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Jihad and Terrorism Studies
June 12, 2002 
No. 388

'Why We Fight America':
Al-Qa'ida Spokesman Explains September 11 
and Declares Intentions to Kill 4 Million Americans with Weapons of 
Mass Destruction

Al-Qa'ida spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith, originally from Kuwait, 
recently posted a three-part article titled "In the Shadow of the Lances" on 
the website of the Center for Islamic Research and Studies, 
www.alneda.com. Following numerous hacking attempts after the international media 
reported that the site was linked to Al-Qa'ida, its address was changed 
to http://66.34.191.223. 

Recently, the site published an article by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, bin 
Laden's deputy and leader of the Egyptian Jihad organization. However, the 
Saudi London-based Arabic-daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that the 
article had already appeared in the Al-Mujahiddeen publication.(1) The 
following are excerpts from Abu Gheith's article:

Part I: Why We Fight the U.S.
"...Perhaps the [Islamic] nation is waiting for one Al-Qa'ida man to 
come out and clear up the many questions that accompany any communiqué, 
message, or picture [concerning September 11], to know the truth, the 
motives, and the goals behind the conflict with the Hubal [one of the 
pre-Islamic Ka'ba idols - referring to the U.S.] of our generation..."

"Why is the world surprised?! Why were millions of people astounded by 
what happened to America on September 11? Did the world think that 
anything else would happen? That something less than this would happen?!"

"What happened to America is something natural, an expected event for a 
country that uses terror, arrogant policy, and suppression against the 
nations and the peoples, and imposes a single method, thought, and way 
of life, as if the people of the entire world are clerks in its 
government offices and employed by its commercial companies and institutions." 

"Anyone who was surprised, and did not expect [the events of September 
11] did not [understand] the nature of man, and the effects of 
oppression and tyranny on man's emotions and feelings. They thought that 
oppression begets surrender, that repression begets silence, that tyranny 
only leaves humiliation. Perhaps they also thought that this [oppressive] 
atmosphere is sufficient to kill man's virility, shatter his will, and 
uproot his honor. These people erred twice: once when they ignored [the 
consequences of] treating man with contempt, and again when they were 
unaware of man's ability to triumph." 

"This goes for every man - let alone when the man in question is of 
those who believe in Allah, in Islam as a religion, and in Muhammad as 
Prophet and Messenger, and anyone who knows that his religion is unwilling 
to allow him to be inferior and refuses to allow him to be humiliated." 

The Entire Earth Must Be Subjected to Islam
"How can [he] possibly [accept humiliation and inferiority] when he 
knows that his nation was created to stand at the center of leadership, at 
the center of hegemony and rule, at the center of ability and 
sacrifice? How can [he] possibly [accept humiliation and inferiority] when he 
knows that the [divine] rule is that the entire earth must be subject to 
the religion of Allah - not to the East, not to the West - to no 
ideology and to no path except for the path of Allah?..."

"As long as this Muslim knows and believes in these facts, he will not 
- even for a single moment - stop striving to achieve it, even if it 
costs him his soul... his time, his property, and his son, as it is said, 
'Say [to the believers]: If your fathers and your sons and your 
brethren and your wives and your kinsfolk and the worth you have acquired and 
the trade, the dullness of which you apprehend, and the dwellings that 
you fancy are dearer to you than Allah and His Messenger, and striving 
in His cause, then wait until Allah issues His judgment. Allah guides 
not the disobedient people...'"(2) 

Part II: The Blow Against the U.S. Will Come from Where Least Expected
"...The [premises] on which we base ourselves as an organization, and 
on which we base our operations and our method of action, are practical 
and realistic... They are also scientific and [in accordance with] 
Islamic religious law, and they give us confidence and certainty... In 
writing them and in [publicly] revealing them, I do not intend to be 
apologetic for what was done; I lay [these arguments] before you so as to 
emphasize that we are continuing with our blows against the Americans 
and the Jews, and with attacking them, both people and installations [so 
as to stress] that what awaits the Americans will not, Allah willing, 
be less than what has already happened to them. America must prepare 
itself; it must go on maximum alert; ... because, Allah willing, the blow 
will come from where they least expect it..."

"America is the head of heresy in our modern world, and it leads an 
infidel democratic regime that is based upon separation of religion and 
state and on ruling the people by the people via legislating laws that 
contradict the way of Allah and permit what Allah has prohibited. This 
compels the other countries to act in accordance with the same laws in 
the same ways... and punishes any country [that rebels against these 
laws] by besieging it, and then by boycotting it. By so doing, [America] 
seeks to impose on the world a religion that is not Allah's..."

"America, with the collaboration of the Jews, is the leader of 
corruption and the breakdown [of values], whether moral, ideological, 
political, or economic corruption. It disseminates abomination and 
licentiousness among the people via the cheap media and the vile curricula." 

"America is the reason for all oppression, injustice, licentiousness, 
or suppression that is the Muslims' lot. It stands behind all the 
disasters that were caused and are still being caused to the Muslims; it is 
immersed in the blood of Muslims and cannot hide this."

"For 50 years in Palestine, the Jews - with the blessing and support of 
the Americans - carried out abominations of murder, suppression, abuse, 
and exile... The Jews exiled nearly 5 million Palestinians and killed 
nearly 260,000. They wounded nearly 180,000, and crippled nearly 
160,000."

"Due to the American bombings and siege of Iraq, more than 1,200,000 
Muslims were killed in the past decade. Due to the siege, over a million 
children are killed [annually] - that is 83,333 children on average per 
month, 2,777 children on average per day. 5,000 Iraqis were killed in 
one day in the Al-'Amiriya shelter alone. Are these statistics of 
military installations???!!!!"

"In its war against the Taliban and Al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan, America 
has killed 12,000 Afghan civilians and 350 Arab Jihad fighters, among 
them women and children. It annihilated entire families from among the 
Arab Jihad fighters while they were in their cars, when the American Air 
Force bombed [them] with helicopters and anti-tank missiles, until 
nothing remained of some of them except scattered body parts." 

"In Somalia, America killed 13,000 Somalis and [its soldiers] carried 
out acts of abomination on [Somali] boys and women."

Muslims Have Suffered from the U.S.'s Standing with Christians
"America's standing with the Christians of the world against the 
Muslims has stripped the camouflage from its face. Much can be said about 
this regarding the Sudan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Kashmir, Macedonia, 
Bosnia, and other tragedies. America's siege on the Islamic countries 
as punishment for their rebellion against its laws has transgressed all 
limits, and Muslims have suffered economic losses that outstrip the 
imagination." 

"After all this, is it forbidden for a victim to escape when he is tied 
and brought to the slaughterhouse?!! Is he not entitled, while he is 
being slaughtered, to stamp his feet?!!..." 

"After all this, some [Arab regimes] shed crocodile tears for what 
happened to the country of heresy [America], and tried to exonerate Islam 
from what happened to [America] and asked the country of heresy to treat 
the Muslims sensitively and gently, and sent messengers and 
broadcasters to the Jihad fighters with a request to stop fighting Hubal [i.e. 
meaning the U.S.]. Do they really think we would do this?!"

"No, by Allah. They [the Arab regimes] have turned their back on us and 
we have turned our back on them... We would have no honor if we did 
not avenge the blood of our brothers in Palestine, in Iraq, in 
Afghanistan, and everywhere." 

"... The banner is being waved openly, and now there is 'only a trench 
of belief' and 'a trench of heresy.'" 

Part III: The Islamic Justification for Al-Qa'ida's Jihad Against the 
U.S.
"The religious arguments on which we base ourselves in our Jihad 
against the Americans - the explanations that inspire us with confidence in 
the triumph of our religion, our belief, and our faith - are many, and 
this is not the place to enumerate them, as they are included in the 
books of the sages." 

"No one disagrees with these explanations, except he who lives [in] 
fear ... he who asks for shelter, thinking that he has distanced himself 
from evil ... or he who kneels as a doorman before the doors of the 
tyrants to gain a position, advancement, or a gift!!"

"These people have not, Allah be praised, dissuaded us, not even for a 
single day, from continuing in our path, from our Jihad, and from our 
mission. Allah willing, they will not prevent us [in the future]."

"In this article I will present one explanation that suffices [to wage] 
Jihad against the Americans, the Jews, and anyone who has gone in their 
path..."

"Allah said, 'He who attacked you, attack him as he attacked you,' and 
also, 'The reward of evil is a similar evil,' and also, 'When you are 
punished, punish as you have been punished.'"

"The words of the sages on these verses are clear: Ibn Taimiyya [in his 
book] Al Ikhtiyarat Wa-Al-Fatawi; Ibn Al-Qayim in I'lam Al-Muqi'in and 
in Al-Hashiya; Al-Qurtubi in his Tafsir, Al-Nawawi in Al-Muhazab; 
Al-Shukani in Nayl Al-Awtar; and others, may Allah's mercy be upon them." 

"Anyone who peruses these sources reaches a single conclusion: The 
sages have agreed that the reciprocal punishment to which the verses 
referred is not limited to a specific instance. It is a valid rule for 
punishments for infidels, for the licentious Muslims, and for the 
oppressors." 

Islamic Law Allows Reciprocation against the U.S.
"If by religious law it is permitted to punish a Muslim [for the crime 
he committed] - it is all the more permitted to punish a Harbi infidel 
[i.e. he who belongs to Dar Al-Harb 'the domain of disbelief'] in the 
same way he treated the Muslim."

"According to the numbers I noted in the previous section of the lives 
lost from among the Muslims because of the Americans, directly or 
indirectly, we still are at the beginning of the way. The Americans have 
still not tasted from our hands what we have tasted from theirs. The 
[number of] killed in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were no more 
than fair exchange for the ones killed in the Al-'Amiriya shelter in 
Iraq, and are but a tiny part of the exchange for those killed in 
Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, the Philippines, Bosnia, Kashmir, Chechnya, and 
Afghanistan."

We Have the Right to Kill 4 Million Americans
"We have not reached parity with them. We have the right to kill 4 
million Americans - 2 million of them children - and to exile twice as many 
and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our 
right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to 
afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the Muslims because 
of the [Americans'] chemical and biological weapons."

"America knows only the language of force. This is the only way to 
stop it and make it take its hands off the Muslims and their affairs. 
America does not know the language of dialogue!! Or the language of 
peaceful coexistence!! America is kept at bay by blood alone..."

Endnotes:

(1) Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), June 7, 2002. 
(2) Koran 9:24.

*********************
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