Whoa! (Hack! Kaff!) There's dust all over this thing! But it's pretty interesting, given the signators and the current "where's Binny" hue and cry. (World Islamic Front is a 3-year-old manifestation of the Learned Elders of Islam. This is the "original" fatwa against the West.)
Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders
World Islamic Front Statement
23 February 1998
Shaykh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin
Ayman al-Zawahiri, amir of the Jihad Group in Egypt
Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, Egyptian Islamic Group
Shaykh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan
Fazlur Rahman, amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh
Praise be to God, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but God is worshipped, God who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.
The Arabian Peninsula has never -- since God made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas -- been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations. All this is happening at a time in which nations are attacking Muslims like people fighting over a plate of food. In the light of the grave situation and the lack of support, we and you are obliged to discuss current events, and we should all agree on how to settle the matter. No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples. If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.
All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in "Al- Mughni," Imam al-Kisa'i in "Al-Bada'i," al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said: "As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed [by the ulema]. Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life."
On that basis, and in compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God."
This is in addition to the words of Almighty God: "And why should ye not fight in the cause of God and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated (and oppressed)? -- women and children, whose cry is: 'Our Lord, rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from thee one who will help!'"
We -- with God's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.
Almighty God said: "O ye who believe, give your response to God and His Apostle, when He calleth you to that which will give you life. And know that God cometh between a man and his heart, and that it is He to whom ye shall all be gathered."
Almighty God also says: "O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of God, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For God hath power over all things."
Almighty God also says: "So lose no heart, nor fall into despair. For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith."
Pubished in the Arabic Newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi (London, U.K.) on 23 February, 1998, p. 3.
Note the signators: Shaykh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin, is of course our old friend Binny, aka The Sheik. Ayman al-Zawahiri was then "amir" of the Jihad Group in Egypt, which folded into al-Qaeda. He's now Binny's second in command, possibly living on a very small farm in Afghanistan. Heard he was wounded a little while back. Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, from Egyptian Islamic Group (al-Gama'at al-Islamiyyah); tied to Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is/was the group's "spiritual leader." He's so holy, he was arrested in 1993 in connection with the world trade centre bombing in the United States. Shaykh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan, who was arrested by Indian authorities in 1993 but was subsequently released. Fazlur Rahman Khalil, amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh, Harkat ul-Mujaheddin (HuJI)
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12/30/2001 11:18 pm ||
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If I could write, I'd like to write like P.J. O'Rourke: A child of nine or ten, wearing a F**K WAR T-shirt without the asterisks, harangued some police officers. The officers could not keep straight faces. Most of the other demonstrators were of college age, with subdermal ink, transdermal hardware, and haircuts from the barber college on Mars. But people my age were present too, and beginning to resemble Bertrand Russell, especially the women. Then I saw him: a hippie in a walker wearing a hearing aid. Sic transit generation gap.
Or Mark Steyn: If you're wondering what the secret of my success is, it's as simple as George W Bush himself: know nothing. In this war, expertise is vastly overrated. Nothing is so certain as that, when a man appears on television with the words "Professor of Middle Eastern Studies" under his name, everything he says will prove to be utter rubbish.
Likewise, all the fellows with decades of experience in the Muslim world, such as Robert Fisk of the Independent. (Sample Fisk headlines: "Bush is Walking into a Trap", "It Could Become More Costly Than Vietnam", "There is No Easy Way for the West to Sort This Out".) Even if one cannot rise to the Rutkowski challenge, surely one should be expected occasionally to get something right, especially if one works for publications that jeered endlessly at what a moron Bush is.
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12/30/2001 11:17 pm ||
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The number of Taliban and al Qaeda being held by the U.S. military for questioning has risen to 150. Of the total, 139 were being detained at a makeshift jail built by U.S. Marines at Kandahar airport, including 14 brought Saturday from Shiburghan. Two others were being held at Bagram and one in Mazar-i-Sharif. Eight more, including Johnny Jihad, were being held on the USS Peleliu in the Arabian Sea.
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12/30/2001 ||
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Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Mohammad Habeel repeated claims that Osama bin Laden was using the Pakistani border town of Peshawar as a base. "He is definitely in Peshawar under the protection of (militant party Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam head) Fazelur Rahman," Habeel said. "Our intelligence is absolutely accurate, we even have the names of those Taliban commanders who helped Osama to get to the other side of the border," he said. Jamiat has denied the claim. "He's everywhere! He's... He could be there." We think he's there, too. Only his plastic surgeon knows for sure.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/30/2001 ||
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The US-spearheaded sanctions on Iraq are âweapons of mass destructionâ and should be lifted immediately, US anti-sanction lobbyists said in a message to US President George W. Bush. âWe are five Americans writing to you from Baghdad, Iraq ... (where we) have indeed discovered that weapons of mass destruction exist,â Voices in the Wilderness said in the letter. âWe see it constantly in use when we visit the children's wards in hospitals across this country. We know its horrible power when we confront the uncontested United Nations statistics: Hundreds of thousands of little children have died as a direct result of the sanctions the US has maintained against Iraq for over 11 years." The group, which has had members in Iraq permanently since mid-November in defiance of US laws, urged Bush to lift the sanctions which were imposed by the United Nations after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Berriganistas still active in Iraq. Ho hum.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/30/2001 ||
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The FBI is conducting more than 150 separate investigations into groups and individuals in the United States with possible ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization. The domestic targets include dozens of people who are under electronic surveillance through national security warrants, and others who are being watched by undercover agents attempting to learn more about their activities and associates. The large number of cases suggests the FBI's efforts against the terrorist network have gone well beyond the widely publicized dragnet that has ensnared hundreds of people in the United States and overseas.
Squeal all you want about civil rights violations, privacy and that sort of thing. Remember that that squealing would stop - albeit temporarily - within seconds after a single grenade rolled into a crowded shopping mall in Philadelphia or St Paul. Strangely enough, that's exactly what happened at a crowded bazaar in Kashmir yesterday. Just make sure the measures being taken are temporary and directed against foreign-controlled and funded terrorists, not people the government doesn't like. But most of us feel enough trust for the administration to believe that's the case.
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12/30/2001 ||
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After stoking high expectations that the federal takeover of airport security would lead to a new breed of airport security screener, one who was better educated and more qualified to assume a position of increased responsibility, the Department of Transportation has decided not to impose rules that would displace thousands of current screeners. Most significantly, the department will not insist that screeners be high school graduates, a requirement that would have disqualified a quarter of the present work force of 28,000. Ummm... What was the advantage to making them civil servants again? You mean, we're stuck with the same people we had, both competent and in-, and now we can't get rid of the deadwood? You outta your mind, Roscoe? It doesn't take a high school diploma to figure what kind of a move that is.
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12/30/2001 11:19 pm ||
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At least 60,000 Indians have fled their homes in the last five days amid heavy shelling and a massive buildup of troops on both sides of the Pakistan-India border in Kashmir. Kashmir Housing Minister Ghulam M Shah said the state administration was battling to provide food and shelter to the thousands who had evacuated their villages near India's shared border with Pakistan.
I think this diversionary tactic has gotten well out of hand and produced more danger to Pakland than the Learned Elders of Islam intended. Like the Palestinian flare-up, it was only supposed to divert attention and resources from Afghanistan.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/30/2001 ||
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Militants gunned down four members of a family in a remote village in Jammu. Heavily armed militants cordoned off Kantha village, barged into a house and opened fire on the occupants killing four and injuring another, all Hindus. Militants set afire six houses and a government school at Mora Bhai village. All the houses and the school were gutted. Call 'em what you want, they're still doing the same things.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/30/2001 ||
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Bowing to the pressures from the United States, Lashkar-e-Taiba seems to have mellowed and attempted to project a more secular image. In an open letter to the United States authorities, Amir of Lashkar-e-Taiba Hafiz Muhammad Saeed said the policies of Lashkar might differ from that of the US "but we do not mean any harm to any US citizen or property." He claimed that the outfit did not believe in carrying out attacks on embassies or issuing threats. Lashkar recently shifted its activities to Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pak-occupied Kashmir, after the Pakistan government instructed all militant outfits to operate only from that area to escape the eye of international community. The name of the outfit was also changed to Jamaat-Al-Dawa in keeping with a policy of ISI of changing names when the heat's on.
It's an indication they're feeling the heat, but they'll try and run it out. The US has to keep pressure on Pak to get these guys under control - and preferably to disband them as a mini-Taliban.
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12/30/2001 ||
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Pakistan faced fresh US pressure to round up Islamic extremists accused of targeting India as its top military brass planned its response to any Indian attack across their tense border. President Bush has called on Pakistan to "eliminate extremists" implicated in an attack on India's parliament and urged leaders to defuse their dispute. In separate phone calls from his Texas ranch to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Bush "urged both leaders to work to reduce tensions in the region." But he specifically called on Musharraf to act decisively against groups seeking to "harm India, undermine Pakistan, and provoke a war between India and Pakistan and destabilize the coalition against terrorism." If Boskone/Ernst Stavro Blofeld/The Learned Elders of Islam had been able to set up a three-front war (Afghanistan, India-Pak, and Middle East) they'd have been closer to their Muslim-Western world war. But when Tora Bora fell they found themselves overextended. Israel could handle the Palestinians and had world opinion on its side for once and temporarily. And India-Pak as a single front would result in Pakland being defeated and maybe even reabsorbed back into India - a three-falls-out-of-three defeat for the Bad Guys. Now they're stuck with ISI, which is probably as much of a rogue organization within SPECTRE/Boskone as it is within the Pak government.
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12/30/2001 ||
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Pakistan's military-led government has frozen the accounts of two nuclear scientists suspected of links with Osama bin Laden. Assets of Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mehmood and Abdul Majid, who worked for Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission until retiring in 1999, have been frozen by the State Bank of Pakistan. The bank also froze accounts of wealthy industrialist Mohammed Tufail. All three were on the board of directors of Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, or Nation Builder, an Islamic charity declared a terrorist group by the United States on Dec. 20. Nice of them to get around to it, finally.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/30/2001 ||
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Michael Collins Piper, in an article in Arab News, says the Jews were the ones who blew the World Trade Center. Piper is a correspondent for The Spotlight, a newspaper published by Liberty Lobby, the most active anti-Semitic propaganda organization in the United States. The same writer elsewhere says the Jews killed Kennedy. And the Federal Reserve is controlled by the Bilderberger group, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations. And John McCain's family fortune was the gift of big-time gangsters.
You get the drift. The Saudis are really reaching with this guy.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/30/2001 ||
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Lebanon's Free Patriotic Movement and Ba'ath Party are arguing over which of them supports terrorist organizations/"armies of resistance" more. The Ba'ath accused FPM leader Michel Aoun, of âsowing the seeds of a new war in Lebanon with the support of the United States.â
They never get tired of that stuff, do they?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/30/2001 ||
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Gulf Arab leaders, worried that the West increasingly sees Arabs and Muslims as âevil,â plan to launch a multimillion-dollar media campaign to improve their peoples' image. The annual conference of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was expected to approve a plan to counter what it sees as a campaign of âhatred and enmityâ towards Arabs and Muslims since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. âThe campaign against Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, is itself a form of terrorism,â Omani Foreign Minister Youssef Bin Alawi Bin Abdullah said on the eve of the summit. It'll take a lot of money and a lot of advertising to convince most of us that smashing the WTC and the Pentagon wasn't "evil." It'll take even more to convince us that there hasn't been a sustained 20-year campaign of attacks against us.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/30/2001 ||
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Israel was preparing for the expected return of US peace envoy Anthony Zinni, but despite a clear drop in violence Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was to tell his cabinet there will be no political talks without a total halt to unrest. The intended result - to distract attention and maybe even forces - from Tora Bora - wasn't quite achieved, so now we can go back to endless negotiating until another flare-up is needed.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/30/2001 ||
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A Lebanese garbage collector was killed when a small bomb exploded near Ain Al Hilweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon. The bomb was concealed in a plastic bag about 30 metres from the camp on the outskirts of Sidon. Mustafa Batesh, 40, a died instantly when he tried to collect the bag. Ain Al Hilweh, Lebanon's largest refugee camp, is home to about 70,000 Palestinians and rival Palestinian factions. The camp, controlled by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fateh movement, has been rocked in the past by bomb explosions. The camp is off limits to Lebanese authorities. Must be sad not to be in charge in your own country. Kinda hard on poor Mustafa, too.
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12/30/2001 ||
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Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer has sent out "signals" that Israel would be willing to renew peace talks with Syria if it agrees to rein in the Islamic militant group Hezbollah. Ben-Eliezer first suggested the offer to Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit during a July visit to Ankara, with a request that they pass it on to Syrian President Bashar Assad. An aide to Ben-Eliezer confirmed that he had raised the matter in Turkey. Ben-Eliezer again raised the proposal in a later conversation with Jordan's King Abdullah II, who passed it on to Assad. Israel radio cited what it said was a dispatch from William Burns, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, reporting on his recent meeting with Assad, in which the Syrian leader indicated he was prepared to consider new negotiations with Israel. Cheeze. What a way to do things, using two or three go-betweens at every turn. No wonder nothing is ever accomplished. Try ordering groceries that way.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/30/2001 ||
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Acting on U.S. intelligence gathered in Afghanistan, the Singapore government earlier this month raided a "terrorist nest" and arrested 12 alleged al Qaida members suspected of planning an attack on the island nation's deep-water Navy port. Two suspected terrorists escaped arrest. Singapore officials have also failed to locate two tons of explosives intended to be used in the attack or attacks. The USS Carl Vinson was scheduled to use the port in December so "people were pretty squirrelly" about the information and moved swiftly to act on it.
Sure hope they got them all. A successful attack on a target that size, and of that importance, would be the only way al Qaeda could establish that it was still in business. So they'll probably try again.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/30/2001 ||
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At least 11 armed followers of detained Muslim leader Nur Misuari and two soldiers were killed in a clash in the Philippine island of Jolo. Field reports said around 40 Misuari followers from the Moro National Liberation Front attacked patrolling members of the Marine Batallion Landing Troop in the town of Luuk, triggering six hours of fighting. Members of the Muslim Abu Sayyaf group were seen backing up the Misuari followers.
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12/30/2001 ||
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Afghanistan called for the deployment of international peacekeeping troops along its border with Pakistan to combat what it claims is Pakistani intelligence assistance to Osama bin Laden. Border Affairs Minister Aminullah Zadran said he has already sent his agents to the frontier to investigate what he called suspicious activities by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence. Interior Minister Yunis Qanooni directly accused the ISI of helping the suspected terrorist "mastermind" escape capture.
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12/30/2001 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
