Our old friend and former Jihad Watch writer Raymond Ibrahim, the most astute analyst of Al-Qaeda's belief-system and ideology on the scene today, here elucidates a theme we have touched on many times here: why no redressing of Islamic grievances against the West (as Obama is relentlessly pursuing) will blunt the force of the global jihad: the grievances are just counters and recruiting tools for a jihad imperative that is based simply on the fact that we are Infidels, not Infidels with an objectionable foreign policy or pop culture.
"An Open Question to Osama Bin Laden -- or Any Other Islamist," by Raymond Ibrahim for Pajamas Media, October 7:
Ever since 9/11, when Osama bin Laden was thrust into the spotlight, he has made it a point to occasionally submit questions to Americans -- questions which he apparently thinks are unanswerable.
In his last message "commemorating" 9/11, for instance, after rehashing the storyline that the jihad on America wholly revolves around U.S. support for Israel -- former grievances cited throughout the years include America's "exploitation" of women and failure to sign the environmental Kyoto Protocol -- bin Laden concluded with the following musing: "You should ask yourselves whether your security, your blood, your sons, your money, your jobs, your homes, your economy, and your reputation are more dear to you than the security and economy of the Israelis."
In fact, bin Laden et al. have made it perfectly clear that should U.S. support for Israel cease, so too would Islamic terrorism cease. Hence, in this last communiqué: "Let me say that we have declared many times, over more than two and a half decades, that the reason for our conflict with you is your support for your Israeli allies, who are occupying our land of Palestine [emphasis added]."
Fair enough. Yet before responding to Osama, it must be noted that, in and of themselves, his communiqués beg a simple, logical question -- one that, as shall be seen, renders all his observations and questions moot.
Before articulating this question, let us first establish much-needed context: As clearly demonstrated by Islam's doctrines and history -- the former regularly manifesting themselves in the course of the latter -- it is a historic fact that Islamic hostility for and aggression against non-Muslims transcends any and all temporal "grievances." In short, Islam, according to the classical -- not "radical" -- schools of jurisprudence, is obligated to subjugate the world.
your Israeli allies, who are occupying our land of Palestine...
Whose land of Palestine? Looks like Osama's been watching Oprah. If he has a complaint to file, he should go blow up the homes of the absentee Arab landlords who sold all that property to the returning Jews during the century just past.
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Blow them up. Murder them. Go all Moslem with them. For shame, these Arabs were greedy and happy to sit up there in Damascus and Amman and count their new folding money, selling out their proud dignified Bedouin Bros, recently dubbed Palestinians, for mere shekels.
former grievances cited throughout the years include America's "exploitation" of women
hmm does he mean the right to vote to leave the home to take any job is short to be more than a baby factory and sex toy for there husbands yes it must be real exploitation
to let women do any job they want .i was a long haul trucker for 18 years often in nv. truck stops are few and far between
so a lot of the small cat houses would have a small restaurant and would give the drivers free showers and the woman that were not working wood sit and talk with the drivers i still remember one gal that said she had paid for school for her children after there muslim dad had taken off to the middle east and not paid one dime of child support and bought a good house not bad for a woman with only a grade 8 education and she loved sex so she got all she wanted from her work. i a reamber thinking that if she was living were her ex husband was she would be stoned to death like that poor gal was in iran for selling the only thing she had to feed her children so who exploits there women more imo its the east
These things seem to occur all over:
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=16516&size=A
In his last message "commemorating" 9/11, for instance, after rehashing the storyline that the jihad on America wholly revolves around U.S. support for Israel...
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I believe the original grievance cited by Osama bin Laden was the US presence in Saudi Arabia--never mind that we were only there at the request of the Saudi government, in order to protect them from the depredations of their co-religionist, Saddam Hussein.
When we left the "land of the two holy places" this grievance was quickly forgotten. In fact, these days, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are cited most frequently as the reason for Muslim grievance against the US--even though these were *reactions* to the Jihad attacks of 9/11.
As for the "exploitation of women" and "Kyoto" grievances, these are just laughable--as though women's rights or ecology had any expression in the Muslim world. These are just sops to the gullible Western Left.
The goalposts of grievance keep moving--because the individual "grievances" are just temporary placeholders in the ongoing Jihad against the infidel.