From the files of Terror Inc

This appears to be part of a series on the money of the world, it does get better......LOL, I suspect that the writer is a socialist, so we are seeing here, another side of the plan. a tale of two currencies To: nettime Subject: a tale of two currencies From: Keith Hart Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 10:04:51 -0500 Reply-to: Keith Hart A tale of two currencies It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. -- Charles Dickens On Friday, I was stopped outside the Banque de France by a platoon of soldiers, armed to the teeth, guarding a shipment of euros. An indomitable old lady -- white hair, shades, big fur coat and comfortable shoes -- ignored them and kept on walking. They let her pass. The euro is protected by the combined armies of twelve states, I thought, but they can't stop a Parisian matriarch in her stride. The whole charade -- guns guarding this stuff, our money, from us, the people -- was redeemed by one person confident enough in herself to call their bluff. I live in what I like to think of as the Amsterdam-Brussels-Paris-Geneva-Milan corridor, a world of public order, fast trains and multi-lingual people. I want a Europe of the regions, based on its great cities and their hinterlands. The French press this week celebrated a European unity more complete than any known since the Roman empire. It is true that the euro leads to a United States of Europe and offers us the best chance yet of limiting the excesses of national governments. The banks did their best to slow the change down, of course: serving only their own customers, ATMs out of order, levying foreign transaction charges on euro cheques from other countries. But then the habit of supping copiously at the trough of national monopoly money dies hard . The television news had shots of bemused but happy punters fingering their euros in supermarket queues. There was no economic analysis. The birth of the euro was a political symbol and a practical matter of handling change. If we want to reflect on the economic consequences of the new currency, it may help to look elsewhere. At the other end of the world, the argentino was also born -- and then immediately died. Whereas Europe is stable and prosperous, Argentina has had five presidents in two weeks and the monetary crisis there could lead to civil war. In 1991, the peso was pegged to the dollar as a way of ending hyper-inflation. This produced a measure of economic success for a while, but Argentina's ruling elite has a world-class record for fiscal irresponsibility and it soon piled up $132 billion in national debt. The peso was overvalued, trading in New York at three-quarters the official rate. Argentinians acquired debts in dollars and on every street corner pesos were off-loaded for dollars. Local products became uncompetitive and were replaced by imports, leading to a deflationary downward spiral. Liquidity, cash in circulation, became even more scarce than usual and provincial governments issued their own money as interest-bearing bonds. The argentino was proposed as the nationalization of these provincial currencies (not in the form of bonds, but as paper paying no interest). It was hoped that this measure would provide interim purchasing power while the government worked out how to devalue the peso without triggering off hyper-inflation. But who would buy money from this government? The idea was quickly dropped. Ordinary citizens floated their own 'social money' in the late 90s, forming an association, Red Global de Trueque Solidario (Global Solidarity Barter Network or RGTS), which issued 15 million currency units (creditos) and then split into a more money-minded organization, Red Global de Trueque, and one stressing egalitarian community, Red del Trueque Solidario. The RGTS credits are a single-issuer scrip like the national currencies that they aim to complement. They are given away or bought cheaply as tokens of exchange within a closed circuit. These and the provincial government experiments in local currency are a response to the rigidity of the fixed dollar exchange rate which squeezed the life out of the domestic economy, when profligate debt and capital flight made devaluation inevitable. Before dismissing this case as the old story of 'Third World' economic failure, it is worth recalling that around 1900 Argentina had the sixth highest per capita national income in the world and was considered to be a potential rival to the United States. This is the latest example of the IMF's well-established policy of sacrificing national economies to the logic of international capital flows, a policy first imposed on Austria after the first world war (but not of course by the IMF), of whom it was said afterwards that the operation was successful, but unfortunately the patient died. The desperate attempts of Argentinians to maintain a market economy in the absence of liquidity evokes nothing so much as the social credit movement in North America during the Great Depression. The value of juxtaposing Europe and Argentina is first as a reminder that we do all live in the same world economy and may suffer from similar limitations. Second, the euro, with its single centralized exchange rate, could function like the dollar/peso arrangement in relation to Europe's diversified regions, especially with the accession of Eastern European countries. This in turn should lead us to explore a variety of social mechanisms for organizing money, rather than rely on just one. We have already seen that Argentinians have started creating their own money at several levels of society. This is just one aspect of a worldwide movement to set up community currencies which has been growing in strength of late. Community currencies point to a fundamental reassessment of the conditions for economic democracy contained in relations between states, people and money. The great thing about the euro is that over 300 mn people agreed to measure their economic transactions with a new unit. Moreover, the currency was seen to be contrived, to be a fiction. There was no question of its being the heir to medieval precursors. This impression was reinforced by a two-year transitional period in which the euro had only a virtual existence. Even so it managed to lose a fifth of its value against the dollar in that period. The euro's management is likely to be less democratically accountable to the public even than its national precursors. The twelve central bank governors of the participating countries represent what is in effect a league of states. The euro may not be a national currency, but, like the dollar, it aims to be a federal state currency. The essence of state money is that currency of little or no worth is offered to a people by the government in payment for real goods and services, as the sole legal means of exchange within the territory and with the obligation to pay taxes on all transactions using it. Genghis Khan pioneered state money as worthless scrip, when he issued a currency made from a special bark imprinted with his seal. Refusal to accept it carried the death penalty. An impressive public works programme, including a new capital, was financed in this way. Foreign traders, however, were able to insist on being paid with something less personal; they preferred commodity money containing precious metals whose real asset value was recognized across political borders. Marco Polo tells us that the Khan tried to pay him too in bark currency, but he managed to get away with some real money and his life. The euro, like most money used in international transactions, is a political currency (issued jointly by the league of twelve states) with a commodity price established through financial markets. In other words, it combines the heads and tails of classical coin of the realm. What would money issued directly by the people look like? Community currencies have come a long way in the last two decades since Michael Linton invented LETS in British Columbia. The idea of LETS is that any network can constitute itself as a community of exchange by nominating a currency and recording all transactions through a central register. The totality of transactions at any time sums to zero. The money is issued by all the members, whenever any of them has a negative balance. They make a promise to honour such commitments in future. The loss of individual members to the circuit does not impede the ability of the others to trade, as it does when the supply from a single issuer dries up. The currency itself is simply a virtual measure. It has no commodity value, therefore no price (interest), no reason to become scarce nor to be hoarded. Most LETS systems to date are unique, self-sufficient organizations providing a minor economic alternative without much prospect of replacing the role of conventional money and markets in our lives. But recent developments, especially in the use of information technologies, have made community currencies a faster, cheaper and more effective means of carrying out normal commerce. Smart cards registering transactions in up to fifteen currencies, linked to businesses and non-profit organizations as well as individuals, allow these circuits to become integrated into the market economy. National domain name systems and multiple currency clearing platforms open the way for the banks to handle LETS business (although none has yet done so). Community currencies also offer one solution to the problem of electronic micro-payments, a possibility being explored with the European Commission at this time. In Japan large corporations are participating with grassroots democratic organizations in LETS experiments. A collaborative project of software engineering and social innovation is maturing to the point where talk of a revolution in money is not just the self-deluding hype of enthusiasts. Maastricht means that the economic destiny of 300 million Europeans will be tied to the fortunes of a single currency whose management cannot possibly meet their varied needs and interests. The euro is in principle a throwback to the Bretton Woods era of fixed parity exchange rates, at least for the participating countries, and it does not take much imagination to figure out that the deflationary consequences for some parts of the European economy might be occasionally unpleasant. The constituent governments of Euroland will come under pressure from their own people for more flexible instruments of economic management. The euro cannot do the job all by itself. National monopolies of money have in any case only been around since the 1850s. Now would be a good time to recognize the need for a variety of monetary instruments, for as many in fact as our communities. Britain's relationship to the euro will be of more than passing interest. At present Blair and Brown have contrived to replicate the old Tory policy of the hard ecu, whereby the national currency persists in competition with a centrally managed European currency, with each finding its own level. I endorse the European drive towards political unity and I share the widespread dismay over Britain's apparent reluctance to join in. But this does not prevent me from holding out for a pluralistic monetary regime rather than a unitary one. It may well be that, by suppressing their national currencies, some countries will encourage the formation of parallel exchange circuits, employing virtual deutschmarks or francs as community currencies. Radical change today hinges on the digital revolution. But the forms of money are only superficially technical: notes, coins, cheques, plastic, digits. The most important forms are social and, after several thousand years of only two kinds (commodity money and state money in various combinations), it takes some effort to embrace another, people's money. Digitalization does point to the growing separation between society and landed power. I have suggested that embracing community currencies would enable us to take fuller advantage of that potential. The euro involves only a limited break with the territorial principle. Its logic is still that of a central bank monopoly within an expanded territory. There are other democratic possibilities. We can make our own money rather than pay for the privilege of receiving it from our rulers. Europeans may not yet be reduced to the desperate measures of the Argentinians, but we too have some way to go before we can afford to rest content with the money forms at our disposal. Paris, 7th January 2002 Keith Hart is the author of Money in an Unequal World (Texere, New York and London, 2001; see www.thememorybank.co.uk) and, with Michael Linton and Ernie Yacub, of Common Wealth: open money and economic democracy (in preparation). Thanks to Eduardo Giannetti and Heloisa Primavera. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo{at}bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime{at}bbs.thing.net

Part 2 of 3..... This is G o o g l e's cache of http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0201/msg00087.html as retrieved on Sep 30, 2004 07:14:19 GMT. To link to or bookmark this page, use the following url: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ljdkoXqm8LoJ:amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0201/msg00087.html+jihad+gold&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&client=googlet Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content. These search terms have been highlighted: jihad gold Julian Dibbell on Sat, 19 Jan 2002 21:08:01 +0100 (CET) In Gold We Trust, part 2 To: Subject: In Gold We Trust, part 2 From: "Julian Dibbell" Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 15:28:57 -0500 Reply-to: "Julian Dibbell" In Gold We Trust, by Julian Dibbell Wired, 10.01, January 2002 [part 2] It's a hot high noon in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Faint, muggy breezes are blowing in off the Persian Gulf; and in the shopping malls, Mercedes dealerships, and air-conditioned Starbucks of this deliriously prosperous city-state, loudspeakers are discreetly broadcasting the muezzins' call to prayer. The call can also be heard, if you listen hard enough, inside a 12-foot-square, steel-and-concrete-walled storage vault located in Dubai International Airport's heavily guarded cargo-holding facilities. But if you're inside the vault, your mind is probably on other things. Like, for instance, the $7.5 million worth of precious metal piled up around you: five flat bars of chrome-bright palladium; two large plastic jars full of powdery platinum sponge; 160 fat, tarnished loaves of silver; and - on a single shelf, laid out one next to the other like babies in a maternity ward - 58 slender, radiant bricks of 99.9 percent pure gold, about 400 troy ounces each and altogether worth more than $6.5 million. These assets represent nearly half of the e-gold system's physical reserves, and there are, arguably, sound business reasons for storing them in this part of the world. Dubai, sometimes called the Switzerland of the Middle East, offers the financial sophistication of a major commercial hub, the low overhead of a mostly immigrant labor pool, and the high security of a politely authoritarian mini-monarchy. But the truth is, the gold is here because Allah commanded it. Or at any rate, because the passionate believers behind e-dinar - the network's Muslim-friendly frontend - believe He did. When Douglas Jackson and the e-dinar principals began the negotiations that culminated in e-dinar's September 2000 launch, Jackson was told up front that a proper Islamic currency requires a proper Islamic country as its base. Obligingly, he moved some of the company's existing assets from ScotiaBank in Canada to Dubai's Transguard repository (the rest remains with J. P. Morgan Chase in London) and even rewrote his governance contract to give e-dinar a limited veto over bullion transfers out of the vault. In return, e-dinar agreed, in effect, to help market the e-gold system to the world's 1.1 billion Muslims. The pitch? Late one night in the lobby of one of Dubai's five-star hotels, a 46-year-old Muslim named Abdalhasib CastiÃ±eira lays it out, sipping chamomile tea as he outlines a brief theology of money and calmly prophesies the downfall of the worldwide capitalist imperium. A gaunt, neatly bearded Spaniard, CastiÃ±eira is marketing director of the Islamic Mint, a private institution dedicated to reviving as international currency the coinage described in the Koran - the gold dinar and silver dirham. He has placed on the table before him two small gold coins inscribed with Arabic scripture. The Islamic Mint makes them and they represent, says CastiÃ±eira, the Islamic virtues of fair trade and honest value. Give someone a piece of gold, the argument goes, and you give him a real asset whose worth has endured throughout millennia. "Whereas this," he says, pulling a crisp US hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet, "is just a promise." Put your faith in it, and you submit to a system ultimately controlled by governments and corporations, a system that when it collapses - "all empires fall sooner or later," he says - will take the dollar down with it. "But if you hold this," he says, picking up one of the gold coins and weighing it thoughtfully in his palm, "you are free." The coin in CastiÃ±eira's hand contains 4.25 grams of gold, just as the dinar did in the time of the Prophet. Likewise, and by no coincidence, the e-dinar's primary unit of account is also 4.25 grams of gold. Officially, the Islamic Mint and e-dinar are separate organizations, but they're actually the off- and online divisions of a single project, joined by ideological and personal ties. E-dinar's British COO, Yahya Cattanach, and his family share a communal condo with CastiÃ±eira in the comfortable Jumeirah district of Dubai. The company's Spanish president, Umar Ibrahim Vadillo, is also the president of the Islamic Mint. And finally, uniting all three men - as well as e-dinar's Swiss CEO, Malaysian CFO, and German CTO - is one crucial biographical datum: All are high-placed members of the Murabitun movement, a modern, Western offshoot of Sufi Islam and possibly the only religious sect in history whose defining article of faith is a financial theory. *** There aren't too many Murabitun in the world; they number probably in the thousands. But they are avid proselytizers, supported in part by Dubai's royal Maktoum family, and they've established significant communities in Germany, England, South Africa, Indonesia, and Spain (though none is quite so impressive, perhaps, as the Murabitun outpost in Chiapas, Mexico, a community of 600 local Indians converted in the midst of the Zapatista uprising). Scattered though they are, community leaders see one another often, convening regularly in the small Scottish town of Achnagairn, home to the movement's founder and patriarch, the 71-year-old Sheikh Abdalqadir As-Sufi. For most of his life, the sheikh went by the proper Scots name Ian Dallas. In the 1960s, he worked as an actor and promoter, making the scene in London and Paris and hanging with Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles, and other hippie icons. Increasingly disillusioned with the counterculture, Dallas wound up in Morocco, where he met the Sufi spiritual leader Sheikh Muhammad ibn al-Habib and became a Muslim. Sheikh Muhammad had a vision: The modern revival of Islam, he believed, would come from, as he put it, "the people who pee standing" - from Westerners. Ian Dallas, now Abdalqadir, was anointed to take the lead. "Go to your land and see what will happen," Sheikh Muhammad told him, and he went. Back in London, Sheikh Abdalqadir slowly gathered acolytes from among the drifting spiritual seekers of the day. Murabitun legend has it that pop star Cat Stevens (later Yusuf Islam) got his first exposure to Islam from Sheikh Abdalqadir, when both of them used to hang out at T. Rex singer Marc Bolan's house. Others became hardcore followers, donning djellabas and turbans and helping the sheikh shape Murabitun belief into a curiously worldly mysticism - a radical Islam tinged with elements of classic European anarchism, moderate feminism, refined anti-Semitism, and dense Heideggerian phenomenology. It wasn't until the mid-1980s, however, that the members of the Murabitun truly began to set themselves apart from the run of post-hippie spiritual movements. Sheikh Abdalqadir came to believe that if there was anything a group of Western Muslims was best positioned to contribute to the world, it was an Islamic cleansing of the global financial system. And so he set his closest followers - in particular Umar Vadillo - the task of studying classic Islamic texts on money, with a view to drawing out their modern implications. The result, published in 1991, was the "Fatwa Concerning the Islamic Prohibition of Using Paper-Money as a Medium of Exchange." In the wake of fatwas sentencing Salman Rushdie to death and launching Osama bin Laden's terrorist jihad, Vadillo's sounds almost comically wonky. But make no mistake: This is an extreme document. The Bible condemns the financial practice of usury, certainly, and Islam does so even more firmly, prohibiting as haram, or unlawful, not only excessive but any interest charges on debt - a stricture that generally requires orthodox Muslims to leap through awkward theological hoops just to keep their money in a bank. But what Vadillo objects to, and in no uncertain terms, is modern money itself. "After examining all the aspects of paper money," he writes, "in the Light of the Qur'an and the Sunna, we declare that the use of paper money in any form of exchange is usury and therefore haram." Naturally, you can't comply with the fatwa merely by paying with plastic instead of paper. Paper money is a usurious cheat, Vadillo argues, largely because it has become "nothing but a pure symbol with no reality attached except the imposition of law." And since that same unreality undergirds the entire monetary system, the only honest way to escape its taint is to strive for the entire system's destruction. The fatwa, in short, is a call to financial jihad, and the struggle, Vadillo predicts, will be an unconventional one. Muslim information warriors will hack into banking networks and "transfer money at random." They will create dummy companies and "absorb debt that will never be paid back." They will "raid" the diamond and gold markets, which, according to Sheikh Abdalqadir's way of thinking, represent the hoarded wealth of the world's great usurers, the Jews. But these are tactics for a war that has yet to come, and may not ever. For now, and before all else, there's one thing Muslims everywhere need to do to hasten the end of the paper-currency regime and with it the demise of capitalism, the liberation of Islam, and the restoration (insh'allah) of the caliphate: They must work together to create a righteous alternative. They must bring back gold and silver as a standard medium of exchange. *** What was Douglas Jackson thinking when he hooked up with these guys? If he could have looked into the future, would he have guessed that, at the start of 2002, the world's attention would be riveted on pan-Islamic radicalism and its links to, among other things, obscure international money networks? And if so, would he still have steered his own obscure international money network into so close a partnership with the Murabitun? Probably. So far, Jackson's only second thoughts about the e-dinar deal have been to wonder just how much appeal the Murabitun's financial extremism really holds for the average Muslim. "The jury's still out," he says somewhat ruefully, noting that in a year of operations the funds held in e-dinar accounts have barely added up to a single bar of gold. For this and similarly mundane reasons, Jackson was already looking to loosen e-dinar's connection to the e-gold system months before the World Trade Center collapsed, and he insists the political mood since then hasn't added any urgency to the task. And why should it? In the weeks since September 11, investigators have painted a pretty clear picture of the kind of networks they think al Qaeda & Co. are moving their money around in, and it doesn't include anything as Net-savvy as online payment systems. And even if it did turn out that al Qaeda funds have passed through e-dinar, one thing's for sure: The Murabitun wouldn't be thrilled to hear it. For years they have publicly proclaimed their contempt for terrorists of every stripe, and in the wake of the September attacks, their stance has only hardened. Shortly after 9-11, Sheikh Abdalqadir issued a declaration excoriating Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. The attacks themselves he condemned as horrific and, more to the point, futile. "Bombing a building which houses a magical wealth system, which has no physical reality but remains simply electronic impulses in the digital archives of computers, far from attacking or weakening the system, strengthens it," wrote the sheikh. "A true study of the Qur'an and the Sunna shows us that capitalism will not be abolished on the battlefield but in the marketplace where it is practiced." "Look, we are against terrorism more than Bush is," Vadillo explains via email. "You want to be radical? You don't need to blow up the bank, just burn your bank account. And for that you are going to need an alternative. What is the alternative? E-dinar." That's not to say Jackson shouldn't be worried about tainted money coursing through the e-gold system - or that he isn't. But what troubles him most are the Ponzi schemes: Hundreds of online pyramid scams have made e-gold (because of its convenience and because it offers bilked users no way to cancel charges) their payment system of choice. It gives some sense of how much these operations have contributed to e-gold's bottom line to know that, to this day, the single largest holding in the e-gold system - $1.1 million in gold, 8 percent of total reserves - sits unclaimed in an account belonging to an alleged Ponzi that shut down a year ago. As for more recent activity, Eric Gaither of Gaithman's, one of the leading independent gold-currency exchanges, guesses that "at least 50 to 60 percent of e-gold" transactions are headed into or out of what he and others sometimes euphemistically call HYIPs (high-yield investment programs) or simply games. Other reputable exchange providers put the figure between 30 and 90 percent. "Frankly," says Steve Foerster, former CTO of G&SR and currently COO of Dominica-based gold currency 3PGold, "without online games right now there would be no gold economy." For his part, Jackson vigorously denies HYIPs account for anything approaching a substantial portion of e-gold traffic. "These are piddly-ass little things," he says. "When you actually run one of these things down, they're pathetic." Still, he concedes, they're a PR liability, and he and his staff have been working hard to squeeze them out of the system. They've instituted "know your customer" rules to identify suspected swindlers, and they've cooperated amicably with law enforcement. When SEC staffers came to G&SR's offices last May to review the accounts of one of the biggest e-gold schemes ever - the self-styled "Christian-based humanitarian organization," E-Biz Ventures, shut down after allegedly inflicting losses of $8.5 million on investors - they were welcomed with coffee, bagels, and a conference room of their own. J. Chris Condren, the attorney charged with recovering E-Biz investors' money, has only good things to say about e-gold. "They've answered every question we've asked them, they've responded to every subpoena, every request for information." Still, Jackson sometimes seems almost baffled that anyone could care who uses e-gold and why. It's all the same for him, for instance, that most users haven't a clue about the profound macroeconomic consequences he sees in e-gold. "They could be doing this for the dumbest reasons, we don't care," he says. "All we need is a growing circulation." For Jackson, the only thing that really seems to matter is what happens when the circulation gets big enough for e-gold to matter. Will he be proved right or not? Will e-gold bring about an epochal change in human destiny or won't it? And if it does, will anybody still care that once upon a time e-gold was a currency beloved of gun freaks, Sufi anarchists, and Ponzi schemers? "You're going to have to make a personal judgment," says Jackson. "Am I some sort of dipshit visionary, you know, that's got some idea, but what I'm really doing is just sort of facilitating all kinds of sleazy stuff? Or in fact is this vision one that is achievable?" *** So which is it? Take your time. And if you really want to get a handle on the question, try the following experiment. Go out and find a 400-troy-ounce gold bar, like the ones stored in the e-gold vault in Dubai, and pick it up. You'll learn something interesting about gold: It's heavy. Maybe you think you knew this already. Maybe you know gold has a specific gravity of 19.3, and that this means it's 19.3 times heavier than water. Maybe you also know gold is heavier than any element known to humans prior to the 18th-century discovery of platinum, and almost twice as heavy as lead. But until you've held 400 ounces of it in your hand, you've probably never grasped just what sort of heavy this stuff really is. Relative to its modest size, the 27.5 pounds in a standard gold bar is so much weight it's nearly impossible to accept that gravity alone accounts for the force you feel as you lift it. You're tempted to attribute some additional, almost metaphysical, power to the metal - as if the gold brick in your hand weren't just undeniably real but a gleaming avatar of reality itself. And whether or not Douglas Jackson actually thinks of gold that way, he sure tends to act like he does. Beneath the scaffolding of what he calls his "unassailable economic logic" lies the true foundation of his vision: the self-assurance of a man convinced he's discovered something as genuine as it gets in a world ruled by fiction and cheats. This is why, despite Jackson's efforts to position his system as a serious financial player - a rival to the major currencies of the world - little e-dinar remains Jackson's closest corporate partner. Maybe Jackson wants to fix capitalism and maybe the Murabitun want to finish it, but both, at bottom, pursue a truth that isn't so much economic as it is spiritual. Both see in gold a purity that transcends the machinations of the merely mortal. Which at least answers part of Jackson's question: Is he some sort of dipshit visionary? Well, no more or less, really, than Sheikh Abdalqadir As-Sufi, the Scottish redeemer of the Muslim world. As for whether Jackson's vision is in fact achievable - let's just say the odds of e-gold effecting an epochal change in human destiny are probably not much better than e-dinar's odds of bringing back the caliphate. But both may be better than you think. Last June, Mahathir Mohammed, the irascible, authoritarian prime minister of financially beleaguered, mostly Muslim Malaysia, called for the formation of an "Islamic trading bloc." Like the Euro Zone, the bloc would have its own currency, yet with a twist: The "Islamic dinar," as Mahathir proposes calling it, would be backed not by anybody's faith and credit but by gold. As it happens, Mahathir seems to have gotten the idea for the gold dinar from none other than Jackson's associates among the Murabitun. If the proposal flies then there is a more than negligible chance that e-gold could become the base-money system for an economic community stretching from Indonesia to Morocco. "I want to jump on that," Jackson says of the opportunity. Already Vadillo and the sheikh have met with Mahathir to make the pitch, and Jackson hopes to fly to Malaysia soon to drive it home. Of course, convincing a major world leader to put the monetary fate of a billion people in the hands of a retired oncologist from Melbourne, Florida, is not going to be easy work. But Jackson doesn't seem to mind the challenge. "That's going to be an especially fun project over the next few months," he says. "I'm gonna have a lot of frequent-flier miles." [end] _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free {at}yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo{at}bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime{at}bbs.thing.net

This is a must read, to protect your children, it is long and more than likely won't all print, there is more at link.

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Recruitment efforts of white extremist groups on the
Internet were examined using qualitative methods. There is
no evidence of a concerted effort to target children at
popular locations where children are active on the Internet.
Most propaganda writings are not well written and
persuasive. White extremists attempt to attract children with
text, MP3 music, and games, but their efforts are not well
organized and are more reactive than aggressive. Findings
are reported for the uses of the Internet, methods employed,
and how technology of the Internet contributes to these
activities.

Contents

Introduction
Purpose
Methodology
Results and Discussion
Internet Characteristics of Sites
Hacking, Electronic Terrorism, and Terror Guidance
Summary and Conclusions

Introduction

Growth of the World Wide Web raises concern about its "dark
side" and the need to guard children from pornography,
sexual predators, and hate groups. The Web can dispense
hate and terror and aid in recruitment by extremist groups.
Children and teenagers can be exposed to hate propaganda
and online hate recruitment, but there is little knowledge
about the actual practices of hate groups online in such
efforts. While many monitoring organizations warn about
hate groups online, the extent and nature of the recruitment
activities of white extremists with children has not been
studied in detail. This is a relatively new field of study, both
because of the nature of the content and the context.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate the methods
used by white extremist organizations to recruit youths via
the Internet. The following research questions guided the
study:

1.To what extent are white extremists using the Internet to
target children?
2.What methodologies are employed by these groups in an
effort to appeal to children?
3.In what way does the technology of the Internet
contribute to these activities?

Methodology

Gaining direct access to extremist groups is impossible with
joining (Blee, 1991; Ezekiel, 1995). The approach used in
this study was an adaptation of observational research.
Observation of human behavior, or ethnography, is a
traditional technique for field settings. Unable to directly
observe the behavior of subjects, the analysis of their
products and messages on Web sites is the only way to
understand their behavior and intentions. Observation
provides knowledge of the context in which events occur and
enables the researcher to examine aspects that participants
are not aware of or unwilling to discuss (Hoepfl, 1997). There
is no knowledge of the observer's presence. Field notes
included descriptions of settings, activities, sounds, text, and
links, and all sites were saved for offline browsing to permit
more extensive analysis.

Subjects

There were 457 hardcore-white extremists groups in the
United States in 1999 (SPLC, 1999). Extremist groups can
also be classified as white supremacists, Neo-Nazis,
Christian Identity, and Holocaust Deniers, but they all share
a common message about white purity and superiority and
include Jews, Blacks, and homosexuals as targets of their
condemnatory attacks. Extremism is characterized by
dogmatic intolerance, expressed mildly or violently, and
inclines toward an inflexible obedience to an accepted
authority, shaped by a common ideology or sense of group
unity (Gardner, 1997). Among American white extremist
groups, the most distinctive trait is faithfulness to racial
purity. Much of their energy is invested in immunizing their
members from the effects of the mass media and on
recruitment (Billig, 1982).

The subjects for this study were those with prominent Web
sites: the Hammerskin Nation, National Alliance, Stormfront,
Aryan Nations, and the Word Church of The Creator
(WCOTC), selected after a literature review (Ferber, 1998;
HateWatch, 2000; Dees & Cocoran, 1996; Gardner, 1997;
SPLC, 1999).

Hammerskin Nation. In addition to the United States, the
Hammerskin Nation claims to have members in Canada,
Australia, Germany, and Britain. The Hammerskins practice
"leaderless resistance" and are organized into cells
supposedly like the Nazi SS divisions. On the Internet, it
functions as a clearinghouse of information and links for the
Hammerskin movement as well as for skinheads and other
white extremists. Links to white power music vendors and
information on a variety of topics of concern to young white
extremists are also available. Hammerskin Nation is a
neo-Nazi skinhead organization.

National Alliance. The National Alliance is the largest and
most active Neo-Nazi group in the United States. Its
emphasis on violence makes its Web pages distinctive among
those in this study. The National Alliance is a Neo-Nazi
organization with a high level of influence and leadership
within white extremism. While offering only a limited number
of links from its site, the National Alliance is linked to by
virtually every white extremist group or organization on the
Internet.

Stormfont. Stormfront promotes a message of "White Pride
World Wide." A major purpose is the creation of a virtual
community for both white extremist families and singles.
The site provides direct or indirect links to a variety of
extremist sites on the Internet, such as neo-Nazis,
skinheads, and various Christian-identity groups that
espouse racism, anti-Semitism and Christian
fundamentalism. Stormfront is an Internet-based, Neo-Nazi
organization.

Aryan Nations. The Aryan Nations functions as a
clearinghouse of information and links for the Aryan
movement, skinheads, and other extremists. Numerous links
provide propaganda and erroneous information about
targeted minority groups, Christianity and the Bible, as well
as other topics of concern to white extremists including
information on acts of terrorism. Aryan Nations has been far
less cautious about avoiding or disguising linkages to
controversial materials such as bomb making, pirate radio,
and computer viruses than any other site in this study. Aryan
Nations is a Neo-Nazi, Christian-identity organization with
strong ties to the skinhead movement. At the time of this
study, the Aryan Nations was involved in a lawsuit, which it
subsequently lost and paid substantial fines. Since then its
Web site has been inactive.

World Church of The Creator. As a part of the White Identity
religious movement, the World Church of the Creator
(WCOTC) is both anti-Semitic and anti-Christian. While
WCOTC is a loose knit group, it is one of the fastest growing
white extremist groups (ADL, 1999). There is an effort to
appeal to skinheads on its Web site. WCOTC has made
inroads with many individuals and groups, which is
demonstrated by its organization, Skinheads of the Racial
Holy War, and its use of the slogan RAHOWA, which
comprised of the first two letters in each of the words in the
phrase.

Data Collection and Analysis

Data collection occurred during a two-week period in the
summer of 2000. Much of the Internet operates within the
public domain. Copyright-protected materials were examined
within the context of educational fair use (U.S. Copyright
Office, 2000). Primary documents published on each site's
server were the central focus of this study. However, direct
links to secondary documents were also included. No attempt
was made to collect files, images, or other data from areas
that are restricted by membership or fees.

Narrative notes were read, analyzed, and reanalyzed to
categorize data based on emergent themes. Using a process
of constant comparison, commonalties were found for data
and new categories were formulated for data that did not fit
into existing categories. Coding of the data followed a
method of a categorization into coherent classes for
emergent themes. The classes were mutually exclusive.

Results and Discussion

Evidence From Internet Search Engines

Children may accidentally enter a Web site when searching
for school-related information or free, downloadable MP3
music. For example, when researching such topics as Martin
Luther King, Jr. or the Holocaust, a child's search can turn up
sites such as "Martin Luther King Jr.: A Historical
Examination" or "What really happened with the Holoco$t
[sic]?" These sites appear to be authoritative, especially to a
juvenile, but each site offers historically inaccurate
information and extremist versions of historic events and
personages. For example, the alternative "King" site
(http://www.martinlutherking.org) contains pictures of Dr.
King with his family; the text on the links on the main page
provide no clue about what will follow, which is anti-King
propaganda. The site alleges that Dr. King was an agent of
communism, a disruptive force in American history, and
accuses him of numerous acts of plagiarism. Stormfront,
however, does not link its main site directly to or from the
"King" pages. Links to this site were provided by 48 different
Web sites, the bulk of them monitoring groups and
educational institutions using the site as an example of the
need for effective Web evaluation (WebTrends, August 25,
2000).

In the other example, "What Really Happened With the
Holoco$t?," there is a revisionist history and Holocaust
denial, hosted by the National Socialist Hitler Youth Legion. It
links to other revisionist and Holocaust denial sites, including
revisionist materials on Stormfront, Hammerskin Nation, and
National Alliance's Web sites. These and other Holocaust
denial sites are rarely listed on child-oriented search engines
such as Yahooligans and AskJeeves, the two most popular
search engines for children (MediaMetrix, June 2000). These
sites are accessible by using other search engines such as
Yahoo, AltaVista, or Fast Search, however.

Evidence From Sites Designed Specifically for
Children and Teens

Creativity for Kids. This is a Web site developed by the World
Church of The Creator (WCOTC) that offers downloadable
coloring book pages and crossword puzzles about "white
pride" in a subtle "kid-friendly" format. Materials are written
at an age-appropriate level. The site invites children to
e-mail questions about the online crossword puzzles. While
WCOTC packages hate messages within the context of a
religion that is anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, and anti-everyone
except whites, its children's section mainly promotes white
pride. This site was linked to by only 13 different Web pages
and the majority of links to this page were from extremist
monitoring sites and other WCOTC pages (WebTrends,
August 25, 2000).

Stormfront for Kids. The site is purported to be the Web page
of a pre-teen boy, who shares his understanding of the world
with his peers, but it is the official "kid's" page and is a highly
organized and technologically savvy production. If offers a
free download of "White Power Doom" as well as two white
power MP3 music files. One page was dedicated to a
discussion of the dangers of Pokemon for white children and
white culture. Several innocuous links to materials on Celtic
culture were also provided. The link to a special children's
and teens' chat forum was inoperable. Children visiting the
page have comprehensive access to all of Stormfront's online
materials as well as to its extensive list of external links.
Linkage to the site, however, is limited. A WebTrends search
of the page's URL revealed 37 links to the site; its host site,
Stormfront, is actually linked to by over one thousand
different Web pages (25 August 2000).

Aryan Nations Youth Corps (ANYAC). This site functions as
the "youth counterpart of Aryan Nations" (Aryan Nations, 6
August 2000, p. 5). It is designed for "young WHITE ARYAN
PEOPLE dedicated to the preservation and building of a
racially pure homeland" (p.5). Other than a basic outline of
what it means to be an Aryan youth, the site is quite limited
in information and appeal. There are no internal or external
links associated with the page. However, children who
manage to find the page can access plenty of information
regarding bomb making and other violent acts by selecting
the Aryan Underground link on Aryan Nation's main page.
ANYAC is linked to by 61 different Web pages, according to
an AltaVista search conducted using WebTrends'
popularity-tracking software (25 August 2000).

Hammerskin Nation. This Web site is geared toward teens
and young adults with links to all other extremist groups in
this study. Links to a variety of other Hammerskin and
skinhead groups are provided. The site offers free MP3
downloads and a banner link to Panzerfaust Records.
Panzerfaust Records is a Minnesota based music label which
specializes in the production and distribution of radical
pro-White rock music. In German, Panzerfaust means
armored fist.

Additional links to other white power music vendors make the
site appealing to teens. Hammerskin Nation employs
cutting-edge Internet technology and a user-friendly layout
to appeal to its audience. Announcements of events such as
concerts as well as up-to-date information on white power
news and events enhance the site's appeal. A variety of chat
forums serve as a place for youth to meet and share ideas
and information. This site also has also engaged in targeting
- by name, organization, and e-mail address - its enemies.
Despite an obvious effort to appeal to a youthful audience,
Hammerskin Nation's official policy is to not allow
membership for those under the age of twenty-one. Only 45
links to the page were listed by AltaVista (WebTrends, 25
August 2000).

Evidence From the Discourse Analysis

Name Calling

All the extremist groups studied employ various propaganda
techniques, but especially name-calling. This technique
arouses prejudices by labeling the object as something the
target audience should fear or hate. The purpose is to sway
the audience to reject a person or an idea because of a
perceived negative association of the idea or person with the
symbol. The front pages tend to promote "white pride" rather
than messages of violence or of ethnic or racial hatred.
WCOTC and Hammerskins use epithets more than older,
more established groups, such as the National Alliance and
Stormfront. Older, more educated white extremists, such as
Don Black of Stormfront and Dr. William Pierce of the
National Alliance, lead the latter organizations. The term
"mud race" is a popular euphemism for non-whites, but just
a few clicks into any of these Web sites reveals language that
is much more direct, such as "nigger." WCOTC openly
defends use of this pejorative term:

"This is a deliberate choice of words. As we state on
page 49 in NATURE'S ETERNAL RELIGION, if we are
for White Racial supremacy then we must stop giving
them credit and respect which they did not earn, do
not deserve, and never did. Again, it is very strange
that the same people who are so affronted by the
niggers not getting their "proper respect" are totally
unconcerned about the vicious, unwarranted attacks
by the niggers and other mud races upon the White
Race and will not lift a finger in the defense of their
own kind. They seem to deem it quite proper that the
niggers should be loyal to their race, the Jews should
be loyal to their race, but when the White Man is
asked to show a loyalty to his own race, he is
immediately denounced, even by members of his own
race, as being a racist, a bigot, a Nazi, and many
other derogatory smear words that the Jews have
concocted." (WCOTC, no date, p. 3)

References to Authority

References to authoritative sources serve a useful function
for white extremists. For example, Aryan Nations offers the
following information that it claims comes from the Sydney
Morning Herald,an Australian newspaper:

"Most victims of race crime - about 90 per cent - are
White. Almost 1 million White Americans were
murdered, robbed, assaulted or raped by black
Americans in 1992, compared with about 132,000
blacks who were murdered, robbed, assaulted or
raped by Whites. Blacks are committing more than 50
times the number of violent racial crimes of Whites."
(Aryan Nations, 6 August 2000).

This is an obvious propaganda technique, presenting
erroneous information, not providing alternative sources to
show more than one side of an issue or variable estimation.
The actual article is not formally cited on the page so
checking the facts becomes a greater effort than many
readers will be willing to undertake. Of course, children who
have yet to develop critical thinking skills may not question
authenticity anymore than do millions of adults who respond
to hoax anonymous, unsigned, unsourced e-mail messages
(e.g., http://www.snopes.com/).

Deference to Documented Authority

The Aryan Nations uses the American Declaration of
Independence for justification and imitates it in its Aryan
Declaration of Independence
(http://www.nidlink.com/~aryanvic/declar.html). A list of
grievances about the current federal government, akin to
those about the British monarchy, is offered as justification
for this call to action against the federal government.
Another example of this technique is a reference to Samuel
Adams' speech at the Philadelphia State House, made on 1
August 1776 (Stormfront, 14 August 2000, p. 1) on
Stormfront's main page. The following excerpt is offered in
an effort to legitimize Stormfront's agenda:

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility
of servitude better than the animating contest of
freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your
counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands
which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget that ye were our
countrymen." (Stormfront, 14 August 2000, p. 1).

This quotation is taken out of context and used in conjunction
with other quotations from notable Americans including
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The quotation
suggests a natural ally for a group professing to offer its
resources to "those courageous men and women fighting to
preserve their White Western culture, ideals, and freedom of
speech and association... ." (Stormfront, 14 August 2000, p.
1).

Stormfront's Web site offers numerous quotations from
famous Western politicians and philosophers. Each quotation
is an anachronism.

Religious Authority

Some white extremist groups, such as Aryan Nations, cloak
themselves in religion, particularly Christianity, to bolster
their claims. Others, such as the World Church of the
Creator, bash Christianity, preferring instead their own
version of a whites-only Godliness. It is interesting that many
extremists call themselves reverend, such as the Reverend
Matt Hale of the World Church of the Creator and Reverends
Mike Teague and Richard Butler of the Aryan Nations.
Religious arguments, which may appeal to some adolescents,
often appeal to divine authority, as in this example:

"WE BELIEVE [sic] that the Cananite Jew is the
natural enemy of our Aryan (White) race. This is [sic]
attested by scripture and all secular history. The Jew
is like a destroying virus that attacks our racial body
to destroyer [sic] Aryan culture and the purity of our
Race. Those of our Race who resist these attacks are
called "chosen and faithful" John 8:44;
1Thessalonians 2:15; Revelations 17:14." (Aryan
Nation, no date, p. 3).

Aryan Nations also uses the Bible to sanction action: "Psalm
149:6 Let the high Praises of God be in their mouth, and a
two-edged sword in their hand... ." (Aryan Nations, no date,
p. 2). Stormfront uses biblical scriptures to justify its racial
philosophy and to encourage action. At Stormfront, Christ is
portrayed as anti-Semitic (Stormfront, 14 August 2000).

Scientific Authority

Scientific ideas, particularly Darwinian evolutionary theory,
are used as a justification for many of the ideas promoted by
the groups, in particular the National Alliance, Stormfront,
and Aryan Nations. Like the Nazis before them, they rely
upon a blend of science, ignorance, and mythology to prop
up their arguments. For example, the National Alliance
advises:

"The culture of a race, free of alien influences, is
telling evidence of that race's essential nature. The
African Negro with a cow-dung hairdo, a bone
through his nose, and teeth filed down to sharp
points, in other words, presents to us a far more
accurate image of the Negro essence than does the
American Black in a business suit who has been
trained to drive an automobile, operate a typewriter,
and speak flawless English ... . Negro culture
inferiority is the consequence of the physical
inadequacy of the Negro brain in dealing with
abstract concepts. On the other hand, the Negro
shows an ability approaching that of the White at
mental tasks requiring only memory. That is why the
Negro can be trained relatively easily to adapt to
many aspects of White culture ... . It has been well
known since the large-scale intelligence testing of
U.S. Army recruits in World War I that the average
Negro IQ is approximately 15 per cent below that of
the average White. Apologists for the Blacks have
tried to explain away the earlier test scores as being
due to the effects of segregated schools and Black
poverty; i.e. they claimed the tests were "culturally"
biased." (Pierce, no date, p. 1).

Institutional Authority

Individuals or organizations cited as information sources
often have apparently impressive credentials that may not
bear up under scrutiny. One example is the Institute for
Historical Review (IHR), a Web site linked from Stormfront,
WCOTC, and many other extremist Web sites. IHR (no
date) offers revisionist perspectives about the Holocaust,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill,
WWII, Fred A Leuchter Jr., Stalinism and other topics. The
site is a sophisticated propaganda effort. Information is
neither balanced nor historically accurate. Anne Frank, Simon
Wiesenthal, Elie Wiesel, and the U.S. Memorial Holocaust
Museum are attacked in numerous articles published by the
Institute's online journal. For example:

"Influential organizations and much of the western
media promote a quasi-religious Anne Frank cult. She
has become a kind of secular saint. Along with many
other Belsen camp inmates, Anne came down with
typhus, from which she died in mid-March 1945. She
was not killed or murdered. Anne Frank perished -
like millions of others, both Jewish and non-Jewish, in
Europe during that terrible time - an indirect victim of
history's most devastating war ... . Few people
realize that Anne, along with father and sister, and
thousands of other Jews, "survived"
Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her father, Otto Frank, came
down with typhus and was transferred to the camp
infirmary there to recover. He was one of thousands
of sick and feeble Jews who were left behind when
the Germans abandoned the camp in January 1945,
shortly before it was overrun by the Soviets. He died
in Switzerland in August 1980 ... . If the German
policy had been to kill Anne Frank and her father,
they would not have survived Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Their fate, as tragic as it was, cannot be reconciled
with the Holocaust extermination story." (Weber, M.,
no date, p. 1).

After earlier efforts to deny Anne Frank's existence failed,
IHR and other Holocaust deniers now attempt to use her
death from typhus to disprove the Holocaust, although they
also deny that she wrote the diary. IHR has no association
with any legitimate historical organizations or history
departments. Links to Holocaust denial sites such as
Zendelsite, Revisionism.com, the Blacks and Jews
Newspage, as well as other Holocaust denial Web sites
around the world reveal the true purpose of the site. The
belief of white extremists about the Holocaust as a hoax
created by Jews, is explained in this passage:

"[The Holocaust] along with Christianity, ranks as one
of the biggest lies and biggest hoaxes in history.
Privately, among themselves, the Jews published the
growth of their total world population between 1938
and 1948, as increasing from approximately
16,600,000 to 17,650,000, an increase of over a
million. This would be an outrageous impossibility, if
it had been decimated by 6,000,000 during this same
period ... . It has reaped tremendous dividends for
them. Having worldwide monopoly of the propaganda
machinery, they were able to put that lie across with
little or no opposition." (WCOTC, no date, p. 3)

Writings archived on the National Alliance and Stormfront
Web sites, as well as content linked to by these and all of the
other sties included in this study attempt to cast doubt on the
reality of the Holocaust by denying historical facts and by
attacking survivors and witnesses. By alleging that the
Holocaust is part of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy to
maintain power and generate money via a "Holohoax"
industry, as the term "Holoco$t" suggests.

"For many years, scholars and researchers have been
delving into the history of World War II, and their
research has cast a lot of doubt on the commonly
accepted 6 million figure for Jewish losses in that
war. Now undoubtedly you've heard Jewish
spokesmen decrying this movement among historians
and researchers to bring our history books into closer
accord with the facts. This movement is usually called
"revisionism," because of the belief of its adherents
that the history of wars is usually written by the
victors, and the victors often have a lot of reasons for
lying: covering up their own atrocities, and justifying
extreme actions taken against those they wish to
paint as "evil." But what these Jewish

This is not only interesting, but also well written.

Part One:

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Juan Cole * Informed Comment *

Thoughts on the
Middle East,
History, Islam, and
Religion

Juan Cole is
Professor of
History at the
University of
Michigan

Presented at "Genocide and Terrorism:
Probing the Mind of the Perpetrator,"
Yale Center for Genocide Studies, New
Haven, April 9, 2003.

Al-Qaeda’s Doomsday Document and
Psychological Manipulation

Juan Cole

In this paper I present a fresh reading
and analysis of the first part of the
so-called “Doomsday Document,” found
in the luggage of September 11
hijacker Muhammad Atta. It follows on
two other close readings, offered by
Hassan Mneimeh and Kanaan Makiya,
and by Bruce Lincoln. My question here
is slightly different from the ones they
asked of the document. I am asking
here how the hijackers misused various
techniques of Islamic spirituality to
achieve a psychological state of mind
in which it was possible for them to
commit mass murder and their own
suicides. On reflection, then, it seems
to me that the text was probably
authored by Muhammad Atta himself,
the only Egyptian on the hijacking
team. Another possibility is that the
document was pulled together from
instructions by more than one person,
some of them not native Arabic
speakers, and not carefully edited by
an Arab with a good style.

It is worth noting that I have been
wrestling with this text since the FBI
released it, but have found working
with it to be extremely difficult on an
emotional level. Like most Americans,
I was traumatized by September 11
and by the enormity of the crime
against humanity then perpetrated. As
a friend of Muslims and an admirer of
Islam as a religion, I also had great
difficulty coming to terms with the was
in which such an act could have come
out of even a fringe cult within Islam.

On a first reading, I had been struck by
what seemed to me Sufi emphases,
coming out of Islamic mysticism. I
suspected a South Asian or Afghan
influence on the Arab jihadis gathered
in southern Afghanistan. But I have
concluded that the text exhibits not so
much Sufism as simple common Islamic
spirituality, if put to monstrous uses.
Even the Muslim Brotherhood strain of
Islamic fundamentalism did not
explicitly reject Sufi figures such as
al-Ghazali, and there was a Sufi tinge
to some Brotherhood texts and
practices. This would have carried over
to the radical splinter groups, al-Jihad
al-Islami and al-Gama`a al-Islamiyyah,
and Atta almost certainly was affiliated
with one or the other of these. Only
four of the five Arabic texts have been
released by the FBI, with the first page
unavailable. Page 2, the first of the
released pages, contains 15
instructions aimed at preparing the
hijackers psychologically for their
action on the night before they were to
carry it out.

The second page begins with a
hadith or saying attributed to the
Prophet Muhammad, “One of the
companions said, “The messenger of
God commanded that it be read before
a raid, so we have read it, and have
gained booty, and remained safe and
sound.” The prophetic saying or hadith
refers to several elements important to
this letter, including the idea that
conducting raids against the enemy is
Koranically sanctioned (even though
the enemy that concerned the Koran
was the pagan Meccans, not US
Christians and Jews). It ties success
and safety in this enterprise to reading
or reciting holy verses. Recitation is
thus essential to establishing the set
of mind and the spiritual conditions
conducive to success. Although the
saying refers to gaining booty, the
Koranic Surah of the Spoils (al-Anfal)
actually insists that booty is not the
central reason for raids, saying “The
spoils belong to God and the
Messenger; so fear you God and set
things right between you, and obey you
God and His Messenger, if you are
believers.” (K. 8:2). That is, the “raid”
(ghazwah) is supposed to be a selfless
act, even if spoils are taken.

The letter now turns to
preparations for the actual operation.
This section is entitled, “The Last
Night.” The raiders are directed to
“vow to accept death.” The word for
‘vowing to accept,’ tabayu`, is related
to the term bay`ah, which means
“giving fealty to,” used to describe
giving allegiance to a caliph or leader
of the Muslim community. It is pledge
of loyalty, but instead of being given to
the leader of Islam, here it is proffered
to death itself. Muslim Brotherhood
founder Hasan al-Banna had written,
“Always intend to go for Jihad and
desire martyrdom. Prepare for it as
much as you can.” Then, the document
advises, the hijacker must “renew
admonition” (tajdid at-tanbih). The
reference is to an admonition of the
base self (an-nafs), which Muslim
mystics saw as the primary impediment
to undertaking selfless acts of
worship. In this document, the carnal
self is the enemy of the vow to die,
selfishly seeking to hang on to life, and
so must be vanquished. Admonishing
the self is the way to contain it and
remain true to the death vow.
The raider is then directed to shave the
extra hair on his body, to perfume
himself, and to ritually wash himself.
Instruction 2 is merely practical, saying
that the raider should know the plan
well “from every angle.” Instruction 3
reverts to mindset. The raider must
read two chapters of the Koran, “The
Spoils” and “Repentance.” He must
meditate on their meaning and on the
rewards God has promised in them to
martyrs. This immersion in key sacred
texts is important to attaining the
mindset of the martyr, to thinking of
oneself as already dead and preparing
to receive the delights of divine
recompense. The Spoils was revealed
after the battle of Uhud between the
pagan Meccans and the Muslims of
Medina in 625, in which a small Muslim
force of 700 defeated a much larger
attacking army. The general context is
thus the Muslim raids on and wars
against the Meccans (there were 70
raids and 3 major wars). Uhud came
after the Battle of Badr. The Surah of
Spoils thus situates the Twin Towers
and Pentagon raids in Islamic history
for the al-Qaeda cult. It mapped the
United States onto Pagan Mecca. Both
had superior military force and both
were extremely wealthy commercial
centers. The earlier Battle of Badr had
aimed at interfering in the Meccan
caravan trade as a way of reducing
their material superiority over Medina.
September 11, which likewise struck a
commercial target, was envisaged as
the first of a three-part attack,
according to John Walker Lindh, the
first of which was executed on
September 11. The second would
“bring the US to its knees,” and the
third would “finish it off.”

The Surah of Repentance (K. 9)
distinguishes between idolaters who
had made a covenant with Muhammad
and those who had sought to wipe out
Islam. With regard to the second
group, 9:5 says “Then, when the sacred
months are drawn away, slay the
idolaters wherever you find them, and
take them, and confine them, and lie in
wait for them at every place of
ambush.” The way of thinking that
allowed the hijackers to apply this to
the US is highly abstract and
unnuanced. Did it really not matter
that Americans are Christians and
Jews, not “idolaters”? That these
verses referred to a historical battle
with Meccans, not to a twenty-first
century cultural struggle? And what of
the verse that follows 9:5, “But if they
repent, and perform the prayer, and
pay the alms, then let them go their
way; God is All-forgiving,
All-compassionate. And if any of the
idolaters seeks of thee protection,
grant him protection . . .” What
opportunity would the “troops” in the
Twin Towers have had to “seek
protection” or “repent” (the whole point
of the Surah)? The hijackers
convinced themselves that they were
seventh-century Muslim raiders
defending the “Medina” of the Muslim
world against aggressive American
Meccans soldiers, who were determined
to wipe out true Islam. Their
comportment and techniques were
therefore those of the successful raider
against a superior and deadly enemy.

Instruction 3 returns to the
battle with the carnal soul. The night
before action, the raider must remind
the base self (tadhkir an-nafs) to listen
and obey. The raider is warned that he
will encounter “decisive turning-points”
such that for his soul to listen and
obey is absolutely crucial. An internal
dialogue is suggested between the
raider’s determined rational self and
his carnal soul: “Train your base self,
make it understand, convince it, and
goad it on to this end.” The base self
is depicted almost as a brute animal
that can be trained to do as it is told
with sufficient effort, evoking the
techniques and terminology of the
Islamic tradition of piety. For Sufis,
“training” (riyadah) of the carnal
involved deliberate acts of self-denial.
The Muslim Brotherhood tradition in
Egypt had not, unlike the Salafis,
entirely rejected Sufi ideas. Al-Banna
was an admirer of the great medieval
Sufi thinker Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. He
wrote, “Strive hard against your own
soul until it is under your full control.
Lower your gaze, control your
emotions, overcome your sexual urge,
and elevate it via means that are
decent and lawful.” An early
Brotherhood member told a Sufi
organization, “The internal composition
of the Muslim Brotherhood was in
certain aspects like that of your sufi
community. We used to live together
for forty days doing dhikr [repetition of
verses] and learning jurisprudence . .
.” The Muslim Brotherhood and its
offshoots, such as the al-Jihad
al-Islami of Ayman al-Zawahiri, thus
continued to use terminology that
would be recognizable in a medieval
Sufi “Manual for Adepts.” They
extracted this terminology, however,
from its original context in Sufi
brotherhoods and mystical shaykhs or
leaders.

The author of the document now
quotes from the Surah of Spoils, 8:46,
“And obey God, and His Messenger,
and do not quarrel together, and so
lose heart, and your power depart; and
be patient; surely God is with the
patient.” This verse helps show why
this chapter of the Koran is so
important to the hijackers. They take
from it key psychological cues,
stressing forbearance, group unity, and
infinite patience, a patience that
conjures the presence of God Himself.
In the small group interactions they
had while pursuing flight training and
leading up to September 11, there
must have been many petty quarrels
and short tempers. Some of that
pressure was relieved by exercising at
the gym or drinking in bars and strip
clubs. But constantly turning to verses
like 8:46 was another way of
maintaining group unity and individual
composure.

The fifth instruction concerns
staying up late at night and engaging
in fervent prayer for victory and God’s
help in accomplishing their task, and in
keeping them hidden. The custom of
tahajjud or after-midnight prayers is
important to the traditions of Muslim
piety and mysticism. A prophetic
saying narrated by Muslim goes, “Every
night, when the last third of it remains,
God, our Sustainer, the Blessed, the
Superior, descends to the lowest
heaven saying, ‘Is there anyone to ask
Me so that I may grant him his
request? Is there anyone to invoke Me
so that I may respond to his
invocation? Is there anyone seeking My
forgiveness so that I may forgive him?’
” Al-Banna wrote, “Always be
conscious of God; remind yourself of
the Hereafter and prepare for it. Be
determined and aspire to seek His
pleasure. Bring yourself closer to God
by performing extra night prayers
(tahajjud) and fasting at least three
days every month.” Of course, staying
up to the “last third” of the night is no
easy task, and apparently coffee first
became popular in concentrated form
as a drug used by Yemeni and then
Ottoman Sufis trying to stay up late for
the especially blessed night prayers.
In order to maintain a liminal
consciousness committed to suicide
and mass murder, the hijackers may
well have kept themselves
sleep-deprived, praying into the small
hours of the morning, and then getting
up for flight school or other activities.
Certainly, they were advised to do so
on their last night. The activity of
praying, chanting and reciting through
the night would aid in the
auto-hypnosis necessary to maintaining
their self-image as martyrs vowed to
die.

The sixth instruction
underlines the importance of constant
internal recitation of sacred phrases,
something analogous to the mantra in
Hindu mysticism. Whereas Sufi orders
developed their own phrases for
constant repetition, called dhikr, the
Salafi influence on author of this
document is underlined by the
assertion that the best phrases for in
constant repletion are those drawn
from the Koran itself. Al-Banna himself
had compiled a short book called
“Selections” (al-Ma’thurat) of Koran
verses and prophetic sayings related to
the practice of dhikr. In another book,
he wrote, “Partake in much
remembrance (dhikr) both of the heart
and the tongue and recite the
renowned supplications of the
Prophet.” There is at least a slim
relationship in some sources between
dhikr and jihad. The “greater jihad” of
the Sufis like al-Ghazali, which involved
conquest of the carnal soul, was
considered by them to be greatly aided
by the technique of dhikr. It is
possible that a suicide/mass murder
operation like this one was considered
by al-Qaeda to combine the virtues of
both the greater (spiritual) and lesser
(military) jihads, and that therefore the
techniques appropriate to the former
should be applied to the latter.
Further, there is a widely cited hadith
or prophetic saying that a person who
engages in dhikr is better than a
mujahid or a holy warrior. A Sunni
Encyclopedia tells us that the medieval
jurist “Ibn Hajar in Fath al-Bari (1989
ed. 11:251) explained that what is
meant by dhikr in Abu al-Darda's
narration of the primacy of dhikr over
jihad is the complete dhikr and
consciousness of Allah's greatness
whereby one becomes better, for
example, than those who battle the
disbelievers without such recollection.”

The seventh instruction employs the
language of Muslim asceticism and
mysticism to reinforce the urge to
suicide or self-martyrdom. The mass
murderer is encouraged to see his
action as selfless. He is to “purify” his
“heart” and cleanse it of “stains.” He
is to forget that there is even such a
thing as “this world.” He is informed
that the time for play has ended, and
the rendezvous Eternal Truth is
nearing. He is encouraged to regret
how much of his life he has “wasted,”
i.e., spent on impious pursuits or in
search of merely material benefits. He
should “take advantage” of these, his
last hours, to offer up to God acts that
will draw him near to the divine and
express his obedience. Whereas
traditional Islamic piety urged
detachment from the material world as
an aid to ethical and spiritual
fulfillment, the Doomsday Document
urges it as a support for suicide and
massive killing of civilians.

There may be a hint in this paragraph
of a strategy of using guilt to
manipulate the hijackers. We know
that al-Qaeda operatives were often
encouraged to antinomian behavior,
including hanging out at strip clubs and
with fast women. Khalid Shaikh
Muhammad was a notorious playboy
and high roller during his years in the
Philippines. Several of the hijackers
were known o frequent US strip clubs
and to drink heavily. Bin Laden
admitted that the hijackers were not
Muslims in the ordinary (i.e. Wahhabi)
sense of the term, and it was to this
strategy of antinomianism that he
probably was referring. The sinful
lifestyle probably had several
advantages. It served as a form of
false flag tradecraft, that is, of covert
deception, in throwing off any
intelligence organizations that might
have been tracking the hijackers as
suspected Islamist terrorists. Such
libertine behavior was in part a cover,
insofar as it marked the operatives as
irreligious. But it may have had other
implications as well. It served as a
reward to young men who would end
their lives early, allowing them to live
out fantasies and feel that had lived
full lives. The earthly delights may
also have been intended to serve as a
reminder for the even more impressive
heavenly delights promised after their
suicides. Were the American exotic
dancers intended to be symbols of the
houris or maidens of paradise the
document mentions elsewhere?
Finally, despite all the good tactical
reasons they had for behaving this
way, the hijackers must have felt some
guilt over it, as committed Muslim
fundamentalists. This last feeling is
played upon in paragraph 7. The time
for play is over. They have wasted
much of their lives with unworthy,
worldly activities. Now they must feel
the full regret and prepare to make
amends with a final night of worship,
drawing close, and preparation for the
rendezvous with God. Their earthly
lives have been in any case “ruined” by
their antinomian activities, so why no
not just cast off that old skin and
emerge into a new existence in the
afterlife?

The fifteenth and final instruction
concerns the morning of September
11. The hijackers are to prayer their
dawn obligatory prayers

Part 2:

The fifteenth and final instruction
concerns the morning of September
11. The hijackers are to prayer their
dawn obligatory prayers in
congregation. Only the Friday noon
prayers are necessarily prayed in
congregation, but committed Muslims
often believe that a special award
attaches to going to the mosque to
pray even some of the five daily
prayers in congregation. Al-Banna had
written, “try to pray in congregation in
the mosque as frequently as possible.”
Al-Qaeda also clearly held that group
prayer contributes to solidarity. The
hijacker is then to proceed to the
morning dhikr or recitation, and should
continue to reflect on the reward of
saying dawn prayers in congregation.
After performing their morning routines
and before leaving the apartment, the
hijackers are instructed to perform their
ablutions once again. The reason
given for this action is that “angels
seek forgiveness for you as long as you
have prepared ablutions and they pray
on your behalf.” The hijackers are
encouraged to live in a magical world
of omens and angels, where small
ritual acts serve as guarantees of
divine succor . . .

The beginning instructions of the
Doomsday Document give us vital
insight into how a normal, middle
class, secular young man like Ziad
Jarrah, a Lebanese engineer with at
Turkish-German live-in girlfriend, could
become a mass murderer and suicide.
He and others were convinced that they
were reenacting sacred history. The
United States was not a Christian
country but rather a reincarnation of
pagan Mecca. As Mecca was
attempting to invade Medina and
destroy Islam, so the United States
had invaded the Muslim world to
undermine Islam. The hardy band of
real Muslims who recognized the
extreme threat had no choice but to
undertake a raid (ghazwah) against
this much superior foe. Just as small
bands of early Muslims often inflicted
defeats on larger Meccan forces, so a
handful of young believers could hope
to inflict a grievous blow on the 21st
century Mecca of the West.

The hijackers thus saw themselves as
holy warriors, as Muslim raiders. Their
victims were not even human, but
rather mere animals for ritual
slaughter. Atta and other handlers
convinced them to live a double life.
Inwardly they were committed to piety
and asceticism and self-sacrifice.
Outwardly they frequented bars and
strip clubs, both to throw the
intelligence agencies off the scent and
to get a foretaste of the rewards of
martyrdom. If it was Bin Laden who
put them up to this double life, he may
well have done so with personal
knowledge of the kind of guilt it would
induce, and the kind of self-hatred and
openness to manipulation to which the
guilt could lead.

The internal psychology of commitment
to murder on a huge scale and to die in
the process was underpinned by an
almost obsessive-compulsive
immersion in the details of repeated
rituals. Specific phrases were recited
with every activity, constantly. The
internal monologue was drowned in a
set of sacred mantras, leaving no
space for questioning orders. The
constant hum of the recitation may
have been intended in part to induce a
liminal state that was not entirely
conscious. The intensity and lack of
small talk that those who met them
remarked on in the hijackers probably
derived from their silent, constant dhikr
or repetition of sacred verses. This
liminal consciousness may have been
reinforced by deliberate sleep
deprivation, and by bouts of
drunkenness. Employed as they were
intended, the techniques of Islamic
mysticism have produced saints and
sages like Rumi and al-Ghazali.
Misused as a form of brainwashing,
they appear to have contributed to
among the largest mass murders in
history.

Appendix:

First section of the Doomsday
Document
Trans. J. Cole

The Last Night

1) Vow to accept death, renew
admonition [of the base self], shave
the extra hair on the body, perfume
yourself, and ritually wash yourself.

2) Know the plan well from every
angle. Anticipate the reaction or the
resistance of the enemy.

3) Read the surahs of Repentance and
The Spoils. Contemplate their meaning
and the bounties God has prepared and
established for the martyrs.

4) Remind your base self to listen and
obey this night, for you will be exposed
to decisive turning points wherein
listening and obeying is one hundred
percent necessary. Train your base
self, make it understand, convince it,
and goad it on to this end. “And obey
God, and His Messenger, and do not
quarrel together, and so lose heart,
and your power depart; and be patient;
surely God is with the patient.”

5) Staying up at night and imploring in
prayer for victory and strength and
perspicuous triumph, and the easing of
our task, and concealment.

6) Much recitation of sacred phrases.
Know that the best of dhikr is reciting
the noble Qur’an. This is the consensus
of the people of knowledge or, indeed,
of the most learned. It is enough for
us that it is the words of the creator of
the heavens and the earth toward
Whom you are advancing.

7) Purify your heart and cleanse it of
stains. Forget and be oblivious to that
thing called the world. For, the time
for playing has passed, and the time
has arrived for the rendezvous with the
eternal Truth. How much of our lives
we have wasted! Shall we not take
advantage of these hours to offer up
acts of nearness [to God] and
obedience?

8) Let your breast be filled with
gladness, for there is nothing between
you and your wedding but mere
seconds. Thereby will begin a happy
and contented life and immortal
blessing with the prophets, the true
ones and the righteous martyrs. They
are the best of companions. We
beseech God for his grace. So seek
good omens. For the Prophet, may
blessings and peace be upon him, used
to love divination about every matter.

9) Then fix your gaze, such that if you
fall into tribulations, you will know how
to behave, how to stand firm, how to
say “We are, verily, from God and to
him we shall return.” Thus you will
know that what has befallen you is not
because of any error you committed.
That you committed an error was not
so that you would face tribulations.
That calamity of yours is in fact from
God, may he be exalted and
glorified—so as to elevate your station
and cause your sins to be forgiven.
Know that it is only a matter of
seconds before it shines forth by the
permission of God. Then blessed is he
who attains the great recompense from
God. God says, “Did you think you
would enter paradise when God knows
those who strove among you, and
knows the patient?” “Am hasabtum an
tadkhulu al-jannat . . .

10) Then recite (tadhkharu) the words
of God, “You were wishing for death
before you encountered it, then you
saw it, and are looking for it . . .” And
you wanted it. After than, recite the
verse “Kam min fi’ah qalilah ghalaba
fi’ah kathirah bi idhn Allah . . .” And In
yunsirukum Allah fa la ghalib lakum . . “

11) Bring your base self, as well as
your brethren, to remembrance through
prayers. And contemplate their
meaning (recitations [adhkar] of
morning and evening, recitations of
city [baldah], recitations of . .
.[makan], recitations of meeting [liqa’
al-Tur] . . . ].

12) The jet: (with breath [an-nafs],
suitcase, clothing, knife, tools, identity
papers, passport and all your papers.]

13) Inspect your weapon before setting
out and before you even begin to set
out and [CBS: “Let every one of you
sharpen his knife and kill his animal
(dhabiha) and bring about comfort and
relief of his slaughter” before the
journey. ]

14) Pull your clothes tightly about you,
for this is the way of the pious
ancestors (as-salaf as-salih), may God
be pleased with them. They pulled
their clothing tightly about them before
a battle. Pull your shoelaces tight and
wear tight socks that grip the shoes
and do not come out of them. All of
these are means that we have been
commanded to adopt. God has
hasabna and he is the best of
advocates (na’im al-wakil).

15) Pray the morning prayers in
congregation and reflect on the reward
for doing so while you are performing
recitation afterwards. Do not go out of
your apartment without having
performed ablutions. For the angels
seek forgiveness for you as long as you
have prepared ablutions and they pray
on your behalf.

Home | J. Cole Academic Page

#1of2 Original web page: www.doublestandards.org/alqa.html Al-Qaeda's statements First statement Second statement Third statement Fourth statement Fifth statement Sixth statement Seventh statement (?) Interview with Bin Laden in 1998 Available at PBS First Al-Qaeda statement I bear witness that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is his messenger. There is America, hit by God in one of its softest spots. Its greatest buildings were destroyed, thank God for that. There is America, full of fear from its north to its south, from its west to its east. Thank God for that. What America is tasting now, is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for scores of years. Our nation [the Islamic world] has been tasting this humiliation and this degradation for more than 80 years. Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked, and no one hears and no one heeds. When God blessed one of the groups of Islam, vanguards of Islam, they destroyed America. I pray to God to elevate their status and bless them. Millions of innocent children are being killed as I speak. They are being killed in Iraq without committing any sins and we don't hear condemnation or a fatwa from the rulers. In these days, Israeli tanks infest Palestine â€“ in Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah, Beit Jalla, and other places in the land of Islam, and we don't hear anyone raising his voice or moving a limb. When the sword comes down [on America], after 80 years, hypocrisy rears its ugly head. They deplore and they lament for those killers, who have abused the blood, honour, and sanctuaries of Muslims. The least that can be said about those people, is that they are debauched. They have followed injustice. They supported the butcher over the victim, the oppressor over the innocent child. May God show them His wrath and give them what they deserve. I say that the situation is clear and obvious. After this event, after the senior officials have spoken in America, starting with the head of infidels worldwide, Bush, and those with him. They have come out in force with their men and have turned even the countries that belong to Islam to this treachery, and they want to wag their tail at God, to fight Islam, to suppress people in the name of terrorism. When people at the ends of the earth, Japan, were killed by their hundreds of thousands, young and old, it was not considered a war crime, it is something that has justification. Millions of children in Iraq, is something that has justification. But when they lose dozens of people in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam [capitals of Kenya and Tanzania, where US embassies were bombed in 1998], Iraq was struck and Afghanistan was struck. Hypocrisy stood in force behind the head of infidels worldwide, behind the cowards of this age, America and those who are with it. These events have divided the whole world into two sides. The side of believers and the side of infidels, may God keep you away from them. Every Muslim has to rush to make his religion victorious. The winds of faith have come. The winds of change have come to eradicate oppression from the island of Muhammad, peace be upon him. To America, I say only a few words to it and its people. I swear by God, who has elevated the skies without pillars, neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it in Palestine, and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him. God is great, may pride be with Islam. May peace and God's mercy be upon you. Second Al-Qaeda statement We thank Almighty God, who said in his holy book: Ye who believe, take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them is of them. Verily God guideth not a people unjustly. May God's peace and blessings be upon our Prophet Muhammad, his companions, and those who followed his course. I address this message to the entire Muslim nation to tell them that the confederates have joined forces against the Islamic nation and the Crusader war, promised by Bush, has been launched against Afghanistan and against this people who have faith in God. We now live under this Crusader bombardment that targets the entire nation. The Islamic nation should know that we defend a just cause. The Islamic nation has been groaning in pain for more than 80 years under the yoke of the joint Jewish-Crusader aggression. Palestine is living under the yoke of the Jewish occupation and its people groan from this repression and persecution while no-one lifts a finger. The Arabian Peninsula is being defiled by the feet of those who came to occupy these lands, usurp these holy places, and plunder these resources. The Islamic nation must also know that the US version of terrorism is a kind of deception. Is it logical for the United States and its allies to carry out this repression, persecution, plundering, and bloodletting over these long years without this being called terrorism, while when the victim tries to seek justice, he is described as terrorist? This type of deception can never be accepted in any case whatsoever. Let the United States know that the Islamic nation will not remain silent after this day on what it is experiencing and what takes place in its land, and that jihad for the sake of God today is an obligation on every Muslim in this land if he has no excuse. God Almighty has said: Then fight in God's cause, thou art held responsible only for thyself and rouse the believers. It may be that God will restrain the fury of the unbelievers, for God is the strongest in might and in punishment. US interests are spread throughout the world. So, every Muslim should carry out his real role to champion his Islamic nation and religion. Carrying out terrorism against the oppressors is one of the tenets of our religion and Shari'ah. Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of God and your enemies. I would like to touch on one important point in this address. The actions by these young men who destroyed the United States and launched the storm of planes against it have done a good deed. They transferred the battle into the US heartland. Let the United States know that with God's permission, the battle will continue to be waged on its territory until it leaves our lands, stops its support for the Jews, and lifts the unjust embargo on the Iraqi people who have lost more than one million children. The Americans should know that the storm of plane attacks will not abate, with God's permission. There are thousands of the Islamic nation's youths who are eager to die just as the Americans are eager to live. They should know that with their invasion of the land of Afghanistan, they have started a new phase of enmity and conflict between us and the forces of infidelity. We are confident that we will achieve victory thanks to our material and moral strength and confidence and faith in Almighty God. The Americans have opened a door which will under no circumstances be shut. I address Muslim youths, men, and women and urge them to shoulder their responsibility. They should know that the land of Afghanistan and the mujahidin there are really facing an all-out Crusader war which is aimed at eliminating this group which believes in God and fights on the basis of a creed and religion. Thus, the nation must shoulder its responsibility. It would be a disgrace if the Islamic nation fails to do so. Finally, I thank Almighty God who enabled us to engage in this jihad and fight this battle, which is a decisive one between infidelity and faith. I ask Almighty God to grant us victory on our enemy, make their machinations backfire on them, and defeat them. May God's peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you. Third Al-Qaeda statement Praise be to God, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds, and may God's peace and blessings be upon our Prophet Muhammad, may he and all his household and companions be blessed by God. Based on the questions and queries that we have received regarding how we view the incidents that have taken place over the past five days, we would like to say that the crusade spearheaded by the two crusaders Bush and Blair is continuing on the territory of Muslim Afghanistan and its population, who are demonstrating day in and day out their sacrifices, firmness and determination to uphold their religion and creed. We pray to the Almighty God to hold their feet firmly, to strengthen their resolve, and to grant them victory over the infidels. We also would like to declare our full support for this emirate and for the Muslim Afghan people in the face of this ferocious assault, offering all the material and moral resources that we have under the command of Mullah Muhammad Omar, commander of the faithful, may God protect him and grant him certain victory. This holds true regardless of the duration of the war. The issue at hand is the issue of an entire nation that opposes humiliation and subservience under the yoke of US arrogance and Jewish persecution. The Al-Qaeda organization declares that Bush Senior, Bush Junior, Clinton, Blair and Sharon are the arch-criminals from among the Zionists and Crusaders who committed the most heinous actions and atrocities against the Muslim nation. They perpetrated murders, torture and displacement. Millions of Muslim men, women and children died without any fault of their own. Al-Qaeda stresses that the blood of those killed will not go to waste, God willing, until we punish these criminals. Bush, in the midst of his arrogance, media frenzy, and the enduring freedom that he boasts about must not forget the video footage of Muhammad al-Durrah [a Palestinian child killed by Israeli troops in the early days of the Palestinian intifada in the Gaza Strip] and his brothers, Muslim children in Palestine and Iraq. If he forgot that scene, then we will never forget it. He must know that his 'enduring freedom' which he boasts of has wiped out entire villages in Nangahar near Jalalabad in Afghanistan. Villages were completely wiped out. It was not a mistake but a deliberate action. What mistake is that which is repeated three times? This village was bombed in the beginning of night, in the middle of the night, and before dawn. Those who supported this Crusader campaign should realise after things have been clarified that it is a Crusader campaign against Islam and the Muslims. Those who supported those criminals go away from Prophet Muhammad, may God's peace and blessings be upon him, who said that the destruction of earth is more tolerable to God than killing a believer without cause. What would they say when their deeds are displayed in front of God, praise be to him? What would they say when the female infant buried alive is questioned? In this regard, we support the religious rulings issued by senior clerics in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, led by His Eminence Shaykh Humud Bin-Uqlah al-Shu'aybi, who said that it is impermissible to co-operate with Jews and Christians and that he who co-operates with them and gives them his opinion or take actions in supporting them becomes apostate and revokes his faith in God and his Prophet, may God's peace and blessings be upon him. Al-Qaeda organisation orders the Americans and the infidels in the Arabian Peninsula, particularly the Americans and the British, to leave the Arabian peninsula. If the mothers of these need their sons then they should ask them to leave the Arabian peninsula, because the land will be set on fire under their feet, God willing. In this regard we greet the mujahidin youths who knew their role and the way to respond to the aggression of the unjust, and killed them. We also greet the Muslims, both in the East and West, who staged demonstrations rejecting this criminal aggression, repression, and injustice. We say to them that they should continue this pressure, especially since the Islamic countries' foreign ministers announced their support for this unjust campaign. These do not represent the nation in any case. They do not have the legitimacy that qualifies them to dispose of the nation's destiny and resolutions. As for the decisions made by Bush and the US administration to prevent satellite channels and world news agencies from making our voice heard in the world, then this is clear evidence that the US administration fears the revelation of the truth that led to the Tuesday events. This truth shows that Bush is an agent of Israel and sacrifices his people and his country's economy for those and helps them occupy the Muslims' land and persecute their sons. Finally, I address the US secretary of state, who cast doubt about my previous statement and downplayed what we said that there are thousands of Muslim youths who are eager to die and that the aircraft storm will not stop, God willing. Powell, and others in the US administration, know that if al-Qaeda organisation promises or threatens, it fulfils its promise or threat, God willing. Therefore, we tell him tomorrow is not far for he who waits for it. What will happen is what you are going to see and not what you hear. And the storms will not calm, especially the aircraft storm. These storms will not calm until you retreat in defeat in Afghanistan, stop your assistance to the Jews in Palestine, end the siege imposed on the Iraqi people, leave the Arabian Peninsula, and stop your support for the Hindus against the Muslims in Kashmir. We also say and advise the Muslims in the United States and Britain, the children, and those who reject the unjust US policy not to travel by plane. We also advise them not to live in highrise buildings and towers. But honour belongs to God, and his Apostle, and to the believers; but the hypocrites know not. Peace and God's blessings be upon you. Fourth Al-Qaeda statement We praise God, seek His help, and ask for His forgiveness. We seek refuge in God from the evils of our souls and our bad deeds. A person who is guided by God will never be misguided by anyone and a person who is misguided by God can never be guided by anyone. I bear witness that there is no God but Allah alone, Who has no partner. Amid the huge developments and in the wake of the great strikes that hit the United States in its most important locations in New York and Washington, a huge media clamour has been raised. This clamour is unprecedented. It conveyed the opinions of people on these events. People were divided into two parts. The first part supported these strikes against US tyranny, while the second denounced them. Afterward, when the United States launched the unjust campaign against the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan, people also split into two parties. The first supported these campaigns, while the second denounced and rejected them. These tremendous incidents, which have split people into two parties, are of great interest to the Muslims, since many of the rulings pertain to them. These rulings are closely related to Islam and the acts that corrupt a person's Islam. Therefore, the Muslims must understand the nature and truth of this conflict so that it will be easy for them to determine where they stand. While talking about the truth of the conflict, opinion polls in the world have shown that a little more than 80 per cent of Westerners, of Christians in the United States and elsewhere, have been saddened by the strikes that hit the United States. The polls showed that the vast majority of the sons of the Islamic world were happy about these strikes because they believe that the strikes were in reaction to the huge criminality practiced by Israel and the United States in Palestine and other Muslim countries. After the strikes on Afghanistan began, these groups changed positions. Those who were happy about striking the United States felt sad when Afghanistan was hit, and those who felt sad when the United States was hit were happy when Afghanistan was hit. These groups comprise millions of people. The entire West, with the exception of a few countries, supports this unfair, barbaric campaign, although there is no evidence of the involvement of the people of Afghanistan in what happened in America. The people of Afghanistan had nothing to do with this matter. The campaign, however, continues to unjustly annihilate the villagers and civilians, children, women, and innocent people. The positions of the two sides are very clear. Mass demonstrations have spread from the farthest point in the eastern part of the Islamic world to the farthest point in the western part of the Islamic world, and from Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan to the Arab world and Nigeria and Mauritania. This clearly indicates the nature of this war. This war is fundamentally religious. The people of the East are Muslims. They sympathized with Muslims against the people of the West, who are the crusaders. Those who try to cover this crystal clear fact, which the entire world has admitted, are deceiving the Islamic nation. They are trying to deflect the attention of the Islamic nation from the truth of this conflict. This fact is proven in the book of God Almighty and in the teachings of our messenger, may God's peace and blessings be upon him. Under no circumstances should we forget this enmity between us and the infidels. For, the enmity is based on creed. We must be loyal to the believers and those who believe that there is no God but Allah. We should also renounce the atheists and infidels. It suffices me to seek God's help against them. God says: "Never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee unless thou follow their form of religion." It is a question of faith, not a war against terrorism, as Bush and Blair try to depict it. Many thieves belonging to this nation were captured in the past. But, nobody moved. The masses which moved in the East and West have not done so for the sake of Osama. Rather, they moved for the sake of their religion. This is because they know that they are right and that they resist the most ferocious, serious, and violent Crusade campaign against Islam ever since the message was revealed to Muhammad, may God's peace and blessings be upon. After this has become clear, the Muslim must know and learn where he is standing vis-a-vis this war. After the US politicians spoke and after the US newspapers and television channels became full of clear crusading hatred in this campaign that aims at mobilizing the West against Islam and Muslims, Bush left no room for doubts or the opinions of journalists, but he openly and clearly said that this war is a crusader war. He said this before the whole world to emphasize this fact. What can those who allege that this is a war against terrorism say? What terrorism are they speaking about at a time when the Islamic nation has been slaughtered for tens of years without hearing their voices and without seeing any action by them? But when the victim starts to take revenge for those innocent children in Palestine, Iraq, southern Sudan, Somalia, Kashmir and the Philippines, the rulers' ulema (Islamic leaders) and the hypocrites come to defend the clear blasphemy. It suffices me to seek God's help against them. The common people have understood the issue, but there are those who continue to flatter those who colluded with the unbelievers to anesthetize the Islamic nation to prevent it from carrying out the duty of jihad so that the word of God will be above all words. The unequivocal truth is that Bush has carried the cross and raised its banner high and stood at the front of the queue. Anyone who lines up behind Bush in this campaign has committed one of the 10 actions that sully one's Islam. Muslim scholars are unanimous that allegiance to the infidels and support for them against the believers is one of the major acts that sully Islam. There is no power but in God. Let us investigate whether this war against Afghanistan that broke out a few days ago is a single and unique one or if it is a link to a long series of crusader wars against the Islamic world. Following World War I, which ended more than 83 years ago, the whole Islamic world fell under the crusader banner â€“ under the British, French, and Italian governments. They divided the whole world, and Palestine was occupied by the British. Since then, and for more than 83 years, our brothers, sons, and sisters in Palestine have been badly tortured. Hundreds of thousands of them have been killed, and hundreds of thousands of them have been imprisoned or maimed. Let us examine the recent developments. Take for example the Chechens. They are a Muslim people who have been attacked by the Russian bear which embraces the Christian Orthodox faith. Russians have annihilated the Chechen people in their entirety and forced them to flee to the mountains where they were assaulted by snow and poverty and diseases. Nonetheless, nobody moved to support them. There is no strength but in God. This was followed by a war of genocide in Bosnia in sight and hearing of the entire world in the heart of Europe. For several years our brothers have been killed, our women have been raped, and our children have been massacred in the safe havens of the United Nations and with its knowledge and cooperation. Those who refer our tragedies today to the United Nations so that they can be resolved are hypocrites who deceive God, His Prophet and the believers. Are not our tragedies but caused by the United Nations? Who issued the Partition Resolution on Palestine in 1947 and surrendered the land of Muslims to the Jews? It was the United Nations in its resolution in 1947. Those who claim that they are the leaders of the Arabs and continue to appeal to the United Nations have disavowed what was revealed to Prophet Muhammad, God's peace and blessings be upon him. Those who refer things to the international legitimacy have disavowed the legitimacy of the Holy Book and the tradition of Prophet Muhammad, God's peace and blessings be upon him. This is the United Nations from which we have suffered greatly. Under no circumstances should any Muslim or sane person resort to the United Nations. The United Nations is nothing but a tool of crime. We are being massacred everyday, while the United Nations continues to sit idly by. Our brothers in Kashmir have been subjected to the worst forms of torture for over 50 years. They have been massacred, killed, and raped. Their blood has been shed and their houses have been trespassed upon. Still, the United Nations continues to sit idly by. Today, and without any evidence, the United Nations passes resolutions supporting unjust and tyrannical America, which oppresses these helpless people who have emerged from a merciless war at the hands of the Soviet Union. Let us look at the second war in Chechnya, which is still underway. The entire Chechen people are being embattled once again by this Russian bear. The humanitarian agencies, even the US ones, demanded that President Clinton should stop supporting Russia. However, Clinton said that stopping support for Russia did not serve US interests. A year ago, Putin demanded that the cross and the Jews should stand by him. He told them: You must support us and thank us because we are waging a war against Muslim fundamentalism. The enemies are speaking very clearly. While this is taking place, the leaders of the region hide and are ashamed to support their brothers. Let us examine the stand of the West and the United Nations in the developments in Indonesia when they moved to divide the largest country in the Islamic world in terms of population. This criminal, Kofi Annan, was speaking publicly and putting pressure on the Indonesian government, telling it: You have 24 hours to divide and separate East Timor from Indonesia. Otherwise, we will be forced to send in military forces to separate it by force. The crusader Australian forces were on Indonesian shores, and in fact they landed to separate East Timor, which is part of the Islamic world. Therefore, we should view events not as separate links, but as links in a long series of conspiracies, a war of annihilation in the true sense of the word. In Somalia, on the excuse of restoring hope, 13,000 of our brothers were killed. In southern Sudan, hundreds of thousands were killed. But when we move to Palestine and Iraq, there can be no bounds to what can be said. Over one million children were killed in Iraq. The killing is continuing. As for what is taking place in Palestine these days, I can only say we have no one but God to complain to. What is taking place cannot be tolerated by any nation. I do not say from the nations of the human race, but from other creatures, from the animals. They would not tolerate what is taking place. A confidant of mine told me that he saw a butcher slaughtering a camel in front of another camel. The other camel got agitated while seeing the blood coming out of the other camel. Thus, it burst out with rage and bit the hand of the man and broke it. How can the weak mothers in Palestine endure the killing of their children in front of their eyes by the unjust Jewish executioners with US support and with US aircraft and tanks? Those who distinguish between America and Israel are the real enemies of the nation. They are traitors who betrayed God and His prophet, and who betrayed their nation and the trust placed in them. They anesthetize the nation. These battles cannot be viewed in any case whatsoever as isolated battles, but rather, as part of a chain of the long, fierce, and ugly crusader war. Every Muslim must stand under the banner of There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is God's Prophet. I remind you of what our Prophet, may God's peace and blessings upon him, told Ibn Abbas, may God be pleased with him. He told him: Boy, I am going to teach you a few words. Obey God, He will protect you. Obey Him, you will find Him on your side. If you ask for something, ask God. If you seek help, seek the help of God. You should know that if all people come together to help you, they will only help you with something that God has already preordained for you. And if they assemble to harm you, they will only harm you with something that God has already preordained for you. God wrote man's fate and it will never change. I tell the Muslims who did their utmost during these weeks: You must continue along the same march. Your support for us will make us stronger and will further support your brothers in Afghanistan. Exert more efforts in combating this unprecedented war crime. Fear God, O Muslims and rise to support your religion. Islam is calling on you: O Muslims, O Muslims, O Muslims. God bear witness that I have conveyed the message. God bear witness that I have conveyed the message. God bear witness that I have conveyed the message. God's peace and blessings be upon you. Fifth Al-Qaeda statement Three months after the blessed strikes against world atheism and its leader, America, and around two months after the fierce crusade against Islam, we must review the impact of these events. The latest events have proved important truths. It has become clear that the West in general and America in particular have an unspeakable hatred for Islam. Those who lived under continuous US raids for the past months are aware of it. How many villages have been destroyed and how many millions have been pushed out in the freezing cold? These men, women and children who have been damned and now live under tents in Pakistan, have committed no sin. They are innocent. But on a mere suspicion, the United States has launched this fierce campaign. We have witnessed the true crimes of those who call themselves humanists and claim to be defenders of freedom. Only seven grammes of explosives are needed to kill someone, but the United States has used bombs weighing seven million grammes proving their hatred of the Taleban and Muslims. When the youths â€“ may God receive them as martyrs â€“ blew up (the US embassy) in Nairobi, less than two tonnes were used. The United States then said it was a terrorist act and a mass destruction weapon, while they unscrupulously used two seven-tonne bombs, of seven million grammes each. After they (the Americans), for no reason, bombed entire villages to scare the inhabitants, the defence secretary said it was the United States' right to exterminate the peoples since they are Muslim and since they are not American. It is a blatant crime. A few days ago, they bombed al-Qaeda positions in Khost [eastern Afghanistan] and dropped â€“ in what they said was a mistake â€“ a radio-guided bomb on a mosque where ulemas were praying. They targeted the mosque, killing 150 Muslim worshippers. It is the hatred of crusaders. Terrorism against America deserves to be praised because it was a response to injustice, aimed at forcing America to stop its support for Israel, which kills our people. We say that the end of the United States is imminent, whether Bin Laden or his followers are alive or dead, for the awakening of the Muslim umma (nation) has occurred.

Part 2- We say that the end of the United States is imminent, whether Bin Laden or his followers are alive or dead, for the awakening of the Muslim umma (nation) has occurred. It is important to hit the economy (of the United States), which is the base of its military power... If the economy is hit they will become preoccupied. Sixth Al-Qaeda statement In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, from the slave of God, Osama Bin Laden, to the peoples of the countries allied with the tyrannical US Government: May God's peace be upon those who follow the right path. The road to safety begins by ending the aggression. Reciprocal treatment is part of justice. The incidents that have taken place since the raids on New York and Washington up until now â€“ like the killing of Germans in Tunisia and the French in Karachi, the bombing of the giant French tanker in Yemen, the killing of marines in Failaka [in Kuwait] and the British and Australians in the Bali explosions, the recent operation in Moscow and some sporadic operations here and there â€“ are only reactions and reciprocal actions. These actions were carried out by the zealous sons of Islam in defence of their religion and in response to the order of their God and prophet, may God's peace and blessings be upon him. White House 'criminals' What [US President George] Bush, the pharaoh of this age, was doing in terms of killing our sons in Iraq, and what Israel, the United States' ally, was doing in terms of bombing houses that shelter old people, women and children with US-made aircraft in Palestine were sufficient to prompt the sane among your rulers to distance themselves from this criminal gang. Our kinfolk in Palestine have been slain and severely tortured for nearly a century. If we defend our people in Palestine, the world becomes agitated and allies itself against Muslims, unjustly and falsely, under the pretence of fighting terrorism. What do your governments want by allying themselves with the criminal gang in the White House against Muslims? Do your governments not know that the White House gangsters are the biggest butchers of this age? [US Defence Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld, the butcher of Vietnam, killed more than two million people, not to mention those he wounded. [US Vice President Dick] Cheney and [US Secretary of State Colin] Powell killed and destroyed in Baghdad more than Hulegu [a grandson of Genghis Khan] of the Mongols. What do your governments want from their alliance with America in attacking us in Afghanistan? I mention in particular Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia. We warned Australia before not to join in [the war] in Afghanistan, and [against] its despicable effort to separate East Timor. It ignored the warning until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali. Its government falsely claimed that they [the Australians] were not targeted. 'You will be killed' If you were distressed by the deaths of your men and the men of your allies in Tunisia, Karachi, Failaka, Bali and Amman, remember our children who are killed in Palestine and Iraq everyday, remember our deaths in Khowst mosques and remember the premeditated killing of our people in weddings in Afghanistan. If you were distressed by the killing of your nationals in Moscow, remember ours in Chechnya. Why should fear, killing, destruction, displacement, orphaning and widowing continue to be our lot, while security, stability and happiness be your lot? This is unfair. It is time that we get even. You will be killed just as you kill, and will be bombed just as you bomb. And expect more that will further distress you. The Islamic nation, thanks to God, has started to attack you at the hands of its beloved sons, who pledged to God to continue jihad, as long as they are alive, through words and weapons to establish right and expose falsehood. In conclusion, I ask God to help us champion His religion and continue jihad for His sake until we meet Him while He is satisfied with us. And He can do so. Praise be to Almighty God. Seventh Al-Qaeda statement(?) The following is the full text of an audio message purported to be by al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, broadcast on Arab television station al-Jazeera on 11 February 2003. In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. A message to our Muslim brothers in Iraq, may God's peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you. O you who believe fear Allah, by doing all that He has ordered and by abstaining from all that He has forbidden as He should be feared. Obey Him, be thankful to Him, and remember Him always, and die not except in a state of Islam [as Muslims] with complete submission to Allah. We are following up with great interest and extreme concern the crusaders' preparations for war to occupy a former capital of Islam, loot Muslims' wealth, and install an agent government, which would be a satellite for its masters in Washington and Tel Aviv, just like all the other treasonous and agent Arab governments. This would be in preparation for establishing the Greater Israel. Allah is sufficient for us and He is the best disposer of affairs. 'Unjust war' Amid this unjust war, the war of infidels and debauchees led by America along with its allies and agents, we would like to stress a number of important values: First, showing good intentions. This means fighting should be for the sake of the one God. It should not be for championing ethnic groups, or for championing the non-Islamic regimes in all Arab countries, including Iraq. God Almighty says: "Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil." So fight ye against the friends of Satan: feeble indeed is the cunning of Satan. Second, we remind that victory comes only from God and all we have to do is prepare and motivate for jihad. God Almighty says: "Oh ye who believe! If ye will help the cause of Allah, He will help you and plant your feet firmly." We must rush to seek God Almighty's forgiveness from sins, particularly the grave sins. Prophet Muhammad, God's peace be upon him, said: "Avoid the seven grave sins; polytheism, sorcery, killing, unless permitted by God, usury, taking the money of orphans, fleeing from combat, and slandering innocent faithful women." Also, all grave sins, such as consuming alcohol, committing adultery, disobeying parents, and committing perjury. We must obey God in general, and should in particular mention the name of God more before combat. 'Media machine' Abu-al-Darda, may God be pleased with him, said: "Perform a good deed before an attack, because you are fighting with your deeds." Third, we realized from our defence and fighting against the American enemy that, in combat, they mainly depend on psychological warfare. This is in light of the huge media machine they have. They also depend on massive air strikes so as to conceal their most prominent point of weakness, which is the fear, cowardliness, and the absence of combat spirit among US soldiers. Those soldiers are completely convinced of the injustice and lying of their government. They also lack a fair cause to defend. They only fight for capitalists, usury takers, and the merchants of arms and oil, including the gang of crime at the White House. This is in addition to crusader and personal grudges by Bush the father. Trench warfare We also realized that one of the most effective and available methods of rendering the air force of the crusader enemy ineffective is by setting up roofed and disguised trenches in large numbers. I had referred to that in a previous statement during the Tora Bora battle last year. In that great battle, faith triumphed over all the materialistic forces of the people of evil, for principles were adhered to, thanks to God Almighty. I will narrate to you part of that great battle, to show how cowardly they are on the one hand, and how effective trenches are in exhausting them on the other. We were about 300 mujahideen [Islamic militants].We dug 100 trenches that were spread in an area that does not exceed one square mile, one trench for every three brothers, so as to avoid the huge human losses resulting from the bombardment. Since the first hour of the US campaign on 20 Rajab 1422, corresponding to 7 October 2001, our centres were exposed to a concentrated bombardment. And this bombardment continued until mid-Ramadan. On 17 Ramadan, a very fierce bombardment began, particularly after the US command was certain that some of al-Qaeda leaders were still in Tora Bora, including the humble servant to God [referring to himself] and the brother mujahid Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri. The bombardment was round-the-clock and the warplanes continued to fly over us day and night. War in Afghanistan The US Pentagon, together with its allies, worked full time on blowing up and destroying this small spot, as well as on removing it entirely. Planes poured their lava on us, particularly after accomplishing their main missions in Afghanistan. The US forces attacked us with smart bombs, bombs that weigh thousands of pounds, cluster bombs, and bunker busters. Bombers, like the B-52, used to fly over head for more than two hours and drop between 20 to 30 bombs at a time. The modified C-130 aircraft kept carpet-bombing us at night, using modern types of bombs. The US forces dared not break into our positions, despite the unprecedented massive bombing and terrible propaganda targeting this completely besieged small area. This is in addition to the forces of hypocrites, whom they prodded to fight us for 15 days non-stop. Every time the latter attacked us, we forced them out of our area carrying their dead and wounded. 'Alliance of evil' Is there any clearer evidence of their cowardice, fear, and lies regarding their legends about their alleged power. To sum it up, the battle resulted in the complete failure of the international alliance of evil, with all its forces, [to overcome] a small number of mujahideen â€“ 300 mujahideen hunkered down in trenches spread over an area of one square mile under a temperature of -10 degrees Celsius. The battle resulted in the injury of 6% of personnel â€“ we hope God will accept them as martyrs â€“ and the damage of two percent of the trenches, praise be to God. If all the world forces of evil could not achieve their goals on a one square mile of area against a small number of mujahideen with very limited capabilities, how can these evil forces triumph over the Muslim world? This is impossible, God willing, if people adhere to their religion and insist on jihad for its sake. Iraqi 'brothers' O mujahideen brothers in Iraq, do not be afraid of what the United States is propagating in terms of their lies about their power and their smart, laser-guided missiles. The smart bombs will have no effect worth mentioning in the hills and in the trenches, on plains, and in forests. They must have apparent targets. The well-camouflaged trenches and targets will not be reached by either the smart or the stupid missiles. There will only be haphazard strikes that dissipate the enemy ammunition and waste its money. Dig many trenches. The [early Muslim caliph] Umar, may God be pleased with him, stated: "Take the ground as a shield because this will ensure the exhaustion of all the stored enemy missiles within months." Their daily production is too little and can be dealt with, God willing. We also recommend luring the enemy forces into a protracted, close, and exhausting fight, using the camouflaged defensive positions in plains, farms, mountains, and cities. The enemy fears city and street wars most, a war in which the enemy expects grave human losses. Martyrdom operations We stress the importance of the martyrdom operations against the enemy â€“ operations that inflicted harm on the United States and Israel that have been unprecedented in their history, thanks to Almighty God. We also point out that whoever supported the United States, including the hypocrites of Iraq or the rulers of Arab countries, those who approved their actions and followed them in this crusade war by fighting with them or providing bases and administrative support, or any form of support, even by words, to kill the Muslims in Iraq, should know that they are apostates and outside the community of Muslims. It is permissible to spill their blood and take their property. God says: "O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other." And he amongst you that turns to them [for friendship] is of them. Verily, Allah guideth not a people unjust. Mobilizing the 'Islamic nation' We also stress to honest Muslims that they should move, incite, and mobilize the [Islamic] nation, amid such grave events and hot atmosphere so as to liberate themselves from those unjust and renegade ruling regimes, which are enslaved by the United States. They should also do so to establish the rule of God on earth. The most qualified regions for liberation are Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, the land of the two holy mosques [Saudi Arabia], and Yemen. Needless to say, this crusade war is primarily targeted against the people of Islam. Regardless of the removal or the survival of the socialist party or Saddam, Muslims in general and the Iraqis in particular must brace themselves for jihad against this unjust campaign and acquire ammunition and weapons. This is a prescribed duty. God says: "[And let them pray with thee] taking all precautions and bearing arms: the unbelievers wish if ye were negligent of your arms and your baggage, to assault you in a single rush." Fighting in support of the non-Islamic banners is forbidden. Muslims' doctrine and banner should be clear in fighting for the sake of God. He who fights to raise the word of God will fight for God's sake. Under these circumstances, there will be no harm if the interests of Muslims converge with the interests of the socialists in the fight against the crusaders, despite our belief in the infidelity of socialists. The jurisdiction of the socialists and those rulers has fallen a long time ago. Socialists are infidels wherever they are, whether they are in Baghdad or Aden. 'High morale' The fighting, which is waging and which will be waged these days, is very much like the fighting of Muslims against the Byzantine in the past. And the convergence of interests is not detrimental. The Muslims' fighting against the Byzantine converged with the interests of the Persians. And this was not detrimental to the companions of the prophet. Before concluding, we reiterate the importance of high morale and caution against false rumours, defeatism, uncertainty, and discouragement. The prophet said: "Bring good omens and do not discourage people." He also said: "The voice of Abu-Talhah [one of the prophet's companions] in the army is better than 100 men." During the Al-Yarmuk Battle, a man told Khalid bin-al-Walid [an Islamic commander]: "The Byzantine soldiers are too many and the Muslims are few." So, Khalid told him: "Shame on you. Armies do not triumph with large numbers but are defeated if the spirit of defeatism prevails." Keep this saying before your eyes: "It is not fitting for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war until he hath thoroughly subdued the land." "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks." Your wish to the crusaders should be as came in this verse of poetry: "The only language between you and us is the sword that will strike your necks." In the end, I advise myself and you to fear God covertly and openly and to be patient in the jihad. Victory will be achieved with patience. I also advise myself and you to say more prayers. O ye who believe! When ye meet a force, be firm, and call Allah in remembrance much (and often); That ye may prosper. God, who sent the book unto the prophet, who drives the clouds, and who defeated the enemy parties, defeat them and make us victorious over them. Our Lord! Give us good in this world and good in the Hereafter and save us from the torment of the Fire! [Koranic verse]. May God's peace and blessings be upon Prophet Muhammad and his household.

Louis Rene Beres, has an insight that makes good sense to me, do a general google search for his name and you will find a lifetime of articles.
ruth

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Arab-Israeli Conflict - Articles

A Palestinian State and Regional Nuclear War

By Louis Rene Beres. Source: IST March 28, 2003.

Until now, fears of a nuclear war in the Middle East have generally focussed on Iraq.
Yet, when the current war against Saddam Hussein is concluded, it is highly unlikely
that Iraq will be in any position to acquire nuclear weapons. A new Arab state of
"Palestine," on the other hand, would have decidedly serious implications for certain
regional resorts to nuclear conflict. Newly endowed with a so-called "Prime Minister,"
this state, although itself non-nuclear, would greatly heighten the prospect of
catastrophic nuclear war in the area.

If all goes well for the United States in Operation Iraqi Freedom, President Bush will feel
compelled to reward Arab state allies and supporters with a dedicated American effort
to create a Palestinian state. This state, tied closely to a broad spectrum of terrorist
groups and flanking 70 percent of Israel's population, would utterly eliminate Israel's
remaining strategic depth. With limited capacity to defend an already fragile land and
facing a new enemy country resolutely committed to Israel's annihilation, Jerusalem
would have to undertake even more stringent methods of counter terrorism and
self-defense against aggression. Various new forms of preemption, known under
international law as anticipatory self-defense, would be unavoidable. Significantly, a
strong emphasis on preemption has now become the recognizable core of President
Bush's national security policy for the United States.

Several ironies must also be noted. Above all, offering Palestine as a reward for
collaborative opposition to Iraq would merely exchange one terror state for another.
Additionally, the nuclear risks associated with a new state of Palestine would derive not
from this state directly - which would assuredly be non-nuclear - but from (1) other
Arab/Islamic states (including Iran) that could exploit Israel's new strategic
vulnerabilities; and/or (2) Israel's own attempts to preempt such enemy exploitations.

Because the creation of a state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel would raise
the area risk of nuclear war considerably, this very politicized measure should now be
viewed with real apprehension. Indeed, its creation could even bring an Islamic "Final
Solution" to the region. After all, every Arab map of the Middle East already excludes
Israel. Cartographically, Israel has already been destroyed.

Architects of the Oslo Agreements had suggested all along that a "Two-State Solution"
to the Palestinian problem would surely reduce the risk of another major war in the
Middle East. After all, they had always maintained, the problem of stateless Palestinians
is THE source of all problems between Israel and the Arabs. Once we have "justice" for
Palestinians, the argument proceeded, Arab governments and Iran could begin to create
area-wide stability and comprehensive peace settlements. Harmony would then reign,
more or less triumphantly, from the Mediterranean and Red Seas to the Persian Gulf.

But as we should have learned by now, especially from recurring Arab violations of the
"peace process," the conventional Oslo wisdom was always unwise. For the most part,
Iranian and Arab state inclinations to war against Israel have had absolutely nothing to
do with the Palestinians. Even if Israel had continued to make all unilateral Oslo
concessions, and had continued to adhere to unreciprocated agreements, these
irremediably belligerent inclinations would have endured, especially from Syria, Iraq and
Libya as well as from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

If Israel should soon face a new state of Palestine, the Jewish state's vulnerability to
armed attack by hostile neighbors will increase markedly. If this diminished safety is
accompanied by the spread of unconventional weapons to certain hostile states, which
now seems certain, Israel could find itself confronting not only war, but genocide. It is
also clear that Israel's own nuclear infrastructures will become increasingly vulnerable to
surprise attack from Palestinian territories.

A new state of Palestine would preoccupy Israeli military forces to a much greater
extent than does the current "intifada". Even if it were able to resist takeover by one of
the other Islamic states in the region, a takeover accomplished either directly or by
insurgent surrogates, Palestine would surely become a favored launching-point for
unconventional terrorism against Israel. Various promises notwithstanding, Islamic
insurgents would continue to celebrate frenzied violence against Israel's women and
children as the essence of "national liberation." Drawing upon fierce Palestinian hatred of
America, a state of Palestine would also provide a sympathetic host to various terrorist
enemies of the United States. This would include Al Qaeda, which already has close ties
to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah.

Recognizing an "improved" configuration of forces vis-a-vis Israel, a larger number of
Islamic enemy states would calculate that they now confront a smaller, more
beleaguered adversary. Further, they would understand that a coordinated effort by
certain countries that possess or are in the process of acquiring pertinent ballistic
missiles could possibly endanger Israel's very survival. Taken together with the fact that
global support for Israel is always weak and that individual or combined
chemical/biological/nuclear warfare capabilities could bring enormous harm to Israel, the
creation of Palestine would tip the balance of power in the Middle East decisively. It is
unlikely that Israel could physically survive next to a Palestinian state, a state that
always defines itself as extending "from the Sea to the River." It is also unlikely that
Palestine would prevent its territory from being used as a base of expanded Islamic
terrorist operations against the United States - operations that could even involve
weapons of mass destruction.

The full strategic implications of an independent Palestine should now be carefully
considered. Israel has much to fear, more than any other state on the face of the
earth. The people of Israel, not the people of "Palestine," are the only ones who could
soon face organized extermination. As for the United States, it too will incur
substantially increased levels of insecurity following establishment of a Palestinian state.
It follows that President Bush should now consider carefully that an exchange of Iraq for
"Palestine" would be foolishly shortsighted and very dangerous. A Faustian bargain, it
could wind up engulfing both Israel and the United States in yet another cauldron of war
and terrorism.

LOUIS RENE BERES (Ph.D. Princeton, 1971) Professor of International Law, Purdue
University. Prof. Beres is the author of SECURITY OR ARMAGEDDON: ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR
STRATEGY (Lexington Books, 1986) and many other major books and articles on nuclear
weapons and nuclear war.

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