Osama bin Laden Statement Via Al Jazeera

NOTE: Mr. bin Laden's video taped remarks were aired on Al Jazeera, an independent Arab television network based in Qatar, after the U.S. and British military attacks on Afghanistan Sunday. The text is translated from Arabic into English - source Information Times

OSAMA BIN LADEN
Statement - Sunday, 7 October 2001

Praise be to Allah [God] and we beseech Him for help and forgiveness.

We seek refuge with the Lord of our bad and evildoing. He whom God guides is rightly guided but he whom God leaves to stray, for him you will find no protector to lead him to the right way.

I bear witness that there is no God but God and Muhammad is His Prophet.

God Almighty hit the United States at its most vulnerable spot. He destroyed its greatest buildings.

Praise be to God.

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 80 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.

Despite this, nobody cares.

When Almighty God rendered successful a convoy of Muslims, the vanguards of Islam, He allowed them to destroy the United States.

I ask God Almighty to elevate their status and grant them Paradise. He is the one who is capable to do so.

When they defended their oppressed sons, brothers and sisters in Palestine and in many Islamic countries, the world at large shouted. The infidels shouted, followed by the hypocrites.

One million Iraqi children have thus far died in Iraq [because of UN/U.S. sanctions and due to the U.S.-UK-Israel war against Iraq] although they did not do anything wrong.

Despite this, we heard no denunciation by anyone in the world or a fatwa [Islamic decree] by the [Muslim] rulers or ulema [Muslim scholars].

Israeli tanks and tracked vehicles wreak havoc in Palestine, Jenin, Ramallah, Rafah, Beit Jala and other Islamic areas and we hear no voices raised or moves made.

But if the sword falls on the United States, after 80 years, hypocrisy raises its ugly head lamenting the deaths of these killers who tampered with the blood, honor and holy places of the Muslims.

The least that one can describe these people is that they are morally depraved.

They [rulers of Israel, USA and UK] champion falsehood, support the butcher against the victim, the oppressor against the innocent child.

May God mete them the punishment they deserve.

I say that the matter is clear and explicit.

In the aftermath of this event and now that senior U.S. officials have spoken, beginning with Bush, the head of the world's infidels, and whoever supports him, every Muslim should rush to defend Islam.

They came out in arrogance with their men and horses and instigated even those countries that belong to Islam against us.

They came out to fight this group of people who declared their faith in God and refused to abandon their religion.

They came out to fight Islam in the name of terrorism.

Hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, were killed in the farthest point on earth in Japan.

For them this is not a crime, but rather a debatable issue.

They bombed Iraq and considered that a debatable issue.

But when dozens of people were killed in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam [capitals of Kenya and Tanzania, where U.S. embassies were bombed in 1998], Afghanistan [Sudan] and Iraq were bombed and all hypocrites stood behind the head of the world's infidelity - behind the Hubal [an idol worshipped by pagans before the advent of Islam] of the age - namely, America and its supporters.

These incidents divided the entire world into two regions - one of faith where there is no hypocrisy and another of infidelity, from which we hope God will protect us.

The winds of faith and change have blown to remove falsehood from the [Arabian] peninsula of Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him.

As for the United States, I tell it and its people these few words: I swear by Almighty God who raised the heavens without pillars that neither the United States nor he who lives in the United States will enjoy security before we can see it as a reality in Palestine and before all the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad, may peace be upon him.

God is great and glory to Islam.

May God's peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you.

[OSAMA BIN LADEN]

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