From Jihad Unspun, an article by its editor, Bruce Kennedy
.... Over the past three years, we have translated literally hundreds of pages of Bin Laden's material, with some even dating back ten years ago that we felt were important for readers to understand Bin Laden's motivations, such as his 1994 letter of King Fahd. In others words, we are very familiar with his writing style, his diction, his voice, his viewpoints and his Aqeedah.
In the October 24th video release Bin Laden came across as a true Statesman — a leader that the Muslim Ummah desperately needs. His statement was articulate, well delivered and addressed not only the obligations of the Muslim Ummah but the broader issues affecting the Muslims as well. This video tape surely was of great concern to Washington and its crusader allies for Bin Laden presented rational viewpoints which in fact he generally does if one reads his material uncut and uncensored. It is only when clipped out of context in mainstream media that Bin Laden comes across as a villain.
On December 16, 2004, an audio tape was released to the web attributed to Osama bin Laden. At first listen, we had serious concerns about this tape, most notably that the speaker clearly had a different voice and while most of the content was old, the content was a significant shift from his previous positions At the time we determined that the voice issues could be just a poor audio recording however the tape had little static and was remarkably clear from a technical perspective. Erring on the side of caution, we decided to translate the tape in its entirety, a very lengthy endeavor, in order to maintain by our policy of letting viewers decide for themselves. The translation was released in four parts due to the enormity of the work and while the more we translated the more concerns we had, we felt it best to honor our agreement with readers that they make the decisions with respect to the material that appears on our pages. |