Q&A: Bin-(Permit)-Laden
Bin-(Permit)-Laden
Question
In recent days, bin Laden’s letter to the American people after his attack on the Twin Towers has become very widely circulated on TikTok (I assume the American side of it). He basically explains why he attacked America. It turns out there are people—and not a few—who, after reading the letter, realized that they understand bin Laden and agree with him (or at the very least no longer see him as such a bad person as they had thought).
What I wanted to ask is: how can it be, or what causes people to agree with the words of a terrorist who, from his point of view, would also sentence them to death? I don’t know if this is a good question; the whole thing just really didn’t sit well with me.
Thank you very much.
Answer
I’m not familiar with the letter. But if you want to ask something, you need to be more concrete.
Discussion on Answer
Unpleasant to admit it, but there are a few points there that make you look at the story from a slightly different angle.
I’d like to add that of course it doesn’t justify anything, etc., as Elchanan wrote—
That’s certainly how I feel, and obviously all those claims are crocodile tears from a cruel terrorist, the kind who would murder and forcibly Islamize anyone who isn’t Muslim (and not as claimed in one of the sections, “just leave us alone, and if not—expect us in New York and Washington”).
But it does make you think. Because bottom line, 9/11 was fairly sterile (“sterile”?!—relative to 10/7, for example), without cruelty for its own sake, and the targets were Western governmental and capitalist symbols—and the manifesto plays the victim with claims that the American left identifies with (for example, U.S. intervention in every possible government, every possible war, and basically everything). You can understand why young Americans with no critical thinking fell for this.
Letter to America:
bin Laden’s letter.
There actually are some good arguments there. Of course, they don’t justify harming people in any way.
https://web.archive.org/web/20040615081002/http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,845725,00.html