Egypt: Obama’s 1979 Iran

by Majid Rafizadeh

 

Since the clashes between the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s security forces broke out early last week, the Western liberal media, Obama administration, and other Western political leaders in Europe have depicted the Muslim Brotherhood as a democratic non-violent movement, and as a political party victimized in the latest clashes. Most of the far left and liberal analyses, as well as the Obama administration’s recent policy stances on Egypt, imply that the Muslim Brotherhood is a political party that advocates for social justice, democratic values, rule of law, and gender equality.

Firstly, it is both a crucial and intriguing point that similar Western-backed foreign policy mistakes and liberal analyses were made with regards to the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Western liberal media, left-wing journalists and scholars, along with the Carter administration harshly criticized the ruling Shah, siding and sympathizing with the religious movement under Ayatollah Rooh Allah Khomeini’s leadership. Khomeini’s Islamic movement was seen as a democratic and spiritual party, which was victimized by the Shah’s governmental apparatuses. This perception considerably contributed to providing a platform for Khomeini’s anti-Semitic and fundamentalist Islamist movement to come to power in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Some analysts and scholars would defend the current political position of the Obama administration— along with Western liberal media and political leaders—by contending that the only 40-year-old history of Iran cannot be compared to the current situation in Egypt, claiming that it is logical that the Western liberal media, political leaders, and Obama administration may have forgotten lessons that Middle Eastern history has given us on Muslim society (and the socio-political and the socio-religious fabric that links it together).

Nevertheless, there is no need for a history lesson to analyze and discover the political truth about the Muslim Brotherhood movement, and its religious and political leaders’ agenda. Immediately after both Mohamed Morsi was elected as president and the Muslim Brotherhood won the majority of the Egyptian parliamentary seats, the organization pushed for an Islamist constitution that worked to centralize power to the Muslim Brotherhood, discriminate against minorities (particularly Christians), amplify gender inequality by the treatment of women as second-class citizens, diminish basic human rights, and lessen the considerable amount of political and economic power that other institutions possessed.

Additionally, Mohamed Morsi granted himself sweeping powers that primarily exempted his decrees from judicial review, until the ratification of a constitution. Even former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, who ruled the country for 30 years, did not possess that same type of unchecked power that Morsi was able to exert.

Millions of protesters marched in the streets against Mohamed Morsi, choosing to occupy the symbolic Tahrir Square for days so as to avoid having a ruling theocratic regime similar to that of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The clerics and Islamists of Iran slowly changed and revised the constitution after taking control through the revolution. The changes included an enforced dress code for women, a ban on drinking alcohol, increased gender segregation, and a ban on communication between opposite sexes, effectively using Sharia law as the legal guidelines of the nation. Just a mere few years after the 1979 Revolution, the Iranian people found themselves under a complete dictatorial, Islamist, and brutal regime.

After the policy changes by the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohamed Morsi, millions of Egyptian citizens, ranging from various social groups, demanded that Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces take serious action and remove the Muslim Brotherhood from power. According to Mustapha, a 22-year-old Egyptian engineering student, “this is what the majority of the Egyptian people want. It is not a military coup. These are demands of millions of people in the street.”

Other major grievances addressed by the Egyptian masses protesting in the street were attributed to political and economic woes stemming from the incapability of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to produce an effective system of governance. Egyptian citizens demanded that the new government be able to adequately address the country’s economic catastrophe, high unemployment rate, fuel shortages, basic food supply issues, dwindling hard currency reserves, and increasing sectarian conflict between the Sunnis and Coptic Christians. In addition, the Egyptian people have repeatedly shown concern about the increasing influence of Morsi’s party and Muslim Brotherhood in different government institutions, as Mohamed Morsi had been criticized for appointing many of the Muslim Brotherhood’s members to high official positions.

Even further, the Muslim Brotherhood leaders have repeatedly, and particularly after losing power and popularity, threatened to endanger Israel’s security by allowing violence to spill over to Tel Aviv through instigating conflict in the Sinai. Recently, suspected Islamist militants ambushed and killed approximately 25 Egyptian police officers in the northern part of Sinai, proof of the plausibility of the threat. While Israel did not have any role in the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood has threatened to take revenge on what their leaders have referred to as the “ Zionist enemy” or the “Zionist and American collaborators,” essentially jeopardizing the peace between Egypt and Israel.  The Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis group, an Islamist- and al-Qaeda-affiliated terror group based in Sinai, has claimed that their “heroes became martyrs during their jihadi duties against the Jews in a rocket attack on occupied lands.”

With the Obama administration and media pushing for the realease of Musim Brotherhood leaders as those who come from a peaceful, victimized, and democratic organization, the need to examine the ideological agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood becomes important.  The revolutionary spirit of the Middle East once brought forth the Islamist party and theocracy that is Iran, and the ruling Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt has revealed a policy of fundamentalism that foreshadows a similar fate.


Majid Rafizadeh

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/egypt-obamas-1979-iran/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

'Impoveris​hed' Gaza feels Pinch of fewer Mercedes-B​enz Sales

by Leo Rennert

Hamas-ruled Gaza is feeling the ripple effects of the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and the decimation of the Muslim Brotherhood. The new military ruling regime accuses Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, of fomenting anti-Egypt attacks in Sinai. In turn, Cairo has put a noose around the only land crossing from Gaza into Egyptian Sinai and blocked most tunnels that Gaza used as a lifeline to the outside world.

William Booth, the Jerusalem correspondent of the Washington Post, has a lengthy article about this development in the Sunday, Aug. 25 edition: "Morsi's ouster deals a blow to Hamas in Gaza -- Egypt closes tunnels that aided the militant Islamist organization," page A14.

One could point out to Booth and Post editors that the "militant Islamist" label hardly does justice to Hamas. Instead of euphemistically "militant," Hamas actually is a terrorist organization that has killed numerous Israelis in pursuit of a genocidal agenda to erase the Jewish state. But let's leave that for another day.

Of more irresistible interest is how Booth describes Gaza to Post readers. "Under Morsi," he writes, "hundreds of tunnels were allowed to flourish. Now there are a few dozen. So, fuel prices in Gaza are soaring. Orders for steel and cement go unfilled. Projects to repave roads, build public housing and repair crumbling infrastructure in the impoverished Palestinian enclave have stopped."

In Booth's view, "Gaza" and "impoverished Palestinian enclave" are synonymous. For more years that I can remember, Western correspondents reflexively have equated Gaza with poverty. Booth is but the latest.

But does the label fit the reality? Far from it, whether pre-Morsi, or post-Morsi. Booth himself seems unpersuaded. Just two paragraphs after the "impoverished" Gaza moniker, he writes that "only a few Mercedes-Benz sedans are moving through the underground corridor these days."

Poor, deprived, "impoverished" Gazans, having to cope with a diminishing supply of Mercedes-Benz automobiles and presumably other such basic essentials.

Question to Booth and Post editors: How do you reconcile Paragraph 5 (impoverished) with Paragraph 7 (Mercedes-Benz)? Is Mercedes-Benz selling a stripped model to an "impoverished" niche clientele?


Leo Rennert is a former White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief of McClatchy Newspapers

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/08/impoverished_gaza_feels_pinch_of_fewer_mercedes-benz_sales.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama’s Vanishing Deterrent

by Frank Gaffney

Barack Obama appears at this writing to be poised to embroil the United States in a new war in Syria in response to the recent, murderous use of chemical weapons there.  Ill-advised as this step is, it is but a harbinger of what is to come as reckless U.S. national security policies and postures meet the hard reality of determined adversaries emboldened by our perceived weakness.

The focus at the moment is on what tactical response the President will make to punish Syrian dictator Bashar Assad for his alleged violation of Mr. Obama’s glibly declared “red-line” barring the use of such weapons of mass destruction.  There seems to be little serious thought given at the moment to what happens next:  What steps Assad and his allies, Iran and Hezbollah, may take against us, our interests and allies; what the repercussions will be of the United States further helping the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda forces who make up the bulk of Assad’s domestic opposition; and the prospects for a far wider war as a result of the answers to both of these questions.

Even more wanting is some serious reflection about decisions taken long before Mr. Obama came to office – but that are consonant with his own, deeply flawed predilections about deterrence.  Over two decades ago, President George H.W. Bush decided he would “rid the world of chemical weapons.”  The UN Chemical Weapons Convention has had the predictable – and predicted – result that the United States has eliminated all such arms in its arsenal, leaving only bad guys like Assad with stockpiles of Sarin nerve gas and other toxic chemical weapons.

No one can say for sure whether the threat of retaliation in kind would have affected recent calculations about the use of such weapons in Syria.  What we do know is that they have been used, evidently repeatedly, in the absence of such a deterrent.

Unfortunately, President Obama seems determined to repeat this dangerous experiment with America’s nuclear forces.  He has made it national policy next to rid the world of these weapons.  And, as with our chemical stockpile, Mr. Obama seems determined to set an example in the hope that others will follow.

This policy has set in train a series of actions whose full dimensions are not generally appreciated.  All planned steps to modernize our nuclear arsenal have either been cancelled or deferred off into the future – which probably amounts to the same thing.  Consequently, we will, at best, have to rely indefinitely on a deterrent comprised of very old weapons.  Virtually all of them are many years beyond their designed service life and most are deployed aboard ground-based missiles, submarines and bombers that are also approaching or in that status.

Confidence in the safety, reliability and effectiveness of these weapons has, since Bush 41’s tenure, relied upon exotic scientific calculations bereft of actual underground nuclear tests to confirm their accuracy.  Accordingly, certifications on these scores by the directors of the nation’s national nuclear laboratories have become a function of informed guesswork, rather than empirically proven analysis.  This is not a basis for reliable deterrence.

Another symptom of the deteriorating condition of our nuclear arsenal is the fact that the Air Force has taken disciplinary action for the second time in the past few months against some of those responsible for the operations of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.  There are surely specific grounds for these punishments.  But we are kidding ourselves if we fail to consider the devastating impact on the morale and readiness of such personnel when they are told, at least implicitly, by the Commander-in-Chief that their mission is not only unimportant; it is one he wishes to terminate as soon as practicable.

Seem far-fetched?  Recall that eliminating outright our land-based missile force is something Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel personally endorsed prior to taking office. That may be the result if the President succeeds in reducing our nuclear forces to just 1,000 deployed weapons.  As of now, it is unclear whether he intends to take that step only if the Russians agree, or will do so unilaterally if they don’t.  Another uncertainty is whether Congress will go along with such rash cuts.

What is clear is that – with no more serious debate than has been applied to the implications of becoming embroiled in another war in the Middle East, this time with a country armed with chemical weapons against which we can threaten no in-kind retaliation – the United States has been launched on a trajectory towards a minimal nuclear deterrent.

Fortunately, a group of the nation’s preeminent nuclear strategists and practitioners under the leadership of the National Institute for Public Policy has just published a powerful indictment of this misbegotten policy initiative entitled Minimum Deterrence: Examining the Evidence.  It lays bare the faulty assumptions that underpin the Obama denuclearization agenda – not least the fact that the other nuclear powers, including all the threatening ones, are not following the president’s lead.

Some say America can no longer afford a strong and effective deterrent.  We may be about to test that proposition in Syria.  Heaven help us if we compound the error there by continuing our slide towards a minimum nuclear deterrent posture, en route to a world rid only of our nuclear weapons.

 

 

Frank Gaffney

Source: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/08/26/obamas-vanishing-deterrent/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Australian Islamic Cleric Incites Violence

by IPT News


An online video of an Australian Islamic cleric calling for Hindus and Buddhists to be killed is under investigation by South Australian police.

"The YouTube clip is an edited version of a longer sermon. Police will examine the entire content of the sermon to gain the full context and determine whether any crime has been committed," a statement said.

The video, published last week by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), contains excerpts from a sermon by Australian cleric Sheikh Sharif Hussein. He attacks and curses Jews, Australian troops, former Prime Minister John Howard, and President Obama.

He calls Australian soldiers "crusader pigs" and accuses them of helping British and American troops rape women in Iraq, claiming that "The Australian participation in the Crusaders' war on Iraq is 6 per cent. This is out of approximately 365,000 Crusader pigs sent to Iraq, during the term of (Mr Howard), Allah's wrath be upon him."

He also threatens President Obama: "Listen, oh Obama, oh enemy of Allah, you who kiss the shoes and feet of the Jews. Listen! The day will come when you are trampled upon by the pure feet of the Muslims." Finally, he exhorts "Oh Allah, count the Buddhists and the Hindus one by one. Oh Allah, count them and kill them to the very last one."

The MEMRI clip is from a March 22 sermon, delivered during Friday prayers at the Islamic Da'wah Centre of South Australia. Wagdy Elgeezawy of the Da'wah center said Hussein's comments were not intended to incite violence but rather "were a call for Allah to exact revenge against those who commit war crimes against Muslims." He claims that the MEMRI video was "selectively edited by pro-Jewish elements and calculated to portray Islam in a bad light."

Hussein is certainly not the first Australian radical preacher to make such comments. Ibrahim Saddiq Conlan called for the overthrow of the Australian legal system, noting that "Democracy is evil, the parliament is evil and legislation is evil." Sheik Haron openly promoted jihad against the West and celebrated the deaths of Australians in war and in the Victorian bushfires. Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali claimed that women who do not wear the hijab are like "uncovered meat."

A 2007 report claimed that Australia had a larger percentage of Muslim youth at risk of turning to radical Islam than any other Western nation, noting that there were "3,000 in 'ideological sleeper cells' in Sydney alone."

Waleed Alkhazrajy, a spokesman for the Islamic Society of South Australia, added that he hopes the video does not provoke retribution. "We don't want people to misunderstood these remarks and believe this represents the wider Muslim community view, and then they start to attack members of our community…" In fact, the inevitable outcome is that the incitement issue is soon sidelined and the focus shifts to police fearing for Sheikh Sharif Hussein's safety.


IPT News

Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/4136/australian-islamic-cleric-incites-violence

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Remember Bashar the Reformer?

by Michael Rubin


Bashar al-Assad is in the running for the most dangerous man in the world. There are not too many world leaders who would acquire such reserves of chemical weapons and then seek to use them against anyone, let alone civilians. While the U.S. military conducts lessons-learned exercises all the time in order to learn from their mistakes and make themselves a more effective force, I am not aware of a single time in which the State Department or senior U.S. government officials have acknowledged error and conducted a similar lessons-learned exercise to identify where they went wrong.

Let’s hope that, if they ever start, they consider how the Syrian regime pulled the wool over their eyes. Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad may have spent some time in the West, but just because Islamists and autocrats spend time in the West does not mean that they acquire Western values; instead, they learn only how to speak to Westerners and cultivate useful idiots.

At any rate, here are some blasts from the past, American officials who for ego or because of animosity toward George W. Bush did their best to end Assad’s isolation. It’s always fun to read their statements reporting Assad’s willingness to solve mutual problems.

• Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.), who took time out to tour the markets to maximum benefit for Syrian state television.
• Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), more John Kerry, and even more John Kerry. That second story reminds how the Obama administration once went so far as to give Syria spare parts for its planes.
• Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who seems to have relished his defiance of Bush.
• The late Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), at the time still a Republican, might have acted as a tour guide: His trip with Nelson and Kerry was his 16th taxpayer-funded trip to Damascus, and it was not his last.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may not have gone herself, but she used her senate colleagues’ experience meeting Assad to justify her description of him as a reformer. “There’s a different leader in Syria now,” she told CBS’s Face the Nation, explaining, “Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.”
• Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) spent nearly $8,000 on two trips to Damascus, while Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) spent nearly twice that, according to Legistorm.
• Gen. David Petraeus repeatedly asked President George W. Bush for permission to go tête-à-tête with Assad in Damascus; let’s be glad Bush said no, both because it saved Petraeus the embarrassment and denied Assad a propaganda coup.

Perhaps in this age of budget-cutting, it would be useful to ask Pelosi, Kerry, and Nelson—all of whom still serve publicly—about what in hindsight they see as the value of their trips to Syria, and someone might ask Clinton which is more important: the established and brutal record of dictators, or what they happen to tell her colleagues in his palace over tea and coffee.
 

Michael Rubin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/08/26/remember-bashar-the-reformer/#more-832177

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Britain: Muslim TV Hate Preachers "Inciting Murder"

by Soeren Kern

"Disrespectful people should be eliminated." — Allama Muhammed Farooq Nazimi, presenter on UK's Noor TV, May 3, 2012

An Islamic television channel has been hit with a hefty fine after a Muslim hate preacher told viewers, live on air, that it was the duty of all Muslims to murder anyone who shows disrespect for the Prophet Mohammed.

Noor TV, a British-based Satellite Television Channel that broadcasts programs about Islam throughout Europe, was fined £85,000 ($115,000) by the British broadcasting regulator known as Ofcom for inciting people to commit murder.

Ofcom said the fine imposed on August 21 was so large due to "the serious nature of the breaches of the Broadcasting Code." It said young Muslims watching Noor TV could become "radicalized" and take "violent and criminal action as a result of watching videos of Muslims with extreme views."

The program in question, Paigham-e-Mustafa, a talk show aimed at young British Muslims, was broadcast on May 3, 2012. According to an "enforcement bulletin" published by Ofcom in December 2012, the program featured a presenter named Allama Muhammad Farooq Nazimi, who answered questions about a wide range of issues and personal conduct relating to Islam and Islamic teachings.

Allama Muhammad Farooq Nazimi.

The questions were provided by people who called in live from various countries, including the United Kingdom, countries in Western Europe such as Holland and Germany, and Pakistan.

At approximately one hour and 18 minutes into the program, Nazimi answered a question from a caller who asked, "What is the punishment for the individual who shows disrespect for Prophet Mohammed?"

In response to the question, Nazimi delivered an impassioned monologue, saying:

There is no disagreement about this [the punishment]; there is absolutely no doubt about it that the punishment for the person who shows disrespect for the Prophet is death. No one [among the Islamic scholars] disagrees about this. No one disagrees about this. The Koran, hadith [orally transmitted quotes of Mohammed], the actions of the companions of Prophet Mohammed, all testify to this [punishment] and there is no room for doubt in it. Whoever shows disrespect for Prophet Mohammed will be given the death penalty.
...
We salute those who protect the sanctity of our Lord [Mohammed] and we pray for ourselves too, "O Allah, accept us among those who protect the sanctity of our beloved Mohammed." There is no privilege in the world greater than this: that the Exalted Allah should select and accept one to [kill to] protect the sanctity of our beloved Lord [Mohammed].

Speaking directly into the camera, Nazimi concluded his remarks this way:

One has to choose one's own method. … No one can be more fortunate than the one who loses his life, wealth and children for the sake of glorifying our beloved Lord [Mohammed] whom Allah praises and protects. I say the aim of establishing Noor TV, and the slogan of the founder of Noor TV, is the protection of the sanctity of Prophet Mohammed. … In the whole world, there should be slaves of Mustafa [Mohammed] everywhere, and disrespectful people should be eliminated. … The mission of our life is to protect the sanctity of our beloved Lord [Mohammed]. May Allah accept us wherever there is a need [to kill a blasphemer]. We are ready and should be ready at all times [to kill a blasphemer].

According to Ofcom, Nazimi's comments raised issues under Rule 3.1 of the Broadcasting Code, which states that, "Material likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or to lead to disorder must not be included in television or radio services."

In addition, the material complained of raised issues under Rule 4.1: "Broadcasters must exercise the proper degree of responsibility with respect to the content of programs which are religious programs."

In its decision (pages 22-31), Ofcom wrote:

In this case, statements were broadcast that it was acceptable, or even the duty of a Muslim, to murder any person thought to have shown disrespect to the Prophet Mohammad where the relevant government had failed to take any action. We therefore assessed whether these statements were likely to encourage or incite criminal action against individuals who might be deemed to have criticized or insulted the Prophet Mohammed; or to lead to disorder. As part of this assessment, we considered whether the presenter's statements in the program included any direct or indirect calls to action.

According to Ofcom,

We considered that the broadcast of the various statements made by the Islamic scholar outlined above was likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime. A number of the remarks in Ofcom's opinion amounted to direct calls to action. In particular, we interpreted some of Mr. Nazimi's comments to be a generic call to all Muslims encouraging or inciting them to criminal action or disorder by unambiguously stating that the appropriate penalty for showing disrespect to Mohammed was the death penalty. … We believe that on a reasonable interpretation of the presenter's remarks, he was personally advocating that all Muslims had a duty to carry out the actions he suggested.

Ofcom also said it considered the remarks to be so inflammatory that they could have inspired a repeat of the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was killed after Islamic clerics condemned his film which criticized the treatment of Muslim women.

Lawyers for Noor TV's parent company, the Birmingham-based Al Ehya Digital Television, said that Ofcom's ruling amounted to Islamophobia.

Al Ehya -- whose corporate motto is "Spreading Love, Peace and Harmony across the Globe" -- said that there was "nothing new or unknown" in the statements made by the presenter relating to the implementation of Islamic law: they are set out in the Koran and it is a requirement that they are taught to young Muslims.

Al Ehya also accused Ofcom of unfairly picking on Muslims and referred to various instances of violence and sacrifice in the Bible. Al Ehya suggested that Ofcom was approaching "this situation in quite a different way in that which it might if any Priest of the Christian Church was reading segments of the Bible that contained such remarks."

Ofcom countered by saying that

the purpose of Rule 3.1 is not to prevent material being broadcast which includes discussion or recital of passages from ancient religious scripture and sacred texts that refer to acts of violence and retribution. However, broadcasters transmitting material under an Ofcom license (who must therefore ensure compliance with UK broadcasting rules) must ensure that such material is not featured in a way that would be likely to incite or encourage viewers to undertake criminal acts and thereby be in breach of Rule 3.1.

Ofcom added that it

is of course aware that there are some texts in the Koran and related documents, well known to Muslims, suggesting that those who blaspheme against or show disrespect towards the Prophet Mohammed should be severely punished, including by execution. … Precisely however because some extremist Muslims have sought to use various passages from these Koranic texts to seek to justify taking very violent action against those whom they deem to have insulted the Prophet, an important responsibility lies on Ofcom licensees to take due care in providing appropriate balance and context to any discussion of those passages.

In its ruling, Ofcom also criticized Al Ehya for not taking the comments seriously enough after concerns were initially raised by the broadcast watchdog:

The Licensee [Al Ehya] has not at any point broadcast any form of apology for, or condemnation of Mr. Nazimi's remarks, and neither on air nor in correspondence with Ofcom has the Licensee expressed its unequivocal regret that these comments were broadcast. The Licensee regretted only in its submissions that the presenter's comments "may have been misinterpreted" and that he expressed his own political views during the program. Taking all these factors into account, Ofcom was concerned that the Licensee has still not recognized the gravity of the statements made by Mr. Nazimi.

The television network has not broadcast an apology for the comments, and it took six months to air a "clarification."

This is not, however, the first time Ofcom has fined Al Ehya/Noor TV for broadcasting code violations.

In September 2011, Ofcom fined Al Ehya £75,000 ($100,000) for repeated breaches relating to Noor TV's Saturday Night Special program, which features presenters taking calls from viewers who donate money to the channel in return for prayers.

The regulator said (here and here) the program offered "inducements" for donations of up to £1,000 ($1,300), such as special gifts and prayers that were claimed to improve the health, wealth or success of donors.

More specifically, Noor TV had appealed for viewers to make donations of £1,000 in return for the receipt of a "special gift" of dirt from Mohammed's tomb.

According to a transcript of the program, the presenter of Saturday Night Special said:

I want to tell all those brothers who have offered £1,000 each to give us their numbers because I, this humble man, would like to send them a gift which is the earth from the holy tomb of our Lord [Mohammed], whom Allah praises and protects. May you be blessed by this; it is a special gift for you. Our perfect sheikh will send this special gift of the earth from the holy tomb of our Lord, whom Allah praises and protects. Allah willing. All those brothers and sisters who have donated £1,000 each, it is a special gift for you which Noor TV is presenting to honor you. We will send this special gift of the earth from the holy tomb of our Lord.

According to Ofcom, the deception "carried the risk that susceptible members of the audience may have been persuaded to donate money to Noor TV when they would not otherwise have done so." At least 20 viewers fell for the scam.

In a separate case in July 2013, Ofcom ordered DM Digital Television to pay a fine of £85,000 ($115,000) after it broadcast a speech by an Islamic scholar who said Muslims had "a duty to kill" anyone who insulted the Prophet Mohammed.

The Manchester-based channel, which says it has a worldwide audience of 30 million, describes itself as bringing "Asian and English cultures closer by integrating its people, the cultural diversity, communities and the economy.

In its ruling, Ofcom cited a program called Rehmatul Lil Alameen, which was broadcast on October 9, 2011, and featured a live lecture it said was "likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or to lead to disorder."

Ofcom stated that some of the scholar's comments could be seen as "a generic call to all Muslims encouraging or inciting them to criminal action or disorder, by unambiguously stating that they had a duty to kill anyone who criticizes or insults the Prophet Mohammed and apostates."

DM Digital TV had also previously been fined £17,500 ($27,200) by Ofcom for perpetrating a series of financial scams in which it misled viewers into investing in phony real estate projects.

In January 2013, Ofcom said that Takbeer TV, based in Nottingham, was guilty of violating the broadcasting code twice in 18 months for programs that incited hatred and violence toward the Ahmadiyya community, a minority Muslim sect.

In November 2012, Radio Asian Fever, in Leeds, was fined £4,000 ($5,400) for breaching broadcasting rules in programs involving a presenter named Rubina Nasir. Also known as Sister Ruby Ramadan, Nasir told listeners that homosexuals should be beaten and tortured.

In a program broadcast on August 17, 2011, Nasir said: "What should be done to those who practice homosexuality? Torture them; punish them; beat them and give them mental torture."

She added: "Allah states, 'If they do such a deed [homosexuality], punish them, both physically and mentally. Mental punishment means rebuke them, beat them, humiliate them, admonish and curse them, and beat them up. This command was sent in the beginning because capital punishment had not yet been sent down."

In its ruling, Ofcom found that Nasir's statements were in breach of Rule 3.1 and likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or to lead to disorder. Ofcom said it considered that the statements could be objectively and reasonably regarded as not only condoning but encouraging violent behavior against homosexuals.

According to Ofcom,

Acts of violence and hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation are prohibited by UK law. We considered that the broadcast of these two statements made by the presenter was likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime, i.e. violence or other unlawful acts motivated by hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. For the same reasons we concluded that these statements were likely to encourage others to copy the sort of unacceptable behavior towards homosexual people described by the presenter, in breach of Rule 2.4 of the Code.

In another broadcast, Nasir said that that any Muslim who marries a non-Muslim was on "the straight path to hellfire." She asked rhetorically, "What happens when a Muslim man or woman get married to a Mushrek [an Arabic term meaning polytheist, but which refers to Christians, who, Muslims say, are polytheists because of their belief in Jesus Christ]. Listeners! Marriage of a Muslim man or woman with a Mushrek is the straight path to hellfire. Have my sisters and brothers, who live with people of bad religions or alien religions, ever thought about what would become of the children they have had with them, and the coming generation?"

"Where the filth of shirk [the sin of following another religion] is present," Nasir added, "where the dirt of shirk is present, where the heart is impure, how can you remove apparent filth. How many arrangements will you make to remove the apparent filth? We are saying that Mushreks have no concept of cleanliness and uncleanliness."


Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3947/britain-muslim-tv-preachers

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Writing the bin Laden Story

by A.J. Caschetta


Great, definitive biographies are rarely written by their subjects' contemporaries. Generations often pass before sufficient evidence can be amassed, analyzed, and written into a narrative by a skilled and dispassionate biographer. The biographies of Osama bin Laden currently in print are all flawed but necessary steps in the path leading to the definitive bin Laden biography. The magnitude and trauma of al-Qaeda's September 11 attacks are so profound and far-reaching that it will likely take a biographer for whom the event is itself history to write the definitive bin Laden biography.

Still, the two-year anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden presents an opportune moment to review the biographies of America's late enemy number one—with a focus on the more recent works written while he was still hiding in Pakistan—while anticipating a flurry of postmortem biographies sure to come.

Omar bin Laden, third son of the arch-terrorist, seen here with his wife, provides an insider's account of childhood with the al-Qaeda leader in Growing Up bin Laden, including tales of his father's severe and often abusive behavior.

Prior to bin Laden's Death

Pre-9/11 bin Laden biographies are a rare few, predating the entry of "bin Laden" and "al-Qaeda" into the nation's, indeed the world's, lexicon. Anyone looking to learn about bin Laden on the afternoon of September 10 could find newspaper investigations, interviews, and television shows aplenty, but the only available book-length texts telling bin Laden's story were Yossef Bodansky's Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America[1] and Simon Reeve's The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism.[2] Bodansky refers to bin Laden's "organization," "group," and "network" but does not yet use the name "al-Qaeda." Reeve's book, which does have a chapter titled "al-Qaeda," shows how the FBI and CIA gradually became aware of bin Laden, at first deeming him merely a terror financier (a "Gucci Terrorist" as Reeve puts it) but gradually piecing together the story and revealing an unprecedented threat.

After 9/11, interest naturally grew, and more book-length biographies were written. But they are still only a handful, hardly more numerous than the pre-9/11 texts written over the near decade comprising bin Laden's "underground" era. They were dominated early on by the journalistic accounts of Peter Bergen, one of the few Westerners to have interviewed the arch-terrorist, first in his Holy War, Inc.[3] and then The Osama bin Laden I Know.[4] Any post-9/11 biography of bin Laden had, and still has, to contend with Bergen's work, a combination of biography and "new journalism," a blending of traditional reportage with an account of the reporter's quest for the information. In 2004, former Washington Post correspondent Jonathan Randal weighed in with Osama: The Making of a Terrorist,[5] and as one might suspect from a leftist journalist writing in the run-up to the reelection campaign of President George W. Bush, he seems more concerned with impugning the incumbent president than with writing bin Laden's story. Unlike Bergen, Randal has difficulty curbing his new journalism proclivities: The author reveals almost as much about himself as about bin Laden, and his book might more aptly be titled "Covering Osama," for he interjects himself into every situation, touching on nearly the entire history of the modern Middle East.

Two other important texts, while not exactly bin Laden biographies per se, tell his story in larger contexts. The first by intelligence specialist-turned-author Rohan Gunaratna is Inside al-Qaeda. Global Network of Terror[6] whose 50-page first chapter "Who Is Osama bin Laden?" is still an important source for bin Laden biographers. The other, by journalist/filmmaker/novelist Lawrence Wright is The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.[7] Wright's grand (and grandiose) Pulitzer Prize-winning work is a narrative masterpiece, weaving together the lives of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, FBI specialist John O'Neill, and Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki with the authority of a journalist and the skills of a novelist. But the bulk of that authority comes from Wright's hundreds of interviews (there are 560 names in the "Author Interviews" appendix), and the downside is that the book thereby depends on often untraceable information. Readers are left with no way to follow up on the details and are expected to accept them as factual. A third work, Steve Coll's The bin Ladens. An Arabian Family in the American Century[8] expanded the focus to the entire bin Laden clan.

Growing up bin Laden

Perhaps the two most important books post-dating 9/11 but predating bin Laden's death are full-length biographies, and they are must-reads: Najwa and Omar bin Laden's Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World[9] and Michael Scheuer's Osama Bin Laden[10] published just weeks before bin Laden's death.

In Growing Up bin Laden, the first wife and third son of Osama bin Laden attempt to humanize and yet distance themselves from husband and father. Eighteen chapters by son Omar and twelve by wife Najwa are book-ended by introductions, appendices, and occasional explanatory notes—short chapters really—by Jean Sasson in the role of interviewer/amanuensis/historian. Both Najwa and Omar are invested in the bin Laden legacy and stand to gain or lose depending on how their roles in that legacy are perceived. Both offer interesting and new information.

Najwa's chapters take readers on her personal journey from her native Syria where she met her first cousin and future husband Osama to her married life in Saudi Arabia, then Peshawar during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, later Khartoum, and ultimately to Afghanistan. The chapters reveal small details in the domestic life of the bin Laden household where she was wife number one and, most importantly, mother of son number one, Abdullah.

These details include bin Laden's love of fast cars ("my husband had enough money from his inheritance to buy the latest model automobile and loved seeing how fast it could go") as well as wives, one of which Najwa herself chooses. She offers new information on the question of whether bin Laden ever came to the United States, claiming that the entire family accompanied her husband and Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden's mentor, to Indiana and remained there while the two men went briefly to Los Angeles. Najwa provides fond reminiscences of life in the Sudan where her husband's "favorite undertaking was working the land." These were the same years that al-Qaeda consolidated power with Egyptian extremist groups, confronted the United States in Somalia, financed the first World Trade Center bombing, and mapped out its global jihad. It is difficult not to read irony—and self-delusion—into her recollection: "Those are the best memories, to be busy and part of a worthy mission to produce something practical."

More interesting historically are Omar's chapters, recalling bin Laden's life through the eyes of the son selected to take over the family terror business. Omar portrays himself as a pacifist who loves his father but hates his "work." Najwa calls Omar her "most sensitive child," and Omar plays this role to the hilt, letting readers experience the asceticism and cruelty of his father's tough love through his sensitive eyes: long hikes through the mountains without water, Spartan accommodations in Tora Bora, the insistence that none of the children laugh, joke, or smile so much that they show their teeth, and other "absurd rules." Omar's chapters more often than not come off as equivocating and mewling but occasionally manage to evoke some sympathy as in his description of his predicament as an asthmatic whose father refused to allow any prescription medications in his house because they were not available in the time of the prophet Muhammad. But in spite of his sufferings and self-portrayal as a misunderstood son struggling to earn the respect of his father, he still offers up lines sure to aggravate many readers, such as, "My father was a brilliant man in many ways." It is difficult to gauge the degree to which Omar is being disingenuous when he claims: "Our Muslim deaths were lamented, African deaths ignored, and American deaths celebrated. I was too young to understand the full madness of such thinking."

Omar's chapters also are filled with fascinating tidbits and important details that fill gaps left by previous biographers. For instance, most journalists assert that bin Laden was left-handed, a belief seemingly confirmed by the ubiquitous post-9/11 film clip of the smiling terrorist, firing and then lovingly cradling a Kalashnikov southpaw-style. But Omar reveals instead a childhood accident that left bin Laden "virtually blind in his right eye," thus his adaptation to the injury by shooting left-handed. Omar also refutes the claims that bin Laden suffered from chronic kidney failure explaining that "the only explanation for this rumor is that my father … had a tendency to suffer from kidney stones."

Omar's chapters are designed to depict the barbarity of life with his father and his loyal supporters. The most shocking example of this is Omar's version of an episode from Khartoum when his friend, the son of a high-ranking member of the jihadist al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya group, was raped by several men from Ayman al-Zawahiri's sometime-rival group Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The rapists photographed their violation of the young boy and once the actual photos were spread around, it was the boy victim rather than the adult rapists who received the blame. Omar reports that Zawahiri became so incensed that the boy "was dragged into a room with Zawahiri, who shot him in the head."

Ultimately, Growing Up bin Laden will, and must, be seen as a piece of propaganda—useful and insightful propaganda, but propaganda nevertheless. Bin Laden's malevolence is frequently attributed, both directly and indirectly, to the Egyptians, portrayed throughout as the dominating forces in the terror-master's thinking. Najwa hints at this influence but acknowledges that she was never privy to her husband's secret meetings: "Like all women in Saudi Arabia, I would never attend such gatherings." Omar is more direct, portraying Zawahiri in particular as the villain of his father's life story claiming that "the Egyptian doctor had an evil influence over my father." Sasson's brief chapters also emphasize the malevolent influence of the Egyptians on bin Laden's circle: "While [Palestinian] Abdullah Azzam was not in favor of violence against fellow Muslims, Zawahiri had no such scruples." In sum, Growing Up bin Laden is destined to be read as an interesting but inevitably suspect and unreliable account of the life of Osama bin Laden.

Scheuer's Osama bin Laden

Michael Scheuer, who pursued bin Laden for years from within the CIA's dedicated bin Laden unit, which he himself set up, is uniquely qualified to write a biography of his quarry. Along with John O'Neill who pursued bin Laden from the FBI's dedicated bin Laden unit, Scheuer fought not only bin Laden and al-Qaeda but also "the wall" built between law enforcement and intelligence, a wall begun by the Carter administration in the wake of Watergate and then made insurmountable by the Clinton administration, with Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick's infamous 1995 memo conferring constitutional protections on foreign terrorists through executive order.[11] Both O'Neill and Scheuer did everything the law would allow to capture, prosecute, or kill bin Laden, and both ended up quitting their posts, in part out of disgust over the rules of engagement forced on them, and in part out of trouble they encountered due to their unique styles. O'Neill would tragically perish on 9/11—a mere twenty days after beginning his new job as head of security for the World Trade Center—while Scheuer would go on to write books, first anonymously (while still at the CIA) and then later openly, after quitting in 2004:

The amount of individual negligence and culpability at the highest levels of the American government was completely whitewashed by the 9/11 commission. And I resigned because I wanted to speak out on those issues.[12]

His post-CIA books have been largely supportive of most aspects of U.S. efforts to destroy al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan but critical of the overall "war on terror" and especially the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This biography of bin Laden is his latest effort.

Of all the biographies surveyed, Scheuer's is the most sophisticated in its assessment of both the life of Osama bin Laden and of previous biographies. Scheuer is not only an astute historian but also a literary critic, nimbly outlining the concepts behind what he calls "the bin Laden narratives"—a series of eight prevalent distortions of the terrorist's life. Scheuer explains how each one is fallacious and dangerous. Three he dismisses out of hand: those that depict bin Laden and al-Qaeda as "tools of Iran … tools of the CIA … [or] tools of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate." The remaining five narratives are more nuanced and less easily dismissed, but Scheuer argues that several are in need of discounting, such as the perception of bin Laden as a madman, a common criminal, or a good and sensitive Muslim whose view of Islam was corrupted by the Egyptians who came to dominate al-Qaeda. Scheuer argues fervently and convincingly that the "story of al-Zawahiri craftily brainwashing bin Laden and hijacking al-Qaeda is cut from whole cloth by the Saudis and others as part of their 'good-Saudi-boy-led-astray-by-evil-Egyptians' narrative." He is also clear and levelheaded in taking on myths such as the "blow-back" theory that blames Washington for the rise of al-Qaeda and the Taliban and that posits the notion that, in the post-Soviet era, U.S. administrations simply abandoned Afghanistan. While Scheuer takes Lawrence Wright to task for relying too heavily on selective sources (such as Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who Scheuer claims is also invested in the "good Saudi boy" narrative), he overlooks the possibility that he also relies too heavily on his own interviews or his own privileging of sources that may advance their own self-serving or self-exonerating narratives.

Scheuer's is the best book yet to detail the importance of the Advice and Reform Committee (ARC), bin Laden's "think tank" set up in early 1994 in the Sudan. He refers to the ARC communiqués as "our first extended look at bin Laden's written thought" and demonstrates how the ARC essays, which were faxed to the London office and then disseminated to the world, reflect al-Qaeda's increasingly radical agenda. Scheuer is also perhaps the best at explaining bin Laden's tactics and the process by which the terrorist learned from his mistakes (especially at the August 1987 battle of Jaji against Soviet troops in Afghanistan) and later in Jalalabad in March 1989.

Scheuer is very good at exposing the popular but erroneous view of bin Laden as an untrained, neophyte scholar, uncredentialed and unschooled in matters that would confer upon him the title of sheikh and, therefore, unworthy of the authority to issue fatwas (Islamic edicts). Of course bin Laden did indeed issue fatwas. And, deservedly or not, he was called sheikh by his followers, who hung on his every word.

By contrast, Scheuer downplays the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on bin Laden. In fact, there is no serious analysis of the influence of the Brotherhood on bin Laden's thought or that of Sayyid Qutb or Hasan al-Banna, seminal leaders of the organization. This unfortunate omission leads Scheuer to overlook completely bin Laden's caliphate irredentism, the longing to fulfill his prophet Muhammad's quest and to institute Shari'a law, at first in the lands of the "near enemy" (i.e., Saudi Arabia) but surely later in the lands of the "far enemy" (the West). Scheuer might understand bin Laden's project in the larger context of Islamic history and polity were he to read carefully Efraim Karsh's excellent Islamic Imperialism: A History,[13] but, in fact, he dismisses Karsh's work wholesale, along with that of Victor Davis Hanson, Douglas Feith, Bernard Lewis, Charles Krauthammer, George Weigel, John Bolton, William Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz, all of whom are denounced as neoconservative imperialists afflicted with a "blind faith in the moral superiority of Israel in general and Likudites in particular."

Readers of this journal may bristle at Scheuer's failure to grasp the natural U.S. connection to Israel as fellow targets of Islamist terrorism. His anti-Israel stance is consistent throughout the book, and he has been unabashed about it since leaving the CIA as in his response to a question posed in an interview conducted prior to bin Laden's death: "I carry no case for the Israeli relationship—I think it is a terrible relationship for America. The public opinion of the Muslim world is deeply hateful towards Israel. If you are going to satisfy the public in this new secular age of democracy you are going to have to be anti-Israeli and probably allow your people to help the Palestinians."[14]

As one might suspect, the author of the anonymously-published Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror[15] has little good to say about the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but, along the way, he paradoxically argues: "While in power, Saddam was the best ally of Israel and the United States when it came to Israel's security. He dabbled with supporting Palestinian insurgents, but he also performed yeoman service in preventing the westward flow of Sunni fighters from South Asia to the Levant." The numerous $25,000 checks signed variously by Saddam and his son Uday sent to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers amount to far more than mere "dabbling" from both a moral and legal standpoint. Scheuer also ignores Iraq's role in international terrorism: Salmon Pak, Saddam's premier terrorist training camp, is not mentioned. For Scheuer, the decision to invade Iraq played right into bin Laden's master plan.

The most surprising (and disturbing) aspect of Osama Bin Laden is the degree to which Scheuer admires his subject, a tendency present in his earlier work. In his view, bin Laden is a celebrity, "one of those 'Great Men'… [who] has had a greater impact on how Americans view their society, government, and security than any other individual in the past fifty years." Fawning admiration also permeates Jonathan Randal's descriptions of bin Laden ("Che Guevara, Robin Hood, Saladin and Avenging Angel of Death rolled into one"). Excessive and unnecessary Osama admiration is also evident in the work of Bruce Lawrence, whose otherwise valuable and necessary anthology Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden[16] is marred by a 13-page introduction filled with moral equivalencies (comparing bin Laden to Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon, for example) and by footnotes and introductory paragraphs that always seem to accept bin Laden's view of history and take his side while opposing the American version. But even Lawrence (who recently made a splash in Hyderabad's Sissat Daily with the proclamation that, as Robert Spencer put it, "Islam has no connection with terrorism") recognizes the hyperbole of Scheuer's 2004 description of bin Laden in Imperial Hubris as "a pious, charismatic, gentle, generous, talented, and personally courageous Muslim."

Scheuer follows Randal's lead with the grating comparison of bin Laden to Saladin and Robin Hood, but he goes further, comparing the arch-terrorist to a Western management guru using his "skills to run a multiethnic, multinational, and multilingual organization that is unique in the Muslim world … display[ing] the cool reasoning of a cost-benefit-calculating businessman, and the sophistication of a media mogul." Readers will decide for themselves whether such rhetoric is overblown or fair. What is fair, however, is to charge Scheuer with too readily believing bin Laden's own narrative for al-Qaeda's reign of terror. Scheuer argues for instance that al-Qaeda is only engaging in defensive jihad when in fact anyone who has read Raymond Ibrahim's The Al-Qaeda Reader[17] cover-to-cover (which Scheuer acknowledges as an important but incomplete text) knows that both bin Laden and Zawahiri have taken great pains to disguise as defensive their plainly offensive jihad. Nonetheless, Scheuer accepts bin Laden's jihad as a defensive one largely due to the latter's portrayal of a U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia (beginning with Desert Shield in August 1990) as an "occupation."

An honest historical evaluation recognizes that both Desert Shield and Desert Storm saved "the land of the two holy sites" from what would have been a genuinely brutal Iraqi occupation, like the one experienced by Kuwait. Subsequent arms and training deals cut between the Saudis and the administrations of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush were mutual agreements between two sovereign nations. Bin Laden's failure to secure the job that the Saudi royal family ultimately entrusted to the U.S. government caused him to portray the relationship between Washington and Riyadh as an occupation: Scheuer should know better.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment in the book concerns the "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman. He was central to the foundation of the so-called Services Bureau (Maktab al-Khidamat or MAK) and then to its takeover after the assassinations of first Abdullah Azzam and then of Mustafa Shalabi, whom Azzam selected to run the Alkifah Center in Brooklyn—MAK's most important hub. Scheuer's work at the CIA presumably put him in a position to know something about the disastrous and perplexing decisions of the U.S. government to admit Rahman at least three times (in 1986, 1987, and 1990)[18] followed by the catastrophic decision to grant him a green card in 1991[19]—despite everything known about him. Bin Laden's numerous written fatwas demanding Rahman's release, and the 2000 video fatwa urging Muslims to "revenge your sheikh," more than justify an analysis of Rahman's role in bin Laden's life story. Scheuer's failure to provide that analysis can only be seen as an evasion.

The driving principle behind Scheuer's bin Laden narrative is the argument that the "status quo U.S. foreign policy generates Islamist insurgents faster than they can be killed" and that only a change in that foreign policy can change the situation. But again Scheuer is selective in his evidence. A glance at bin Laden's 2002 diatribe, "Why We Are Fighting You," shows that foreign policy is indeed a problem, for the polemic focuses about half of its attention on U.S. foreign policy, especially vis-à-vis the Israeli-Arab conflict. But the other half is devoted to matters that touch at the core of America, matters such as personal freedom, which bin Laden sees as our insufficient submission to God, the fact that Americans "separate religion from your policies," and U.S. law's refusal to prosecute people for "immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and usury." He complains that women in America are allowed to work and that sex is sold and traded "under the name of 'art, entertainment, tourism, and freedom.'" All of these complaints and others add up to bin Laden's lament that America is "the worst civilization witnessed in the history of mankind." The only solution he offers is that Americans convert: "The first thing we are calling you to is Islam." Scheuer seems earnestly to believe that a change in U.S. foreign policy will end al-Qaeda's war, but he arrives at that conclusion by selectively focusing on parts of bin Laden's program while ignoring others that do not fit his narrative. Sometimes he allows this stance to blind him to reality as when he claims of bin Laden's jihad: "The war is being fought, for now, only on Muslim territory."

Conclusion

Omar and Najwa bin Laden, as participants in the life and history of Osama bin Laden, are able to tell us about their subject through their firsthand dealings with him, relying on their memories rather than research. Lawrence Wright is a storyteller whose sweeping narrative omits and ignores much in the interest of crafting a coherent portrayal of four different lives, spanning decades and continents, producing a work of art and of artifice. But Michael Scheuer is all three: a skilled analyst and historian, a capable storyteller, and a participant in the events of bin Laden's life out to set the record straight.

The future of what may come to be known as "bin Laden studies" and the legacy of the man are still in question. Scheuer's is the most recent biography with all subsequent books likely focusing on the hunt for and killing of bin Laden. And while it is too early to tell what the postmortem biographies will look like (none was available at this writing), it is likely that some will downplay and diminish the role of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, depicting the United States, Saudi Arabia, the Taliban, or some other nation-state or non-state entity as the more important force that pushed bin Laden onto the world stage while others will elevate and exaggerate the role of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Still others will claim bin Laden was never killed in May 2011 at all. One wonders how Hollywood will present him in the bio-pics that are sure to come.

The most significant addition to the story will come with the declassification and release of the treasure-trove of information removed from bin Laden's dingy hideout in Abbotabad.[20] Thus far of the dozens of hard-drives, thumb-drives, lap-tops and disks removed by the Navy SEALs, a mere seventeen documents have been made available to West Point's Counter Terrorism Center.[21] Over time that data will be released, and it will be invaluable to future bin Laden biographers, assuming it consists of more than bin Laden's pornography stash[22] and his collection of self-indulgent videos, like the one released on May 7, 2011, of a grey-haired bin Laden squatting in front of a television watching videos of himself.

A.J. Caschetta is senior lecturer in English at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He can be reached at ajcgsl@rit.edu.

[1] Roseville, Calif.: Prima Lifestyles, 1999. [2] Holliston, Mass.: Northeastern, 1999. [3] London: Phoenix Paperbacks, 2002. [4] New York: Free Press, 2006. [5] New York: Knopf, 2004. [6] New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. [7] New York: Knopf, 2006. [8] New York: Penguin Press, 2008. [9] New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009. [10] New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2011. [11] "A Review of the FBI's Handling of Intelligence Information Prior to the September 11 Attacks, Special Report, Redacted and Unclassified," Nov. 2004 (released publicly June 2005), Office of the Inspector General, chap. 2: Background. [12] Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, Jan. 8, 2007. [13] New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. [14] Paul Davis, "IACSP Q & A with Michael Scheuer," The Journal of Counter Terrorism and Homeland Security International, 2 (17), p. 70. [15] Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc., 2004. [16] London: Verso, annotated ed., 2005. [17] New York: Doubleday, 2007. [18] The New York Times, July 22, 1993. [19] Time Magazine, July 5, 1993. [20] Mark Owen, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden (New York: Dutton Adult, 2012), p. 247. [21] CNN News, May 4, 2012. [22] CBS News, May 14, 2011.

A.J. Caschetta is senior lecturer in English at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He can be reached at ajcgsl@rit.edu.

Source: http://www.meforum.org/3595/bin-laden-story

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.