You should pray, you should fast. You should ask God for guidance .... Continue to recite the Qur'an. Purify your heart and clean it from all earthly matters.... You will be entering the happiest life, everlasting life." So read the handwritten instructions to the hijackers who carried out their suicide missions on 11 September. For the writer and the hijackers themselves, the mission was a religious one. The first four pages of the instructions recalled incidents in Islamic history, particularly Muhammad triumphing against adversaries. On the fifth and last page, guidance was given about what to do on entering the plane. The hijacker was asked to pray, "Oh Allah, open all doors for me. Oh Allah who answers prayers and answers those who ask you, I am asking for your help.... Allah, I lay myself in your hands."
In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and so began the Gulf War. An alliance of Muslim Middle Eastern and American, British, and other nations joined together to drive out Saddam Hussein's army. For some Arab Muslims, Osama bin Laden included, this period was classed as al amza, the crisis. It was a crisis for at least two reasons. First, it involved Muslim Arabs fighting against other Muslim Arabs. Second, it involved U.S. and other non-Arab forces entering Saudi territory. For a Muslim, the Saudi city of Mecca, birthplace of the prophet Muhammad, is a holy city, so holy that non-Muslims are not allowed to enter. Some of that holiness is seen by some Muslims to spread through the whole country of Saudi Arabia. To have non-Muslim soldiers enter the country, especially to help one Muslim country fight against another, was seen as offensive. In the eyes of some fundamentalist Muslims, the United States and its allies represent the opposite of what Islam stands for. For them, Islam represents solidarity among Muslim peoples, moral decency, and obedience to Allah and the precepts of Allah found in Islam's holy book, the Qur'an, and in the sayings and deeds of Muhammad. The West is seen to be the home of moral license and indecency. This "invasion" became the driving reason behind bin Laden's hatred of the West.
The second cause of bin Laden's hatred is what he sees as U.S. support for Israel against the Palestinian people. Why is it, he asks, that the United States acts on U.N. resolutions concerning Iraq but fails to act on its resolutions concerning Israel—specifically Resolution 242, which calls for the withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank?
These two factors led Osama bin Laden and others to issue a fatwa in 1998 ordering Muslims everywhere to kill Americans and their allies. "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 [in Jerusalem] and the holy mosque [in Mecca] from their grip." These sentiments were restated by bin Laden following the start of the allied assault on the Taliban in Afghanistan: "I swear to Allah that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him. Allah is greatest and glory be to Islam."
While bin Laden and other fundamentalists could quote verses from the Qur'an that appear to sanction terrorism, other Muslims would argue that the Qur'an sanctions war only under "just war" conditions. According to Abdul Moti Bayoumi of the Islamic Research Center at Islam's highest seat of learning, Al Azhar University in Cairo, these include the Muslim fighting only in response to aggression, fighting only the one who fights him, and avoiding killing children and women.
What is the way forward? Moderate Middle Eastern states feel able to support the alliance even though many of the people within their borders have sympathies with bin Laden. The West must continue to court the cooperation of these states during the period of military attack on both bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization and against its Taliban hosts. Secondly, the West should look hard at its position with regard to Israel and Palestine. Over the past few weeks President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has argued repeatedly that terrorism will continue until the Palestinian problem is resolved: "We call upon the United States to take effective measures to resolve the Palestinian problem because we think such a solution is of key importance to drying up the sources of terrorism." America and the West must press for security for the Jewish people and for justice and prosperity for the Palestinians. A resolution of this thorny issue will take much of the fuel out of the terrorist fire.
Commander Kibble is a deputy headteacher at Huntington School in York, U.K. A former Royal Navy reservist, his article in the March 1999 Proceedings, “Responding to Two-Dimensional Terrorism,” addressed the complexities of dealing with fundamentalists such as Osama bin Laden.