The New Jihad and Islamic Tradition
John Kelsay Thursday, 4 June 2009
On October 21, 2001, Osama bin Ladin issued a statement via Al Jazeera television. With U.S.-led military action underway in Afghanistan, bin Ladin spoke about the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington, DC.
God Almighty hit the United States at its most vulnerable spot. Here is the United States. It was filled with terror from its north to its south and from its east to its west. Praise be to God. What the United States tastes today is a very small thing compared to what we have tasted for tens of years. Our nation has been tasting this humiliation and contempt for more than eighty years. Its sons are being killed, its blood is being shed, its holy places are being attacked, and it is not being ruled according to what God has decreed.
Bin Ladin speaks of those carrying out the September 11 attacks as God's convoy, the vanguard of Islam. He prays for them, asking God to "elevate their status and grant them Paradise."
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