend solely

on learned interpreters like himself but to hold one another to account

for the quality of their observance. The extreme Islamist version of history

blames the decline from Islam’s golden age on the rulers and people

who turned away from the true path of their religion, thereby leaving

Islam vulnerable to encroaching foreign powers eager to steal their land,

wealth, and even their souls.

BIN LADIN’S WORLDVIEW

Despite his claims to universal leadership, Bin Ladin offers an extreme

view of Islamic history designed to appeal mainly to Arabs and Sunnis.

He draws on fundamentalists who blame the eventual destruction of the

Caliphate on leaders who abandoned the pure path of religious devotion.

He repeatedly calls on his followers to embrace martyrdom since

“the walls of oppression and humiliation cannot be demolished except in

a rain of bullets.” For those yearning for a lost sense of order in an older,

more tranquil world, he offers his “Caliphate” as an imagined alternative

to today’s uncertainty. For others, he offers simplistic conspiracies to

explain their world. Bin Ladin also relies heavily on the Egyptian writer

Sayyid Qutb. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood executed in 1966

on charges of attempting to overthrow the government, Qutb mixed Islamic

scholarship with a very superfi cial acquaintance with Western history

and thought. Sent by the Egyptian government to study in the United

States in the late 1940s, Qutb returned with an enormous loathing of

Western society and history. He dismissed Western achievements as entirely

material, arguing that Western society possesses “nothing that will

satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence.”

Three basic themes emerge from Qutb’s writings. First, he claimed

that the world was beset with barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief (a

condition he called jahiliyya, the religious term for the period of ignorance

prior to the revelations given to the Prophet Mohammed). Qutb argued

that humans can choose only between Islam and jahiliyya. Second, he

warned that more people, including Muslims, were attracted to jahiliyya

APPENDIX 141

and its material comforts than to his view of Islam; jahiliyya could therefore

triumph over Islam. Third, no middle ground exists in what Qutb

conceived as a struggle between God and Satan. All Muslims — as he defi

ned them — therefore must take up arms in this fi ght. Any Muslim who

rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of destruction.

Bin Ladin shares Qutb’s stark view, permitting him and his followers

to rationalize even unprovoked mass murder as righteous defense of an

embattled faith. Many Americans have wondered, “Why do ‘they’ hate

us?” Some also ask, “What can we do to stop these attacks?”

Bin Ladin and al Qaeda have given answers to both these questions.

To the fi rst, they say that America had attacked Islam; America is responsible

for all confl icts involving Muslims. Thus Americans are blamed

when Israelis fi ght with Palestinians, when Russians fi ght with Chechens,

when Indians fi ght with Kashmiri Muslims, and when the Philippine

government fi ghts ethnic Muslims in its southern islands. America is also

held responsible for the governments of Muslim countries, derided by

al Qaeda as “your agents.” Bin Ladin has stated fl atly, “Our fi ght against

these governments is not separate from our fight against you.” These

charges found a ready audience among millions of Arabs and Muslims

angry at the United States because of issues ranging from Iraq to Palestine

to America’s support for their countries’ repressive rulers.

Bin Ladin’s grievance with the United States may have started in reaction

to specifi c U.S. policies but it quickly became far deeper. To the

second question, what America could do, al Qaeda’s answer was that

America should abandon the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end

the immorality and godlessness of its society and culture: “It is saddening

to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history

of mankind.” If the United States did not comply, it would be at war

with the Islamic nation, a nation that al Qaeda’s leaders said “desires

death more than you desire life.”

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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

Abdullah Azzam

Azzam, Abdullah. Defense of Muslim Lands, the First Obligation of Faith. 1979.

Available in translation at http://www.islamistwatch.org/texts/azzam/

defense/chap3.html.

Azzam, Abdullah. Join the Caravan. 1988. Available in translation at http://

www.religioscope.com/info/doc/jihad/azzam_caravan_5_part3.htm.

Mullah Mohammed Omar

Omar, Mullah Mohammed. Interview with Voice of America. The Guardian.

September 26, 2001. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/26/afghan

istan.features11.

Osama Bin Laden

Arnett, Peter. Interview with Osama bin Laden aired on CNN, 1997. http://www.

anusha.com/osamaint.htm. Arnett conducted the most comprehensive

interview with bin Laden before he declared war on the United States.

144 ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Historic Islamic Writers

al-Banna, Hasan. Jihad. Translated at http://www.islamistwatch.org/main.

html. Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood. His work inspired

Osama bin Laden.

Bergen, Peter L. The Osama bin Laden I Know. New York: Free Press, 2006. A

comprehensive anthology of statements by Osama bin Laden, as well as

accounts by those who knew him.

Esquire. Interview with Osama bin Laden, February 1999. In Compilation of

Osama bin Laden Statements, 1994 –January 2004 (Washington, DC: Federal

Broadcast Information Service, 2004), http://www.fas.org/irp/world/

para/ubl-fbis.pdf.

ibn Taymiyyah, Ahmad. The Religious and Moral Doctrine of Jihad. Translated

and excerpted at http://www.islamistwatch.org/main.html. This site provides

a useful translation of the teachings of the 13th-century Islamic

Salafi st whose work inspired Osama bin Laden.

Ibrahim, Raymond, ed. and trans. The Al Qaeda Reader. New York: Broadway

Books, 2007. This book contains a variety of al-Qaeda documents, including

many statements by bin Laden.

Osama bin Laden. “Bin Laden Attacks Obama Policies.” Al Jazeerah English

net. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/20096312325

1920623.html.

Osama bin Laden. “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the

Land of the Two Holy Places.” Al Quds Al Arabi [newspaper published in

London], August 1996. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/internati

onal/fatwa_1996.html.

Osama bin Laden. “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.” February 23, 1998. http://

www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm.

Osama bin Laden. “Open Letter to Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Baz on the Invalidity

of His Fatwa on Peace with the Jews.” Translated by the Counter Terrorism

Center, U.S. Military Academy, West Point. wikisource.org/wiki/

Open_Letter_to_Shaykh_Bin_Baz_on_the_Invalidity_of_his_Fatwa_

on_Peace_with_the_Jews.

Qutb, Sayd. Milestones. Originally published in 1964; translated at http://www.

islamistwatch.org/texts/qutb/Milestones/characteristics.html. Qutb developed

al-Banna’s ideas further. He is probably the single most infl uential

Islamist writer of the 20th century.

United Kingdom Government Document

Report of the Offi cial Account of the Bombings in London on 7th July 2005. London:

Her Majesty’s Stationary Offi ce, 2006.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 145

U.S. Government Documents

Obama, Barack. Transcript of Cairo University Speech. June 4, 2009. http://

www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_offi ce/Remarks-by-the-President-at-

Cairo-University-6-04-09/.

Report of the 9/11 Commission (Washington, DC: Government Printing Offi ce,

2004), http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf.

United Nation Documents

UN Offi ce on Drugs and Crime. World Drug Report 2009, http://www.un odc.org/

unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2009.html.

UN Security Council Document, S/RES/1054 (1996), 26 April 1996. http://

daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N96/107/86/PDF/N9610786.

pdfOpenElement.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Books

Cassidy, Robert M. Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya: Military Strategic Culture

and the Paradox of Asymmetry. Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic

Studies Institute, 2003. A succinct summary and analysis of these two

confl icts.

Coll, Steve. The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century. New

York: Penguin, 2008. This work is the only comprehensive study of the

bin Laden family available in English.

Denny, Mathewson. An Introduction to Islam. 2nd edition. New York: Macmillan,

1994; 1 st ed., 1985. This concise but thorough work provides an

excellent overview of Islam accessible to non-academic readers.

Esposito, John. Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. Oxford, UK: Oxford

University Press, 2002. Esposito challenges Bernard Lewis’s thesis that a

clash between Islam and the West has developed because of the failure

of Muslim civilizations to modernize.

Gunaratna, Rohan. Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror. New York: Columbia

University Press, 2002. Gunaratna has produced what may be the

best book on al-Qaeda up to 9/11.

Kepel, Giles. Jihad: In Search of Political Islam. Translated by Anthony F.

Roberts. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,

2002. Kepel provides a detailed account of the rise of political Islam

and advances the controversial thesis that the movement is waning.

146 ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Korem, Dan. Rage of the Random Actor. Richardson, TX: International Focus

Press, 2005. Korem exams what motivates individuals to engage in extreme

violence such as terrorism.

Naylor, Sean. Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda.

New York: Penguin, 2006. Naylor is extremely critical of the conduct

of this military operation.

Riedel, Brian. Search for Al-Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future. Washington,

DC: Brookings Institute, 2008. Riedel served as a senior CIA

Middle East analyst.

Scheuer, Michael. Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam,

and the Future of America. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Potomac Books,

2007. Scheuer was a long-serving CIA offi cer.

Stern, Jessica. Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. New

York: Harper Collins, 2003. Stern provides an excellent examination of

the roots of religiously motivated terrorism.

Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. New

York: Knopf, 2006. Wright presents an interesting analysis of the events

leading to 9/11.

Zuhur, Sherifa. A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and the Future of Counterinsurgency.

Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2005. This

excellent study situates Islamist extremism within the broader Islamist

movement and challenges some of the basic assumptions upon which the

“global war on terror” has been based.