Tiktokers might be surprised to learn that this 2002 “Letter to
Americans” is only one of many such communiques (some 100 pages of
messages to Westerners are contained and analyzed in my 2007 The Al Qaeda Reader).
Moreover, this Ladenese theme never wavered. As late as 2009,
for instance, after once again rehashing the claim that jihad against
America wholly revolved around U.S. support for Israel, bin Laden concluded
with the following musing: “You should ask yourselves whether your
security, your blood, your sons, your money, your jobs, your homes, your
economy, and your reputation are more dear to you than the security and
economy of the Israelis.”
In that same communique, bin Laden, yet again, made it perfectly
clear that should U.S. support for Israel cease, so too would Islamic
terrorism cease: “Let me say that we have declared many times, over more
than two and a half decades, that the reason for our conflict with you is your support for your Israeli allies, who are occupying our land of Palestine [emphasis added].”
While these observations and questions require an answer, some
context is first needed. As clearly demonstrated by Islam’s doctrines
and history — the former regularly manifesting themselves in the course
of the latter — it is a historic fact that
Islamic hostility for and aggression against non-Muslims transcends any
and all temporal “grievances.” Islam, according to the classical — not
“radical” — schools of jurisprudence, is obligated to subjugate the
world.
This is why prudent non-Muslims have for centuries been finding the
question of achieving permanent peace with the Islamic world a vexatious
problem. Professor of law James Lorimer (1818-90) succinctly stated the
problem over a century ago:
So long as Islam endures, the reconciliation of its
adherents, even with Jews and Christians, and still more with the rest
of mankind, must continue to be an insoluble problem. … For an
indefinite future, however reluctantly, we must confine our political
recognition to the professors of those religions which … preach the
doctrine of “live and let live” (The Institutes of the Law of Nations, p. 124).
In other words, political recognition — with all the attendant
negotiations and diplomacy that come with it — should be granted to all
major religions/civilizations except Islam, which does not recognize the notion of “live and let live.”
Now while most Muslims may not go around invoking Islamic law’s
dichotomized worldview that pits Islam against the rest of the world,
bin Laden, the “man of grievances,” always did. For example, for all
his talk of Israel being the heart of the problem, bin Laden exposed his
true convictions in the following excerpt, which he directed to fellow
Arabic-speaking Muslims not long after the 9/11 strikes:
