Response to Osama bin Laden
Alexander S. Peak
10 September 2007
Osama bin Laden has recently released a new video on Al Jazeera. It is my wish to respond to bin Laden with this
piece.
Before I begin, however, I wish to present a disclaimer to bin Laden. You may not like some of the things I say. In
fact, I’m quite sure you will find some of the statements I make about you below to be offensive. I wish to clarify in
advance that I present these criticisms below, not to simply berate you, but rather with the hope that you will take them
with an open mind and use this criticism to make yourself a better person.
You state,
To preface, I say: despite America being the greatest economic power and possessing the most powerful and up-to-
date military arsenal as well; and despite it spending on this war and is army more than the entire world spends
on its armies; and despite it being the major state influencing the policies of the world, as if it has a
monopoly on the unjust right of veto; despite all of this, 19 young men were able—by the grace of Allah, the
Most High—to change the direction of its compass. And in fact, the subject of the Mujahidean has become
an inseparable part of the speech of your leader, and the effects and signs of that are not hidden.
You did in this statement what so many people do: you said America, as though it were the same thing as the
government that rules over the people living here. In your previous paragraph, you correctly label us the “people of
America.” But here, you conflate America with its government. America is a mass of land, not the people who live on it
or the governments that rule over it.
You make an important point, however: that despite all the spending our government does, it is still inefficient and
ineffective at protecting us.
Since the eleventh, many of America’s policies have come under the influence of the Mujahideen, and that is by
the grace of Allah, the Most High. And as a result, the people discovered the truth about it, its reputation
worsened, its prestige was broken globally and it was bled dry economically, even if our interests overlap with
the interests of the major corporations and also with those of the neoconservative, despite the differing
intentions.
That’s very difficult to follow. First, it appears that you might be saying the Mujahideen’s reputation worsened.
Did you mean to America’s reputation worsened? If so, you’re certainly correct—but it’s not like your own reputation has
gotten any better.
America hasn’t been bled dry yet, although our anti-free market politicians are sure working on it.
And for your information media, during the first years of the war, lost its credibility and manifested itself as
a tool of the colonialist empires, and its condition has often been worse than the condition of the media of the
dictatorial regimes which march in the caravan of the single leader.
Are you saying our media had credibility before September eleventh? I’m not sure it has any more or less
credibility now.
The Internet, however, is a great source, and is a form of “information media” as you put it. Like any other medium, you
have to take with a grain of salt the stuff you get from it, of course.
And thus, what is called the civil war came into being and matters worsened at his hands before getting out of
his control and him becoming like the one who plows and sows the sea: he harvest nothing but failure.
Americans already know this about Bush. Isn’t your video supposed to be telling us stuff we don't know, or stuff we
wouldn’t be inclined to believe?
And then the backtracking of Bush on his insistence on not giving the United Nations expanded jurisdiction in
Iraq is an implicit admission of his loss and defeat there.
Not necessarily. It’s not impossible that he simply believes that the United Nations will make matters worst in Iraq.
I will grant to you this: he probably doesn’t believe as I do that the United Nations should be dismantled. But it’s not
impossible that he has only a limited amount of faith in the United Nations.
And among the most important items contained in Bush’s speeches since the events of the eleventh is that the
Americans have no option but to continue the war. This tone is in fact an echoing of the words of
neoconservatives like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Richard Pearle, the latter having said previously that the Americans
have no choice in front of them other than to continue the war or face a holocaust.
I say, refuting this unjust statement, that the morality and culture of the holocaust is your culture, not our
culture.
Bin Laden, here is the problem with your philosophy, in a nutshell. You, just like Bush and the neoconservatives,
are a collectivist. You do not appear to see individuals as individuals. You cannot simply blame a “culture” for evil
acts. Each individual is responsible for his or her own actions, and can hold no responsibility whatsoever for the
actions of his or her neighbour.
Are some persons in America bad? Certainly, just as some persons in the Middle East are bad.
Is George W. Bush bad? Yes, because he has caused innocent persons to die. But in the same way, you are bad, because
you, too, have caused innocent persons to die.
You have a reasonable gripe with America, but your tactic is unreasonable. You, like the American government, act as
though “collateral damage” in human lives is justifiable, and it simply is not.
Let’s say there is a building holding 100 people, 99 of them serial killers and one of them an innocent person. Let’s say
I bomb that building, killing all 100 persons inside. If I have killed an innocent person, then I deserve to be killed
myself because of my action.
The vast majority of Americans are innocent people. The vast majority of them do not deserve to die. The vast majority
of the persons in the twin towers were innocent persons, and therefore did not deserve to die.
Do you not see how you and Bush follow the same collectivist path, killing person X for person Y’s actions?
Do you not see how inherently unjust that is?
In fact, burning living beings is forbidden in our religion, even if they be small like the ant, so what of
man!? The holocaust of the Jews was carried out by your brethren in the middle of Europe, but had it been
closer to our countries, most of the Jews would have been saved by taking refuge with us.
Hitler was a collectivist. Indeed, all racists are collectivists. As Ayn Rand so eloquently pointed out, “Racism is the
lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political
significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced
and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.”
You state that the Nazis were our brethren. But why? Is it because most Americans are white? Surely you can see why
that would be racist.
Or is it because most Americans are descendents of European immigrants?
Whatever the reason, it is inherently collectivist to associate individuals in America on a whole with the individuals
responsible for the Holocaust. As I stated earlier, each individual must be judged based on his or her own actions. As
one individual to another, let me be clear that my personal political ideology is centred around the non-aggression axiom,
an axiom which Nazism rejected, an axiom which prescribes that no man or group of men may aggress against another. Judge
me on my own actions, for I, as an adherent of the non-aggression axiom, would never commit the heinous acts that
the Nazis committed against the Jews.
And my proof for that is in what your brothers, the Spanish, did when they set up the horrible courts of the
Inquisition to try Muslims and Jews, when the Jews only found safe shelter by taking refuge in our countries.
You are ascribing to me, by virtue of my having been born in America, “brotherhood” with those responsible for the Spanish
inquisition. This association is collectivist.
We are a people who don’t sleep under oppression and reject humiliation and disgrace, and we take revenge on the
people of tyranny and aggression, and the blood of the Muslims will not be spilled with impunity, and the morrow
is nigh for he who awaits.
I should probably share with you more information about the non-aggression axiom. According to this axiom, one must not
aggress, that is to say initiate force, against another. One is, however, fully permitted to use force against
those who aggress. Therefore, I will say that you are perfectly justified in using force, but only against those
who have initiated force against you. You are not justified in using force against any other human being.
You have initiated force against many Americans, most of whom have never initiated force against Muslims. And this,
Osama, is why you are as unjust, as un-defendable, as tyrannical as Bush and other neoconservatives.
Also, your Christian brothers have been living among us for 14 centuries: in Egypt alone, there are millions of
Christians whom we have not incinerated and shall not incinerate. But the fact is, there is a continuing and
biased campaign being waged against us for a long time now by your politicians and many of your writers by way
of your media, especially Hollywood, for the purpose of misrepresenting Islam and its adherents to drive you
away from the true religion.
I don’t doubt your sincerity when you say you do not intend to hurt those Christians living in Egypt. I do think,
however, that you misunderstand why people wish to misrepresent your views. A lot of people wish to distance themselves
from you because they wish to make it clear that they do not condone your tactics, and they have a very, very large fear
of being associated with your tactics in any way. Of course, not-wanting-to-be-associated-with-your-tactics is
reasonable. Some people, unfortunately, have taken larger steps than they need to for the accomplishment of this
disassociation.
That some people associate your personal tactics (i.e. terrorism) to your personal religion (i.e. Islam) is
not so much an attempt to drive people away from a “true religion” as it is an attempt to try to locate the philosophical
roots of your tactic.
There are some, although not many, who will take this association too far, and will claim that Islam is an inherently evil
religion. I know this probably upsets you. Everyone has a natural, inalienable right to free speech, however. This even
includes a right to lie. Now, lying may be immoral, as I suspect you and I will agree it is. But it’s not unjust. At
worst, the statement “Islam is evil” is a lie, and at best it is just an incorrect statement made by a person who believes
it to be true. But either way, the use of violence is never a justified response to the claim that “Islam is evil.” What
is the just response? To use your own free speech to disagree with the claim. This appears to be what you are
doing with this video: using your inalienable freedom of speech to disagree with the speech of others who you believe are
misrepresenting your religion. Insofar as you are doing this, you are acting justly.
As for “true religion,” I won’t go into too much detail about my perspective, other than to say that I’m agnostic, and
therefore I make no claim that God exists, or that God does not exist. I’m open-minded about the possibility that God
exists and also to the possibility that He/She/It does not exist.
The genocide of peoples and their holocausts took place at your hands!
Osama, this is incorrect. I have never killed a single human being. Clearly, the genocide of peoples and their
holocausts did not take place at my hands. You absolutely must judge each human individually.
Allow me to quote the great libertarian philosopher Murray N. Rothbard.
“The same criteria hold if Smith and Jones each have men on his side, i.e., if ‘war’ breaks out between Smith and his
henchmen and Jones and his bodyguards. If Smith and a group of henchmen aggress against Jones, and Jones and his
bodyguards pursue the Smith gang to their lair, we may cheer Jones on in his endeavor; and we, and others in society
interested in repelling aggression, may contribute financially or personally to Jones’s cause. But Jones and his men
have no right, any more than does Smith, to aggress against anyone else in the course of their ‘just war’: to steal
others’ property in order to finance their pursuit, to conscript others into their posse by use of violence, or to kill
others in the course of their struggle to capture the Smith forces. If Jones and his men should do any of these things,
they become criminals as fully as Smith, and they too become subject to whatever sanctions are meted out against
criminality. In fact if Smith’s crime was theft, and Jones should use conscription to catch him, or should kill innocent
people in the pursuit, then Jones becomes more of a criminal than Smith, for such crimes against another person as
enslavement and murder are surely far worse than theft” (The Ethics of Liberty, 1985).
You seem to wish to judge me and other Americans based on the actions of American politicians and upon the actions of non-
Americans who happen just to be white (like most, but not all, Americans) or happen just to be Christian (like most, but
not all, Americans). But to judge any person or group of persons based upon the actions of others is to ignore the
inherent sovereignty and personal responsibility of every human.
Only a few specimens of Red Indians were spared, and just a few days ago, the Japanese observe the sixty-second
anniversary of the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by your nuclear weapons.
Those bombs were dropped by specific humans at the recommendation of other specific humans. The specific humans who
dropped the bombs as well as the specific humans who gave the orders are the specific humans that ought to be held
responsible for that atrocity. To hold me responsible for that atrocity makes as much sense as holding yourself
responsible for that atrocity. That is to say, it makes no sense at all to hold either you or I responsible for that
atrocity.
And among the things which catch the eye of the one who considers the repercussions of your unjust war against
Iraq is the failure of your democratic system, despite it raising of the slogans of justice, liberty, equality
and humanitarianism. It has not only failed to achieve these things, it has actually destroyed these and other
concepts with its weapons—especially in Iraq and Afghanistan—in a brazen fashion, to replace them with fear,
destruction, killing, hunger, illness, displacement and more than a million orphans in Baghdad alone, not to
mention hundreds of thousands of widows.
I don’t disagree with any of this. And this is why most Americans are now opposed to the war in Iraq.
People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have
recently come to know that, after several years of the tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it
stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven’t made a move worth
mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing
and war there, which has led to the vast majority of you being afflicted with disappointment.
Very true. Unfortunately, the Democrats in Congress seem more interested in playing partisan games to win elections that
in actually ending this horrible war. I think they’re banking on the war still being in effect in ’08 so that they will
have a better shot of winning the Presidency. I hate politics.
And here is the gist of the matter, so one should pause, think and reflect: why have the Democrats failed to
stop this war, despite them being the majority?
Because not enough of them truly oppose the war. The most anti-war Democrat in Congress I can think of in Congress is
Kuchinich. Unfortunately, Kuchinich is a socialist. The most anti-war Republican in Congress I can think of is Dr. Ron
Paul.
There are those in Congress who sincerely wish to end the war, both on the Republican and on the Democratic sides. But
they, unfortunately, are not yet in the majority.
Why are the leaders of the White House keen to start wars and wage them around the world, and make use of every
possible opportunity through which they can reach this purpose, occasionally creating justifications based on
deception and blatant lies, as you saw Iraq?
As Randolph Bourne stated, war is the health of the state.
In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war,
and during it, Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. And when Kennedy took over the presidency
and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war,
that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation.
You’re referring to the military-industrial complex, which is inherently neo-mercantilist and therefore inherently
against free-market capitalism.
And so Kennedy was killed, and al-Qaida wasn’t present at that time, but rather, those corporations were the
primary beneficiary from his killing. And the war continued after that for approximately one decade. But after
it became clear to you that it was an unjust and unnecessary war, you made one of your greatest mistakes, in
that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its
murderers, Rumsfeld.
The non-aggression axiom requires that people not aggress against each other. Rumsfeld was a violator of the non-
aggression axiom, and was therefore unjust.
The non-aggression axiom allows us to use violence at a means of fighting against or punishing aggressors. It would
therefore not have been unjust to punish Rumsfeld.
The non-aggression axiom does not, however, dictate that one must ever use violence, even in self defense.
Therefore, although a it was a mistake to not punish Rumsfeld, nobody is under any ethical requirement to punish him,
either.
And even more incredible than that is that Bush picked him as secretary of defense in his first term after
picking Cheney as his vice-president, Powell as secretary of state and Armitage as Powell’s deputy, despite
their horrific and blood history of murdering humans. So that was clear signal that his administration—the
administration of the generals—didn’t have as its main concern the serving of humanity, but rather, was
interested in bringing about new massacres. Yet in spite of that, you permitted Bush to complete his first
term, and stranger still, chose him for a second term, which gave him a clear mandate from you—with you full
knowledge and consent—to continue to murder our people of Iraq and Afghanistan.
First, I did not elect Bush, not the first time or the second. I was not old enough to vote the first time he was
elected, and the second time he was elected, I voted for the Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik.
You cannot blame me for Bush getting elected, nor can you blame anyone else who did not vote for him. Blaming those of us
who voted against him is collectivist, because it is judging of one person or group of people based upon the actions of
another person or group of people.
Secondly, had you not attacked America on September eleventh, Bush would most likely have lost the 2004
election. Your own action confused enough Americans into actually thinking that it’s okay to re-elect Bush that he got
re-elected. There are a lot of Americans out there, even now, who believe that if the government of America does not
continue this war in Iraq, who believe that if the American government does not maintain its military presence in the
Middle East, you and your followers will attack us more. The supporters of the war support it because they believe in the
mantra that we must “fight over there so that we don’t have to fight over here.” It was these confused Americans that
re-elected Bush, and it was your tactics that contributed most greatly to their confusion.
Third, I wish to quote the individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner on taxation. He wrote, “The fact is that the
government, like a highwayman, says to a man: ‘Your money, or your life.’ And many, if not most, taxes are paid
under the compulsion of that threat.
“The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol
to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more
dastardly and shameful.
“The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that
he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be
anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a ‘protector,’ and that he takes
men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to ‘protect’ those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to
protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such
professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist
in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful ‘sovereign,’ on account of the ‘protection’
he affords you. He does not keep ‘protecting’ you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do
this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to
do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if
you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and
insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe
or his slave.”
Then you claim to be innocent! This innocence of yours I like my innocence of the blood of your sons on the
eleventh—were I to claim such a thing. But it is impossible for me to humor any of you in the arrogance and
indifference you show for the lives of humans outside of America, or for me to humor your leaders in their
lying, as the entire world knows they have the lion’s share of that. These morals aren’t our morals.
Unfortunately, you do hold the same morals as our politicians. If you were to judge each human individually based
upon his or her own actions rather than upon the actions of others, then you would recognise that your attack on
September eleventh was just as evil as the attack by our politicians on Iraq.
Let me be clear that I am not trying to offend you in saying this, but rather to demonstrate the error of your ways.
This war was entirely unnecessary, as testified to by your own reports. And among the most capable of those
from your own side who speak to you on this topic and on the manufacturing of public opinion is Noam Chomsky,
who spoke sober words of advice prior to the war, but the leader of Texas doesn’t like those who give advice.
Maybe this was just a mistranslation, but I believe you mean the leader from Texas, not the leader of Texas.
So in answer to the question about the causes of the Democrats’ failure to stop the war, I say: they are the
same reasons which led to the failure of former president Kennedy to stop the Vietnam war.
Ah, you believe it is the military-industrial complex, in other words neo-mercantilism, in other words the lack of free-
market capitalism in America? Although I will certainly say that the military-industrial complex is bad and does exist,
that neo-mercantilism is destructive and unjust, and the America desperately needs this system to be replaced by free-
market capitalism, I cannot agree that it is the reason the Democrats are supporting the war. I think the problem runs
deeper than all of that.
The Democrats know that the main reason they won in 2006 was the massive unpopularity of the war in Iraq. If they succeed
in stopping the war, they will surely be praised—but for how long? They want to win big in 2008, and they believe that
if the war is still roaring on in 2008 around election-time, they will be able to once again campaign on an anti-war
platform and soak up all the votes. This is why they have not taken any large or meaningful steps to end the war.
Those with real power and influence are those with the most capital.
No, those with the real power and influence are those who possess the ability to tax, i.e. the politicians. No
matter how much capital a business has, it cannot steal out of our pockets unless it has the government’s support,
protection, and subsidy. The government is the one holding all the guns, and thus it is the government which has the real
power.
And I tell you: after the failure of your representatives in the Democratic Party to implement your desire to
stop the war, you can still carry anti-war placards and spread out in the streets of major cities, then go back
to your homes, that that will be of no use and will lead to the prolonging of the war.
Did you just claim that engaging in anti-war protests will prolong the war? I cannot agree. The Vietnam war ended
in part because of the rise in anti-war sentiments, demonstrated to the political elite in part by anti-war
protests. As the war became more and more unpopular, the flood eventually became too great for the pro-war politicians
and they had to fold.
However, there are two solutions for stopping it. The first is from our side, and it is to continue to
escalate the killing and fighting against you.
No no no no no, that tactic is doomed to fail! Osama, the most effective way for you to keep the war going is to
continue to kill us. If you do not want to keep the war going, then I highly, highly recommend you change your
tactic. Please!
If you listen to the rhetoric of the pro-war people in America, you will continue to hear the same things being said.
They say that the violence of al-Qaeda and the like is proof that we “need to be in the Middle East.” They say that we
can’t leave Iraq until the terrorists in Iraq stop attacking Americans and Iraqis. They say that if we don’t fight you in
the Middle East, you will attack us on U.S. soil again, as you did on September eleventh.
For the love of all things good, stop the killing! It’s al-Qaeda and the like that are prolonging the war just as much as
Bush and the neoconservatives, not anti-war protestors in the U.S.
Please, stop the killing!
This is our duty, and our brothers are carrying it out, and I ask Allah to grant them resolve and victory.
It is not your duty. No human has a duty to commit an action. The only duty humans possess is to not commit certain
actions, for example not to murder, not to rape, not to steal, et cætera. If someone tries to murder me, I have a
right to stop him/her, but I have no “duty” to stop him/her. If someone tries to steal from me, I have a right to step
him/her, but I do not have a “duty” to stop him/her. Et cætera.
And the second solution is from your side. It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of
the democratic system and how it plays with the interests of the peoples and their blood by sacrificing soldiers
and populations to achieve the interests of the major corporations.
And with that, it has become clear to all that they are the real tyrannical terrorists.
Osama, when you say “the major corporations,” you seem to imply “all major corporations.” Only specific corporations,
such as Halliburton, are neo-mercantilist. Only specific corporations are profiting from war. There are also
corporations that are not neo-mercantilist. These corporations, the ones that are not neo-mercantilist, are usually very
good.
This is why I tell you: as you liberated yourselves before from the slavery of monks, kings, and feudalism, you
should liberate yourselves from the deception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist system.
Osama, free-market capitalism is a very good thing, is beneficial for the economy as well as the environment, and is in
every way liberating. Neo-mercantilism, which has also been called statist capitalism, is a very bad thing, as you
have demonstrated with your speech. What I want you to realise is that capitalism is not bad per se, but rather can be a
very good thing or a very bad thing depending upon what kind of capitalism it is. Free-market capitalism, which is
advocated by libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, and even some conservatives, is an extremely different animal from the
despicable system we have in the U.S.
I recommend reading “A Future of Peace and Capitalism” by Murray N. Rothbard.
The essence of man-made positive laws is that they serve the interests of those with the capital and thus make
the rich richer and the poor poorer.
I am not in disagreement with that. I would even say that the welfare state benefits the rich at the expense of the
poor, despite the fact that most socialists would disagree with me on that point.
You believe with absolute certainty that you believe in Allah, and you are full of conviction of this belief, so
much so that you have written this belief of yours on your dollar.
I’ve already pointed out that I’m agnostic. I will now also point out that I did not write the text which appears on our
fiat currency.
But the truth is that you are mistaken in this belief of yours. The impartial judge knows that belief in Allah
requires straightness in the following of His methodology, and accordingly, total obedience must be to the
orders and prohibitions of Allah alone in all aspects of life.
Listen, I don’t want to get into a religious debate with you, Osama. I don’t claim to be smart enough or wise enough to
know whether or not there is a God. And regardless of whether there is or not, there’s no reason why peace shouldn’t
reign on Earth, or why persons should kill innocent persons.
So how about you when you associate others with Him in your beliefs and separate state from religion, then claim
that you are believers?!
The state is a tool of coercion, of aggression, of initiation of force, of war, of tyranny. The separation of religion
and state is necessary to prevent the state from forcing one sect’s beliefs onto another sect. If you were living in
America, and America did not have a separation of church and state, it is very likely that the government of the U.S.
would be forcing you to follow Christianity. Would that be fair to you? Certainly not, nor would it be fair to any other
Muslim, Jew, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, et cætera. Not only this, but the government would be stealing your
money in the form of taxation which it would put toward building Christian monuments, churches, et cætera. This,
too, would be patently unfair. Besides, given that the state is a tool of coercion, of aggression, of initiation of
force, of war, and of tyranny, why would you want it associated with your religion in any way? If I were
religious, I’d want to keep the state as far away from my religion as possible.
The power of the state must be limited as much as possible.
What you have done is clear loss and manifest polytheism.
Actually, it’s agnosticism.
I also want to bring your attention that among the greatest reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union was
their being afflicted with their leader Brezhnev, who was overtaken by pride and arrogance and refused to look
at the facts on the ground.
The most fundamental reason the Soviet Union fell was that socialism does not and cannot work. No economy can exist under
a system that does not allow private ownership of the means of production because private ownership of the means of
production is necessary for the establishment of a price system to determine how best to allocate resources. I recommend
that you read “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” by Ludwig von Mises. There are, of course, other
factors as well, but that’s the primary one.
It is severer than what the slaves used to suffer at your hands centuries ago.
I was not alive centuries ago, and if I were, you can bet I would have been an abolitionist, fighting against slavery.
Judge me on my actions, not on the actions of other people.
To conclude, I invite you to embrace Islam, for the greatest mistake one can make in this world and one which is
uncorrectable is to die while not surrendering to Allah, the Most High, in all aspects of one’s life—i.e., to
die outside of Islam. And Islam means gain for you in this first life and the next, final life. The true
religion is a mercy for people in their lives, filling their hearts with serenity and calm.
I repeat what I said earlier, I am not wise enough to know whether or not there is a God. I am not wise enough to know
what is the “true religion.” I am open-minded to the idea that there is a God. But what you have said does not convince
me either way regarding whether or not a God exists. I shall remain open-minded. Maybe one day I will be wise enough to
know the answer.
I can only hope that if there is a God, He/She/It will have mercy on me for my lack of wisdom, and will judge me on my own
actions.
And it will also achieve your desire to stop the war as a consequence, because as soon as the warmongering
owners of the major corporations realize that you have lost confidence in your democratic system and begun to
search for an alternative, and that this alternative is Islam,...
I think you’re using an either/or logical fallacy here.
Well, I thank you, Osama, for taking the time to communicate with us. Please take what I have to say about collectivism,
not as an insult, but as a guide to improving yourself. You come across to me as being little different from Bush because
you, like him, do not object to the idea of “collateral damage” in the loss of human lives and are therefore willing to
use force against innocent persons. Your excuse that they are not innocent is as empty as Bush’s excuses for war. Every
individual human is a sovereign being, none possessing any more or less rights than others, and each being wholly
responsible for his or her own actions. You and Bush would be both well-advised to learn this and take it to heart.
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