Key bin Laden para raises translation and other questions
It is very clear [that bin Laden was] trying to control acts of violence that fall outside of what he views as morally acceptable, but also that are counterproductive to Al Qaeda’s strategic agenda
There’s a public relations issue here for bin Ladin, in other words — but there’s also a moral issue from the standpoint of Islamic theology. Theology — not just any old ideology borrowed from Marx or whoever, but theology<, the logos pertaining to theos, and thus in Islamic terms transmitted and revealed Word of God, “an Arabic Qur’an that you might understand” (Q 12.2).
Note that the CTC analysis, unlike Leah’s, is focused entirely on the secular, PR side of things and fails to address the religious. Immediately before quoting the paragraph in question (the second version above) in their commentary, the authors write:
Bin Ladin was following Shahzad’s trial in the news and was disappointed by his performance, which he thought distorted the image of jihadis.
Immediately following it, we find:
This is not the only instance that Bin Ladin worried about jihadis violating their oaths. The letter addressed to Abu Basir in which he is asked to focus on operations inside the United States (instead of Yemen) alerted him to focus on Yemenis “who hold either visas or U.S. citizenships to carry out operations inside America as long as they did not take an oath not to harm America.” Underlying Bin Ladin’s thinking is a distinction between a visa (ishara), acquired citizenship — which involves taking an oath (`ahd) — and citizenship by birth — which does not entail taking an oath. From an Islamic law perspective, it is not lawful to violate one’s oath (naqd al-`ahd or naqd al-mithaq).
Bin Ladin wanted to promote the image that jihadis are disciplined and conform to Islamic Law. Faisal Shahzad’s boasting that he lied during his oath not to harm the United States, therefore, is antithetical to the image of jihadis that Bin Ladin wanted the world to see.
Bin Laden wants “to promote the image that jihadis are disciplined and conform to Islamic Law” — but doesn’t he also perhaps want them to “conform to Islamic Law” for the sake of Allah, who commanded that law, and in whose path they are fighting?
What is the Caliphate, if it makes Islamic law the law of the Islamic world, or of the world entire, and obedience to that law is a matter purely of appearances?
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The second issue that this paragraph beings up for me is that of taqiyya or religiously sanctioned dissembling.
Shariah: The Threat to America (An Exercise in Competitive Analysis—Report of Team ‘B’ II) [link to .pdf], which I take to be the closest thing yet to an indepth, scholarly presentation of the Boykin-Gaffney-Woolsey-Yerushalmi view of Islam, makes a big deal of taqiyya, the Islamic doctrine that permits dissembling under certain circumstances, quoting the Qur’an (3:28):
Let not the believers take the disbelievers as friends instead of the believers, and whoever does that, will never be helped by Allah in any way, unless you indeed fear a danger from them. And Allah warns you against Himself, and to Allah is the final return.
and commenting:
it is imperative that those whose duty it is to protect the United States. from shariah grasp the centrality of taqiyya in the arsenal of its adherents. This is critical because the consequences of taqiyya extend to real world issues related, for example, to Muslim overtures for interfaith dialogue, peace and mutual tolerance – all of which must be viewed in the light of Islamic doctrine on lying.
Bin Laden, in his letter to Mahmud / ‘Atiyya, is not writing to a an audience of non-Muslims to deceive them, he is writing to a comrade in faith and in arms. And he clearly does not believe that either taqiyya or the necessities of war (which often involves deceit) give jihadists the option to lie under oath — even for purposes of jihad, even within the enemy camp. Taqiyya, in bin Laden’s mind, appears to be a far more restricted doctrine than Gaffney and cohort take it for…
As Juan Cole puts it, taqiyya is “not a license to just lie about anything at all, or to commit perfidy. It is just a permission to avoid dying uselessly because of sectarian prejudice.” Corrie ten Boom lying to the Gestapo to protect the Jews hiding in her house might be a somewhat similar situation — as an analogy worth considering, though, not an equation.
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