A Letter From Osama bin Laden to the American People
released to press 11-17-2002 or thereabouts
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.”[Quran4 :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 a 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 is 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 sub dual.
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 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 than1 . 5million 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.
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 than1 , 000of you prisoners from
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 O 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 you 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 as 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 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 a 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” [Quran3 :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.” [Quran3 :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.” [Quran61 :9]
“Allah has decreed that ‘Verily it is I and My Messengers who
shall be the victorious.’ Verily Allah is All-Powerful,
All-Mighty.”[Quran58 :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?
