We Have Been Warned

By now you have heard about it, and perhaps read about it in the blogosphere.

Here I link to one news article about bin Laden's latest video, and offer some excerpts and some comments.

Bob Ayers, a terrorism expert at London's Chatham House think tank, said that while bin Laden professes to be speaking to the American people, his message is not really aimed at them.

That is exactly right. His message is aimed at the faithful.

In the wake of 9/11, while so many in the Islamic world (and elsewhere) were so happy at the death and destruction caused in the United States, some in the Islamic world denounced it.

Yes, there were some Muslim voices that unequivocally denounced terrorism, but that's not what I'm getting at.

What I'm getting at are the Muslims who denounced the attack, not because they thought it was wrong in principle, but because they thought we should have been offered the choice of submitting to Islam, first.

Historically, many Muslims have felt the calling to spread Islam violently, by the sword. In fact, for Islam's first several centuries, the Islamic empire spread quickly, from the depths of the Arabian desert to the edges of the Atlantic Ocean, across the Strait of Gibralter to the Pyrenees; it spread through the Balkans, arriving at the doorstep of Vienna; it spread to the mountains and steppes of Central Asia; and, it spread into India. This spread was accompanied by great bloodshed.

Prior to the Mujahideen attacking, however, infidels had to be offered the choice of conversion to Islam. Often times, this was a triple choice: conversion to Islam, submission to Muslim rule under a "protected" (oppressed) and heavily-taxed status, or war. Failure to offer the infidels this chance to convert was seen as wrong.

Hence, when bin Laden's 9/11 attack occurred, there was an outcry in some quarters of the Muslim world, not against the attack itself, but against the fact that we infidels had not been properly warned and offered the chance to submit.

Now we are being warned of new bloodshed.

But [bin Laden] adds that there is a solution to the bloodshed, saying: "I invite you to embrace Islam."

1) Sheikh Osama bin Laden has in the past threatened that we will suffer an attack that will make us forget all about the horrors of 9/11.

2) Sheikh bin Laden has nuclear weapons.

3) Al Qaeda has warned us repeatedly.

"This man (Osama) has nothing to do with religion," Saad Ubo Mustafa, a local resident in Baghdad, told AP television news. "He is killing Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Christians, Jews and foreign people. Islam has got nothing to do with such kinds of people."

Added another man, Abu Basheer: "This man lives in prehistoric times. No one should pay attention or listen to him."

Philosophically, no, no one should listen to him.

But as a criminal mastermind and leader of an Islamic mafia that traffics weapons, drugs and slaves, in addition to conducting spectacular terrorist acts, perhaps we should.

In any case, this time no one can say that we haven't been warned.