Omar bin Laden is a sideshow at best, but this article is typical of the international coverage he has received lately: it focuses on his rejection of his father's methods, without ever questioning whether or not he holds to his father's goals, and is trying to accomplish them through different means. This is, unfortunately, yet another manifestation of the superficiality and lack of understanding that mars so much of the media and government/law enforcement analysis of the jihad threat.
"Bin Laden urged by his son to end explosions," from Xinhua :
CAIRO, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was urged by his son to stop explosions as they do no good for anyone, the Egyptian MENA news agency reported on Tuesday.The 26-year-old Omar bin Laden made the remarks in an interview with an Egyptian TV program broadcast on Monday, the report said.
The killing of civilians contradicts religion, democracy and humanity, Omar was quoted by MENA as saying in the first Arabic television channel interview in Cairo.
Asserting his intention to be an ambassador for peace, Omar also called on his father to try to stop using bombs and weapons and to find another way to reach his goals.
Ah. So.
Huh? Omar denies that his father was behind the 9/11 attacks so this is surprising. I think he needs to be more clear as to exactly what acts of violence his father is responsible for before he condemns them.
This also presents a problem because of the way that Western governments have handled the so called "War on Terror." Omar still supports his fathers goals and Salafist worldview, but according to what the public is being told that is okay so long as these Islamist goals are persued by peaceful means.
His goals are an Islamic planet. How would you suggest he do it Jr?
Omar bin Laden : Prior to 9/11......
"Omar bin Laden was a participant or observer in the following events:
February-September 11, 1996: Investigation of Bin Laden Family Members Is Opened; Then Closed
...]The FBI begin an investigation into two relatives of bin Laden in February 1996, then close it on September 11, 1996. The FBI wanted to learn more about Abdullah Awad bin Laden, “because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth [WAMY]—a suspected terrorist organization.” [Guardian, 11/7/2001] Abdullah Awad was the US director of WAMY and lived with his brother Omar in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb of Washington. They are believed to be nephews of Osama bin Laden. The coding on a leaked FBI document about the case, marked secret, indicates the case related to national security. WAMY’s office address is 5613 Leesburg Pike. It will later be determined that at least two of the 9/11 hijackers lived at 5913 Leesburg Pike for much of 2001 at the same time the two bin Laden brothers were working only three blocks away (see March 2001). WAMY has been banned in Pakistan by this time. [BBC, 11/6/2001; Guardian, 11/7/2001] The Indian and Philippine governments also will cite WAMY for funding Islamic militancy. The 9/11 Commission later will hear testimony that WAMY “has openly supported Islamic terrorism. There are ties between WAMY and 9/11 hijackers. It is a group that has openly endorsed the notion that Jews must be killed.… [It] has consistently portrayed the United States, Jews, Christians, and other infidels as enemies who have to be defeated or killed. And there is no doubt, according to US intelligence, that WAMY has been tied directly to terrorist attacks.” [9/11 Commission, 7/9/2003, pp. 66] A security official who will later serve under President Bush will say, “WAMY was involved in terrorist-support activity. There’s no doubt about it.” [Vanity Fair, 10/2003] Before 9/11, FBI investigators had determined that Abdullah Awad had invested about $500,000 in BMI Inc., a company suspected of financing groups officially designated as terrorist organizations (see 1986-October 1999). [Wall Street Journal, 9/15/2003] The Bosnian government will say in September 2002 that a charity with Abdullah Awad bin Laden on its board had channeled money to Chechen guerrillas, something that reporter Greg Palast will claim “is only possible because the Clinton CIA gave the wink and nod to WAMY and other groups who were aiding Bosnian guerrillas when they were fighting Serbia, a US-approved enemy.” The investigation into WAMY will be restarted a few days after 9/11, around the same time these two bin Ladens will leave the US (see September 14-19, 2001). [Palast, 2002, pp. 96-99] (Note that Abdullah Awad bin Laden is Osama bin Laden’s nephew, and is not the same person as the Abdullah bin Laden who is Osama’s brother and serves as the bin Laden family spokesperson
.....hmmmm...OMar has past associations with 9/11 attackers, designated terrorist organizations, lived at same address as know terrorists, and has trained in Al-Qaeda camps..
....I think he is just another covert Islamic terrorist....(my opinion only...of course)....Militant Islamic types rarely change their minds...they look for opportunities to advance their causes....
....Omar is just playing on those weak minded infidels in lala land....
Ban Muslim Immigration..
This is as absurd as begging Gomez Addams to give up a life of dynamiting Lionel model trains.
To quote Morticia: "C'est la vie, mon chéri!"
BREAKING NEWS:
JOHN EDWARDS (TERRORISM IS JUST A BUMPER STICKER)TO QUIT DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL RACE, ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTING
The son provides the father with the cover for defeat.
Osama has already cried uncle with the overwhelming death and capture count of his minions in Iraq.
What has to be defeated is islam with its core of deception hate and supremicism.
In this we face our staunchest opponents - the lefties, appeasers, and the Saudi largesse distributors (undermined by our own petrodollars).
Just more ass to kick, more corruption to expose.
"Bin Laden's boy Omar: Dad, please stop blowing things up"
-- title given to the article above
Kids say the darndest things.
Bin Laden's boy Omar: Dad, please stop blowing things up
Great headline. It's always nice to laugh.
Omar also called on his father to try to stop using bombs and weapons and to find another way to reach his goals.
And what goals are they Omar? Obviously you support them. Can't you spell them out?
As for the methods: daddy likes hard power, you prefer soft, huh? Both of you want the same thing: power.
Sir Omar the English gentleman with the multiple wives. Probably be pegged for an advisory role with Borat Hussein Obomba presidency.
More priceless pearls from this 'peace activist':
"My father thinks he will be good for defending the Arab people and stop anyone
from hurting the Arab or Muslim people any place in the world," This is a quite a rejection.
"Before they call it war(against the Soviets); now they call it terrorism, he believes this is his job -- to help the people, I don't think my father is a terrorist because history tells you he's not."
Was 9/11 a just attack?
"I don't think 9/11 was right personally, but it happened," he said. "I don't think ... [the war] in Vietnam was right. I don't think what's going on in Palestine is right. I don't think what's going on in Iraq is right. If we make what is right and not right, we will make a very big list."
What is the obstacle to peace?
It's not violence in the name of Islam:
"It's about changing the ideas of the Western mind. A lot of people think Arabs, especially the bin Ladens, especially the sons of Osama, are all terrorists. This is not the truth."
As Bugs Bunny would say, "What a moroon"
Father and Son: Good Cop / Bad Cop
Omar needs Osama, and Osama needs Omar.
Violence in Islam works hand in glove with deceptively peaceful expansion, particularly to the degree that Muslims perceive their powers to be temporarily weak.
Without Osama's methods, Infidels would not be so receptive to Omar's methods, which offer to those Infidels -- semi-consciously afraid of Islam yet at the same time besotted with a PC multiculturalist admiration for it -- what they therefore desperately need: a Peaceful Islam (spiced with Oriental flavorings, and a dash of mysticism here, and a dash of cool ethnicity there). Peaceful Islam will save us from Dangerous Islam, they tell themselves nervously; and of course, Peaceful Islam is the real, authentic Islam of the "vast majority", right...?
Without Omar's methods, which look (like those of Tariq Ramadan and Fethullah Gulen) to the patient long view, Osama would not have a chance to really pierce the armor of the new Roman Empire, America and her globalist power shared by the West, and penetrate for an effective, definitive conquest.
Each needs the other. Each represents two symbiotic tactics of Islam, sharing the same ultimate goal.
I don't think what's going on in Palestine is right. I don't think what's going on in Iraq is right.
By what's going on in Palestine, does he mean Hamas and Fatah killing each other? or the constant rockets being launched into Israel?
And by what's going on in Iraq, is he referring to children being used as suicide bombs? or the shiite/sunni blood letting?
Pretty vague in an islamic sort of way.
What say you Nasseem?
What a joke Omar is. I sat and watched his miserable, jihad-loving ass in a TV interview just a week or so ago. He was point-blank asked, "If you knew where your father was right now, would you hand him over to the U.S. government?"
His reply?
"No. I would hide him, of course. He's my father."
Those were his exact words. I made a point to remember them.
I sent in the following letter to the editor 1.5 weeks ago responding to an AP article about bin Laden's son, but it hasn't yet been published:
Not a man of peace.
Is the notorious bin Laden’s son, Omar Osama bin Laden really a man of peace? Omar doesn’t criticize his notorious father saying that he is just trying to defend the Islamic world. But world Islamic domination is Al-Qaida’s stated goal. Taking over the world is not a defensive strategy.
Omar says, “It is all about changing the ideas of the Western mind”. He says nothing about the Islamic mind which is in viscous wars with everyone of its neighbors; the Christian West, Hindu India, Communist Russia, Communist China, Buddhists and Jews everywhere, and anyone not Islamic in the Philippines, Singapore, or Indonesia. In a recent Kuwaiti poll 2/3 of Muslims polled believed that anyone who converts from Islam should be killed. It is no coincidence that minority religions in Islamic countries are almost non-existent. Only when Omar starts talking about how attitudes and behaviors need to change in Islamic societies will he be a credible man of peace.
What a joke Omar is. I sat and watched his miserable, jihad-loving ass in a TV interview just a week or so ago. He was point-blank asked, "If you knew where your father was right now, would you hand him over to the U.S. government?"
His reply?
"No. I would hide him, of course. He's my father."
Those were his exact words. I made a point to remember them.
What a joke Omar is. I sat and watched his miserable, jihad-loving ass in a TV interview just a week or so ago. He was point-blank asked, "If you knew where your father was right now, would you hand him over to the U.S. government?"
His reply?
"No. I would hide him, of course. He's my father."
Those were his exact words. I made a point to remember them.
"Omar also called on his father to try to stop using bombs and weapons"
Mmmm, yes. I've heard that once one gets started with explosives and beheading it's very difficult to quit. I understand the cravings are so intense. Maybe a 12 step program for Jihadists? Maybe rehab centers? The Saudis are trying this, huh? Maybe substitution therapy. Jobs in slaughterhouses? But no the cravings are only satisfied by the killing of infidels. Good luck Omar.
Omar's freak show is really the propaganda wing of AQ, this git should be shot by a patriotic European. I cannot believe that this scum is allowed to freely swan around Europe, his Bin Ladens son for gods sake! he even had military training at one of the camps and now he's telling us we need a peace agreement between AQ and the West. Give me a break.
"The killing of civilians contradicts religion, democracy and humanity"
--Omar bin Laden--
it was simply a call for pops to be more careful in seperating the "civilians" from the "combatants".
Otherwise, he would have to call his father out for engaging in "anti-Islamic activity".
Bin Laden's son is probably following his father's master plan... Seeking the trust of the non beliver is a smart way to infiltrate into their society...Tell them what they want to hear, then when there guard is down, strike!!!
This is what the barbaric Islamists do, why is this hard to understand? A nest of cockroaches will not go away when asked, they must be exterminated...
It is absolutely amazing that Osama bin Laden's kids travel around the West freely. After 9-11 every single OBL son and daughter should have been seized and sent to Guantanamo with the announcement that they'll be held until OBL surrendered or was captured. Then up the ante by turning a couple of them over to a third country that would execute them unless OBL surrendered.
The Muslim's have made taking hostages into an art with great success. We should learn this lesson and respond in kind.
It is absolutely amazing that Osama bin Laden's kids travel around the West freely. After 9-11 every single OBL son and daughter should have been seized and sent to Guantanamo with the announcement that they'll be held until OBL surrendered or was captured. Then up the ante by turning a couple of them over to a third country that would execute them unless OBL surrendered.
The Muslim's have made taking hostages into an art with great success. We should learn this lesson and respond in kind.
Chesterton talked about the folly of this position 100 years ago ("All Things Considered," published 1908):
"Whatever else is right, it is utterly wrong to employ the argument that we Europeans must do to savages and Asiatics whatever savages and Asiatics do to us. I have even seen some controversialists use the metaphor, "We must fight them with their own weapons." Very well; let those controversialists take their metaphor, and take it literally. Let us fight the Soudanese with their own weapons. Their own weapons are large, very clumsy knives, with an occasional old-fashioned gun. Their own weapons are also torture and slavery. If we fight them with torture and slavery, we shall be fighting badly, precisely as if we fought them with clumsy knives and old guns. That is the whole strength of our Christian civilisation, that it does fight with its own weapons and not with other people's. It is not true that superiority suggests a tit for tat. It is not true that if a small hooligan puts his tongue out at the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Chief Justice immediately realises that his only chance of maintaining his position is to put his tongue out at the little hooligan. The hooligan may or may not have any respect at all for the Lord Chief Justice: that is a matter which we may contentedly leave as a solemn psychological mystery. But if the hooligan has any respect at all for the Lord Chief Justice, that respect is certainly extended to the Lord Chief Justice entirely because he does not put his tongue out.
"Exactly in the same way the ruder or more sluggish races regard the civilisation of Christendom. If they have any respect for it, it is precisely because it does not use their own coarse and cruel expedients. According to some modern moralists whenever Zulus cut off the heads of dead Englishmen, Englishmen must cut off the heads of dead Zulus. Whenever Arabs or Egyptians constantly use the whip to their slaves, Englishmen must use the whip to their subjects. And on a similar principle (I suppose), whenever an English Admiral has to fight cannibals the English Admiral ought to eat them. However unattractive a menu consisting entirely of barbaric kings may appear to an English gentleman, he must try to sit down to it with an appetite. He must fight the Sandwich Islanders with their own weapons; and their own weapons are knives and forks. But the truth of the matter is, of course, that to do this kind of thing is to break the whole spell of our supremacy. All the mystery of the white man, all the fearful poetry of the white man, so far as it exists in the eyes of these savages, consists in the fact that we do not do such things. The Zulus point at us and say, "Observe the advent of these inexplicable demi-gods, these magicians, who do not cut off the noses of their enemies." The Soudanese say to each other, "This hardy people never flogs its servants; it is superior to the simplest and most obvious human pleasures." And the cannibals say, "The austere and terrible race, the race that denies itself even boiled missionary, is upon us: let us flee."
And I should note that the general soundness of Chesterton's position is not negated by the fact that the "Soudanese" and Arabs today use RPGs, AK-47s, IEDs, and the occasional Boeing jumbo jet, rather than "large, very clumsy knives, with an occasional old-fashioned gun," as their weapons.
Seamus,
While it's morally superior not to respond in kind, the commandment to "turn the other cheek" applies to individuals, not to nations. As Saint Paul observed, nations do not "bear the sword in vain" but "The government is God's servant working for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid. The government has the right to carry out the death sentence. It is God's servant, an avenger to execute God's anger on anyone who does what is wrong" (Romans 13:4).
This lesson was shown clearly in Lebanon back in the 1980s. While the western hostages were held for years and several killed, the Soviets reponded differently when four diplomats from the Soviet embassy were taken hostage.
Moscow quickly identified the sheik who was holding their men and sent a spetnaz team to kidnap the sheik's 13-year-old son. They then sent the sheik his son's severed ear with the message that if the diplomats were not released within 12 hours, they'd next sent the boy's penis, then 12 hours after that, his head.
Needless to say, the diplomats were released immediately. After they were safely secured, the spetsnaz team killed the boy anyway as a warning never to mess with the Soviets again. It worked. After that, not a single Soviet diplomat in Lebanon was ever threatened again.
Moral? No. Effective? Yes!
I didn't advise anyone to turn the other cheek. But when someone strikes you on the cheek, you don't go and smack his son.
"you don't go and smack his son."
--------------------------------
No, but they do!
No, but they do!
My point, and Chesterton's, is that that isn't any excuse for us to behave like them. (I might mention that your proposal to punish the family members of those who injure us is one that is practices, not only by Mohammedans, but by the Nazis and Soviet Communists. Nice role models you've picked there.)