Al-Qa’ida spokesman explains September 11 and declares intentions to kill 4
Million Americans with weapons of mass destruction.
By the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an independent,
non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle
East, June 12, 2002
Al-Qa’ida spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith, originally from Kuwait, recently
posted a three-part article titled “In the Shadow of the Lances” on the website
of the Center for Islamic Research and Studies, www.alneda.com. Following
numerous hacking attempts after the international media reported that the site
was linked to Al-Qa’ida, its address was changed.
Recently, the site published an article by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s
deputy and leader of the Egyptian Jihad organization. However, the Saudi
London-based Arabic-daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that the article had
already appeared in the Al-Mujahiddeen publication (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat
(London), June 7, 2002). The following are excerpts from Abu Gheith’s article:
Part I: Why We Fight the U.S.
“…Perhaps the nation is waiting for one Al-Qa’ida man to come out
and clear up the many questions that accompany any communique, message,
or picture , to know the truth, the motives, and the
goals behind the conflict with the Hubal of our generation…”
“Why is the world surprised?! Why were millions of people astounded by what
happened to America on September 11? Did the world think that anything else
would happen? That something less than this would happen?!”
“What happened to America is something natural, an expected event for a
country that uses terror, arrogant policy, and suppression against the nations
and the peoples, and imposes a single method, thought, and way of life, as if
the people of the entire world are clerks in its government offices and employed
by its commercial companies and institutions.”
“Anyone who was surprised, and did not expect
did not the nature of man, and the effects of oppression and
tyranny on man’s emotions and feelings. They thought that oppression begets
surrender, that repression begets silence, that tyranny only leaves humiliation.
Perhaps they also thought that this atmosphere is sufficient to kill
man’s virility, shatter his will, and uproot his honor. These people erred twice:
once when they ignored treating man with contempt,
and again when they were unaware of man’s ability to triumph.”
“This goes for every man – let alone when the man in question is of those who
believe in Allah, in Islam as a religion, and in Muhammad as Prophet and
Messenger, and anyone who knows that his religion is unwilling to allow him to
be inferior and refuses to allow him to be humiliated.”
The Entire Earth Must Be Subjected to Islam
“How can possibly when he knows that
his nation was created to stand at the center of leadership, at the center of
hegemony and rule, at the center of ability and sacrifice? How can possibly
when he knows that the rule is that
the entire earth must be subject to the religion of Allah – not to the East, not to
the West – to no ideology and to no path except for the path of Allah?…”
“As long as this Muslim knows and believes in these facts, he will not – even
for a single moment – stop striving to achieve it, even if it costs him his soul…
his time, his property, and his son, as it is said, ‘Say : If your
fathers and your sons and your brethren and your wives and your kinsfolk and
the worth you have acquired and the trade, the dullness of which you
apprehend, and the dwellings that you fancy are dearer to you than Allah and
His Messenger, and striving in His cause, then wait until Allah issues His
judgment. Allah guides not the disobedient people…'” (Koran 9:24)
Part II: The Blow Against the U.S. Will Come from Where Least Expected
“…The on which we base ourselves as an organization, and on
which we base our operations and our method of action, are practical and
realistic… They are also scientific and Islamic religious
law, and they give us confidence and certainty… In writing them and in
revealing them, I do not intend to be apologetic for what was done; I
lay before you so as to emphasize that we are continuing
with our blows against the Americans and the Jews, and with attacking them,
both people and installations that what awaits the Americans
will not, Allah willing, be less than what has already happened to them.
America must prepare itself; it must go on maximum alert; … because, Allah
willing, the blow will come from where they least expect it…”
“America is the head of heresy in our modern world, and it leads an infidel
democratic regime that is based upon separation of religion and state and on
ruling the people by the people via legislating laws that contradict the way of
Allah and permit what Allah has prohibited. This compels the other countries to
act in accordance with the same laws in the same ways… and punishes any
country by besieging it, and then by boycotting
it. By so doing, seeks to impose on the world a religion that is not
Allah’s…”
“America, with the collaboration of the Jews, is the leader of corruption and
the breakdown , whether moral, ideological, political, or economic
corruption. It disseminates abomination and licentiousness among the people
via the cheap media and the vile curricula.”
“America is the reason for all oppression, injustice, licentiousness, or
suppression that is the Muslims’ lot. It stands behind all the disasters that were
caused and are still being caused to the Muslims; it is immersed in the blood of
Muslims and cannot hide this.”
“For 50 years in Palestine, the Jews – with the blessing and support of the
Americans – carried out abominations of murder, suppression, abuse, and
exile… The Jews exiled nearly 5 million Palestinians and killed nearly 260,000.
They wounded nearly 180,000, and crippled nearly 160,000.”
“Due to the American bombings and siege of Iraq, more than 1,200,000
Muslims were killed in the past decade. Due to the siege, over a million children
are killed – that is 83,333 children on average per month, 2,777
children on average per day. 5,000 Iraqis were killed in one day in the
Al-‘Amiriya shelter alone. Are these statistics of military installations???!!!!”
“In its war against the Taliban and Al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan, America has killed
12,000 Afghan civilians and 350 Arab Jihad fighters, among them women and
children. It annihilated entire families from among the Arab Jihad fighters while
they were in their cars, when the American Air Force bombed with
helicopters and anti-tank missiles, until nothing remained of some of them
except scattered body parts.”
“In Somalia, America killed 13,000 Somalis and carried out acts of
abomination on boys and women.”
Muslims Have Suffered from the U.S.’s Standing with Christians
“America’s standing with the Christians of the world against the Muslims has
stripped the camouflage from its face. Much can be said about this regarding
the Sudan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Kashmir, Macedonia, Bosnia, and other
tragedies. America’s siege on the Islamic countries as punishment for their
rebellion against its laws has transgressed all limits, and Muslims have suffered
economic losses that outstrip the imagination.”
“After all this, is it forbidden for a victim to escape when he is tied and brought
to the slaughterhouse?!! Is he not entitled, while he is being slaughtered, to
stamp his feet?!!…”
“After all this, some shed crocodile tears for what happened to
the country of heresy , and tried to exonerate Islam from what
happened to and asked the country of heresy to treat the Muslims
sensitively and gently, and sent messengers and broadcasters to the Jihad
fighters with a request to stop fighting Hubal . Do they
really think we would do this?!”
“No, by Allah. They have turned their back on us and we
have turned our back on them… We would have no honor if we did not avenge
the blood of our brothers in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and everywhere.”
“… The banner is being waved openly, and now there is ‘only a trench of
belief’ and ‘a trench of heresy.'”
Part III: The Islamic Justification for Al-Qa’ida’s Jihad Against the U.S.
“The religious arguments on which we base ourselves in our Jihad against the
Americans – the explanations that inspire us with confidence in the triumph of
our religion, our belief, and our faith – are many, and this is not the place to
enumerate them, as they are included in the books of the sages.”
“No one disagrees with these explanations, except he who lives fear … he
who asks for shelter, thinking that he has distanced himself from evil … or he
who kneels as a doorman before the doors of the tyrants to gain a position,
advancement, or a gift!!”
“These people have not, Allah be praised, dissuaded us, not even for a single
day, from continuing in our path, from our Jihad, and from our mission. Allah
willing, they will not prevent us .”
“In this article I will present one explanation that suffices Jihad
against the Americans, the Jews, and anyone who has gone in their path…”
“Allah said, ‘He who attacked you, attack him as he attacked you,’ and also,
‘The reward of evil is a similar evil,’ and also, ‘When you are punished, punish
as you have been punished.'”
“The words of the sages on these verses are clear: Ibn Taimiyya Al
Ikhtiyarat Wa-Al-Fatawi; Ibn Al-Qayim in I’lam Al-Muqi’in and in Al-Hashiya;
Al-Qurtubi in his Tafsir, Al-Nawawi in Al-Muhazab; Al-Shukani in Nayl Al-Awtar;
and others, may Allah’s mercy be upon them.”
“Anyone who peruses these sources reaches a single conclusion: The sages
have agreed that the reciprocal punishment to which the verses referred is not
limited to a specific instance. It is a valid rule for punishments for infidels, for
the licentious Muslims, and for the oppressors.”
Islamic Law Allows Reciprocation against the U.S. “If by religious law it is
permitted to punish a Muslim – it is all the more
permitted to punish a Harbi infidel in the same way he treated the Muslim.”
“According to the numbers I noted in the previous section of the lives lost from
among the Muslims because of the Americans, directly or indirectly, we still are
at the beginning of the way. The Americans have still not tasted from our hands
what we have tasted from theirs. The killed in the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon were no more than fair exchange for the ones killed in
the Al-‘Amiriya shelter in Iraq, and are but a tiny part of the exchange for those
killed in Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, the Philippines, Bosnia, Kashmir, Chechnya,
and Afghanistan.”
We Have the Right to Kill 4 Million Americans
“We have not reached parity with them. We have the right to kill 4 million
Americans – 2 million of them children – and to exile twice as many and wound
and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them
with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal
maladies that have afflicted the Muslims because of the chemical
and biological weapons.”
“America knows only the language of force. This is the only way to stop it and
make it take its hands off the Muslims and their affairs. America does not know
the language of dialogue!! Or the language of peaceful coexistence!! America is
kept at bay by blood alone…”
