Category Archives: Terrorism

Following Christian Amanpour to… Mecca

Islam, Media, Terrorism, The Zeitgeist

In the CNN documentary, “In the Footsteps of Bin Laden,” also the topic of my latest column, the following exchange takes place between Christian Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, and Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit:

As is apparent from my column, Amanpour and her collaborators depict the September-11 attack as a deviation from Mohammad’s modus operandi. Not surprisingly, she hasn’t been challenged, so far. Here goes:

SCHEUER: I think part of the reason that there hasn’t been an attack since 9/11 is he [bin Laden] was criticized among his peers for the attack of 9/11.

AMANPOUR: Criticized by fellow extremists for not following, as they see it, the guidance of the holy prophet Mohamed for attacking an enemy.

SCHEUER: So he’s spent the last four years very much addressing those issues with his audience. From the Muslim perspective, the prophet always demanded that before you attack someone you warn them and you offer them a chance to convert to Islam.

AMANPOUR: And that’s exactly what bin Laden later did.

Amanpour and Scheuer are suggesting that bin Laden is in hot water with his oh-so high-minded followers for not expressly warning Americans of the impending attack and offering a way out: conversion. What addled minds. What apologetics. What dissembling.

As scholar of Jihad Andrew Bostom reminds me, bin Laden issued his “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” in 1996! Here it is. Scheuer, who helped create the CIA’s bin Laden unit that very year (1996), ought to know bin Laden has been at war with the US since then, at least. As far as Islamic jurisprudence goes, bin Laden has gone by the book. So what on earth are Sheuer and Amanpour yammering on about?

According to Bostom, “the call to Islam was only required of infidels who could not possibly have known of the ‘great faith.’ This was already stated by the scholar Mawardi, who died in 1058—he emphasized that., yes, this formality should be undertaken, but he also added that most of the inhabited world surely knew of Islam by then!!

All the more so now.

The Scheuer-Amanpour exchange is fundamentally misleading, in particular, as the documentary is, in general.

'Amanpour's Dhimmi Documentary.'

Islam, Terrorism, The Zeitgeist

“Clad in her trademark butch safari suits (one kaki; another red), Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, took off “in the footsteps of Bin Laden.” In the eponymous documentary, Amanpour proves to be a good track dog, digging up everything from bin Laden’s English teacher in Saudi Arabia, circa 1968, to the minutes of the first al-Qaida meetings. A trailblazer she is not. “In the Footsteps of Bin Laden” is ultimately a dhimmi documentary. Amanpour cleaves dogmatically to the permissible narrative: bin Laden has hijacked, not heeded, Islam. Whenever a Muslim commits odious acts in the name of his faith, these must be deemedpost haste and post hoca manifestation of the inauthentic Islam.” The excerpt is from my new column, “Amanpour’s Dhimmi Documentary.” Read it here.

‘Amanpour’s Dhimmi Documentary.’

Islam, Terrorism, The Zeitgeist

“Clad in her trademark butch safari suits (one kaki; another red), Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, took off “in the footsteps of Bin Laden.” In the eponymous documentary, Amanpour proves to be a good track dog, digging up everything from bin Laden’s English teacher in Saudi Arabia, circa 1968, to the minutes of the first al-Qaida meetings. A trailblazer she is not. “In the Footsteps of Bin Laden” is ultimately a dhimmi documentary. Amanpour cleaves dogmatically to the permissible narrative: bin Laden has hijacked, not heeded, Islam. Whenever a Muslim commits odious acts in the name of his faith, these must be deemedpost haste and post hoca manifestation of the inauthentic Islam.” The excerpt is from my new column, “Amanpour’s Dhimmi Documentary.” Read it here.

‘Remembering the World Trade Center’

Islam, Terrorism, The West

Every year since September 11, 2001, New Yorker Chris Matthew Sciabarra (who was gracious enough to endorse my book) has written a tribute to the World Trade Center. In 2003 he penned this:

“We all knew that these buildings had come to symbolize so much of what made New York great. That’s one of the reasons they were targeted. It’s the kind of thing that led the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand to write in The Fountainhead, fifty years earlier, that New York’s skyline was ‘the will of man made visible. She wrote'”:

Is it beauty and genius people want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see this city from my window—no, I don’t feel how small I am—but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.

Read Chris’ poignant yearly tributes here.