printIn 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.
I watched “The Path to 911” and “In the Footsteps of OBL” this week. A clear picture emerged:
1 Incompetent Clintonistas – treating terrorism as a law enforcement problem – continuing the same methods after multiple failures.
2 OBL dis NOT have a religious motivation – it was purely emotional and secular – he was obsessed at “payback” to Saudi Arabia for dismissing his “offer” to defeat Saddam in 1991 (megalomania – as if a small band of Islamic thugs could equal the efforts of the US Military).
He has used the phony message of the USA being unholy and occupying the “Holy Land” – no doubt he could not possibly conquer Saudi Arabia with the US Military present – so he dreamed up religious ideology.
And there are a lot of religious fools who will sacrifice themselves to put OBL in the driver’s seat.
Truly, “There’s a Fool Born Every Minute”.