Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden
by Osama bin Laden, Osama bin Laden, Bruce Lawrence, James Howarth
List Price:
Our Price: $9.00
You Save: $7.95 (47%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $5.63 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Bruce Lawrence, James Howarth, Osama bin LadenEditor: Bruce Lawrence
Translator: James Howarth
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2005-11-28
ISBN: 1844670457
Number of pages: 225
Publisher: Verso
Book Reviews of Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden
Book Review: Troubling Clarity: A Leftist Reads Osama
Summary: 5 Stars
However readers might dispute the validity of the claims made in Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin-Laden, they will no longer be able to claim ignorance regarding the intentions of the Saudi-born Islamic radical. Presented together in their entirety for the first time, the twenty-four essays and transcripts comprise the body of public messages bin-Laden released during the ten year period from 1994 to 2004, a decade during which relations between the West and the Muslim world underwent dramatic changes. Since that time, the battle for hearts and minds has been waged by governments and Islamic reformists alike through discourse that legitimizes or condemns terroristic acts. Bin-Laden's thoughts in Messages clearly aim at the former but also more radically attempt to redefine "terrorism" as a justified political tool and an appropriate response to American imperialism. Challenging the basic tenets of democracy, capitalism, and even Islam as understood by many Muslims, the collected statements both clarify bin-Laden's political goals and complicate Western responses to his unique methods for realizing them. The source of this polemic tension is bin-Laden's reliance on a relatively well-accepted narrative to justify Islamic retributive attacks on Western targets--his knowledge of history and current political events should give even the most nationalist Westerners pause. However troubling the methods might be he endorse, Messages finally provides a brutally honest answer to the somewhat disingenuous question widely asked in the contemporary West: `Why do the terrorists hate us?'
The book's value is immense given that Western suppression of bin-Laden's thought provides valuable ammunition for an argument he repeats throughout the collection: that the West is grossly hypocritical by overtly professing democratic values while covertly and simultaneously pursuing authoritarian, hegemonic foreign and domestic policies--like censoring free access to information. In an October 21, 2001, interview with reporter Taysir Alluni of al-Jazeera, bin-Laden claims that freedom, human rights, and equality all conceptually collapsed along with the Twin Towers on 9/11: "These values were revealed as a total mockery, as was made clear when the US government interfered and banned the media outlets from airing our words because they felt that the truth started to appear to the American people." (112) Bin-Laden's statements were indeed deliberately censored by US authorities who claimed to fear that "encoded messages" in his taped interviews would be communicated to terrorist cells and trigger more attacks on Americans. Bin-Laden dismisses these "laughable claims" while he warns against underestimating the technical savvies of today's Islamic radicals: "It is as if we are living in a time of carrier -pigeons, without the existence of telephones, without travelers, without the Internet, without regular mail, without faxes, without email. This is just farcical; words which belittle people's intellect." (126)
Bin-Laden is outraged at what he sees to be Western arrogance and casuistry that informs a double-standard of justice for Westerners and Muslims. In an interview from 1998, he is incredulous, "that the Crusader should attack and enter my land and holy sanctuaries, and plunder Muslim's' oil, and then when he encounters any resistance from Muslims, to label them terrorists." (73) Again and again he issues powerful indictments of the "Zionist-backed" US, a "nation without principles or morals," which nonetheless demands from others what it is unwilling to do. (170)
The real danger in withholding information from one's citizens is that it can lead to wild speculation regarding the motives of an opponent. In turn, and in the absence of complete information, people are left to develop (with the encouragement of government) negative stereotypes of an imagined "Other" who's life and goals seem incomprehensible. Following this dehumanization process, opponents can be framed in increasingly negative ways that then legitimize violent political responses--responses that oftentimes prove wholly inappropriate. Failing to interrogate and thus misunderstanding bin-Laden's motives has proved disastrous for US foreign policy since the mid 1990s. Messages makes clear the very different philosophical stakes for both sides and Bin-Laden goes so far as to call his ideological differences with Western "infidels" a "doctrinal" one (134). He accuses President George W. Bush of waging war, "all in the name of oil and more business for his private companies" (234). According to bin-Laden, "victory is not material gain; it is about sticking to your principles" (154). Thus, he describes the nineteen September 11 "post-secondary students" come hijackers as the "living conscience" of the umma, who were motivated by a desire to take "revenge against the evildoers and transgressors and criminals and terrorists" (120).
Bin-Laden's critique of neoconservative politics and capitalist economics is so nuanced that one is initially receptive to his broadly painted social landscape despite the picture's omissions. In the entire collection, he makes a scant reference to providing financial support for the widows of martyrs (101) and encourages pious Muslims to emigrate from corrupt Islamic states to escape "psychological pressure" (274). This is roughly the extent of his social strategy. Instead, his rhetoric breaks off, rather than down when talk turns to implementing his brand of "Qutbist" Islam. He claims to need no alternative vision for the umma's politics--in fact, that's forbidden. Save organization under shari'a law, bin-Laden articulates little with regard to what the Arabian peninsula might actually look like after corrupt and "unaccountable" Arab leaders are deposed and the Prophet's law reinstated (227). Bin Laden never indicates, however, that he agrees with Muslim women who feel discriminated against by shari'a law as widely interpreted by the four major jurisprudential Islamic schools of thought. Many feminist scholars, for example, have explored the egalitarian potential of Islam, but currently lack the political and social capital that conservative legal traditions possess.
His disgust with injustice is genuine, although it curiously stops short of condemning all systems of oppression in its blindness to the workings of patriarchy. Feminists (both secular and Islamic) might wonder how an eye so keenly trained to spot the transgressions of "Western apostates" can miss the injustice endured by his own wives and daughters under shari'a law? Bin-Laden's tunnel-vision-like focus on martyrdom and "the real life of killing, striking, fighting and injuring" (204) impoverishes his theory of justice and overall conception of a healthy, functioning community. Thus, his proclamation of the umma as, "the Nation that desires death more than you desire life," (172) is more self-defeating than threatening. (Such a race to the bottom is a historic strategy guerilla combatants worldwide have grappled with when facing a more powerful oppressor. The scope but not the substance of martyrdom is at issue with radical Islam.) The work of international and post-colonial feminists who have explored these powerful links between masculinity and militarism would be valuable here for its perspicacity and skill in mapping violence's gendering path through sites of conflict. For example, some feminists are quick to point out that dismissing the exigencies of a patriarchal culture can lead to dangerous assumptions that victimize men as well. In his discussion of the best ages from which to recruit jihadists, bin-Laden describes 15 to 25 year old intellectually immature males as those most able to give service to the umma as mujahedeen, purportedly because of their limited family commitments (91). Not only are these boys disproportionately recruited into warfare because of their gender and impressionable age, but many never return to communities throughout the Islamic world that are worse for their absence.
Had Americans any doubt of bin-Laden's willingness to keep his sights on Western targets for the foreseeable future, Messages should dispel that notion. In fact, average US citizens might benefit from conversations on the legitimate use of political violence, theories of representative government, and a crash course on how the global financial market works--and for whom. For it is these average citizens that bin-Laden is talking to. The American people who vote and fund their government's activities with tax money (140)--and particularly those who chose to work in a building symbolic of American economic imperialism--are just as likely targets as uniformed men. This charge of culpability is indeed fearsome--but perhaps not in the way he intended. Bin-Laden's intolerant, narrow solution to injustice refuses to know the burden of a do-it-yourself model of justice that must be tweaked and monitored vigilantly--a model that depends on Westerners' ability to steer, however clumsily, their constructed government. Messages might be the best reminder lately of the responsibilities of citizenship--of each citizen--to keenly observe the political systems they claim to have birthed. That is perhaps the only real check on radical violence of any sort.
Nonfiction Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Faith and Charity
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (I Can Read It All by Myself)by Dr. Seuss, Theodor Seuss Geisel
Random House; Random House Books for Young Readers; Published: 1960-03-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1.27
Price in other shops:
Treasure Trouble #5 (Pirate School)by Brian James
Grosset & Dunlap; Published: 2008-01-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.99
Price in other shops:
Historic Print (XL): [Laborers in Japan, one filling pull cart, three men transporting stones, two carrying sOlde Yankee Map and Photo Shoppe; Library Images; Kitchen
Best price: $457.00
Potty Time for One, Two or Three! A Parent's Survival Guide for Potty Training One Child, Twins, or Tripletsby Maria S. McCarthy
Maria Skantzaris\McCarthy; Published: 2004-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.49
Price in other shops:
One, Two, Three, Pull!by Sabine Praml
North-South Books; Published: 2006-12-28; Board book; Book
Best price: $1.98
Price in other shops:
Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisisby Jimmy Carter
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2006-09-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.12
Price in other shops:
An Hour Before Daylight : Memories of a Rural Boyhoodby Jimmy Carter
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2001-10-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheidby Jimmy Carter
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2006-11-14; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.69
Price in other shops:
Rabbi Meir Kahane: His Life and Thought - Volume One: 1932-1975by Libby Kahane
Institute for Publication of Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane; Published: 2008-03-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $33.00
Price in other shops:
On Jews and Judaism: Selected Articles 1961-1990 (Hebrew Edition)by Meir Kahane
Institute for Publication of the Writings of Rabbi; Published: 1993-01-01; Hardcover; Book
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
The Massacre at El Mozoteby Rk Danner
Vintage; Published: 1994-04-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.98
Price in other shops:
The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Globalby Fawaz A. Gerges
Cambridge University Press; Published: 2009-04-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $68.00
Price in other shops:
Al Qaeda in Its Own WordsBelknap Press of Harvard University Press; Published: 2008-04-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $16.94
Price in other shops:
Social Justice in Islamby Sayyid Qutb
Islamic Publications International; Published: 2000-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.65
Price in other shops:
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classic.)by Eric Hoffer
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2002-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.94
Price in other shops:
His Own Words: A Translation of the Writings of Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiriby Laura Mansfield
LULU; Published: 2006-07-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.19
Price in other shops:
Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asiaby Ahmed Rashid
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2002-12-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.85
Price in other shops:
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/ 11by Lawrence Wright
Knopf; Published: 2006-08-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $17.75
Price in other shops:
Milestonesby Sayed Qutb
Islamic Book Service; Published: 2006-07-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.50
Price in other shops:
The Al Qaeda ReaderBroadway; Published: 2007-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.07
Price in other shops: