"Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden" Bruce Lawrence (Verso 2005)
Despite the saturation of global media coverage, Osama bin Laden's own writings have been curiously absent from analysis of the "war on terror." Over the last ten years, bin Laden has issued a series of carefully tailored public statements, from interviews with Western and Arabic journalists to faxes and video recordings. These texts supply evidence crucial to an understanding of the bizarre mix of Quranic scholarship, CIA training, punctual interventions in Gulf politics and messianic anti-imperialism that has formed the programmatic core of Al Qaeda. In bringing together the various statements issued under bin Laden's name since 1994, this volume forms part of a growing discourse that seeks to demythologize the terrorist network. Newly translated from the Arabic, annotated with a critical introduction by Islamic scholar Bruce Lawrence, this collection places the statements in their religious, historical and political context. It shows how bin Laden's views draw on and differ from other strands of radical Islamic thought; it also demonstrates how his arguments vary in degrees of consistency, and how his evasions concerning the true nature and extent of his own group, and over his own role in terrorist attacks, have contributed to the perpetuation of his personal mythology. About the author
Bruce Lawrence is a professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University and the author of six books, including
"New Faiths, Old Fears: Muslims and Other Asian Immigrants in American Religious Life,
Shattering the Myth"
"Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age"
(text by publisher)
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Title: Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden
Authors: Osama bin Laden (Author), Bruce Lawrence (Author, Editor)
Publisher: Verso
Year: 2005
Number of pages: 320
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:: Table of Contents ::
I. From Sudan 1994-1995
1. The betrayal of Palestine
2. The invasion of Arabia
II. In Khurasan 1996-1998
3. Declaration of Jihad
4. The Saudi regime
5. From Somalia to Afghanistan
6. The world Islamic front
III. Towards 9/11 1998-2001
7. A Muslim bomb
8. Under Mullah Omar
9. To our brothers in Pakistan
10. The winds of faith
11. Terror for terror
IV. War in Afghanistan 2001-2002
12. Crusader wars
13. The example of Vietnam
14. Nineteen students
15. To the people of Afghanistan
16. To the Americans
17. To the allies of America
V. War in Iraq 2003-2004
18. To the people of Iraq
19. Among a band of knights
20. Quagmires of the Tigris and Euphrates
21. Resist the new Rome
22. To the peoples of Europe
23. The towers of Lebanon
24. Depose the tyrants
