Bin Laden's Video Message to the American People

Special Dispatch – Jihad & Terrorism

September 10, 2007 

No.1709

Osama Bin Laden's Video Message to the American People

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Osama Bin Laden's Video Message to the American

On September 8, 2007 the Islamist forum http://al-ekhlaas.org, hosted by Layered Technologies, Inc. in Texas, USA, posted a video message from Osama bin Laden to the American people titled "The Solution."
The following are excerpts.

Bin Laden opens his message by discussing the effect of the 9/11 attacks, which, he claims, "further harmed America's reputation and its prestige worldwide..." He goes on to characterize U.S. policies throughout history, and more recently in Iraq, as morally reprehensible. For example, he presents Bush's claim that the U.S. is "cooperating with Al-Maliki's government in order to spread freedom in Iraq" as an attempt to cover up Bush's "true intentions," which are "to work with leaders of one sect in Iraq against another sect" in hope that this will turn the war in his favor, while in fact this policy has precipitated a civil war "which [Bush] can no longer control." Thus, bin Laden claims that while the U.S. "proclaim[ed] the slogans of justice, freedom, equality, and humaneness," in reality its policies yielded "fear, destruction, killing, famine, illness, and vagrancy." As a result of this war, he continues, "there are more than one million orphans in Baghdad alone, and hundreds of thousands of widows... The American's [own] statistics... [reveal] that more than 650,000 people have been killed in Iraq as a result of the war and its consequences."

Bin Laden then points out that the Democrats have so far failed to stop the war in Iraq, despite winning the congressional elections. He interprets this as an indication that wealthy individuals still dominate policy decisions, and says to the Americans, "Now that your representatives in the Democratic party failed to fulfill your desire to stop the war, you can keep marching in the streets of big [U.S.] cities holding up anti-war signs," but this will be to no avail.

Bin Laden then adds that "there are [nevertheless] two [ways] to bring [the war] to an end. The first... is for us to continue killing and fighting you with ever increasing intensity [until we defeat you]... The second is... [for you] to liberate yourselves from the deception and restrictions... inflicted upon you by the capitalistic system... in the same way you liberated yourselves from the monks and kings that once enslaved you, and from feudalism." The goal of the capitalist system, he warns, is to turn the entire world into a fief controlled by large corporations..."

As an alternative to the capitalist system, bin Laden offers Islam. He calls upon the Americans to embrace Islam, saying: "The biggest and most irreversible error one can commit in this world is to die without surrendering oneself to Allah, namely, to die without embracing Islam." He warns that, once the owners of the major corporations realize that the Americans people have lost confidence in the democratic system and have started searching for an alternative, i.e., Islam, "they will run after you to please you and fulfill your every desire, in order to turn you away from Islam." He therefore advices the Americans not to waver in their pursuit of Islam, since the benefits they will receive by embracing it are numerous, including a significant reduction in taxes, since Islam does not impose taxes beyond the mandatory 2.5% Zakat (i.e., alms) tax.

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