Why do they hate us so badly? It's beyond comprehension.
Various people would give many reasons.
It is important to note the religious importance of sacred land to the Muslims. Bin Laden tunred
violent against the US only when King Fahd of Saudia Arabia invited the Us to help
defend the oil-producing countries against an invasion by Irag. (I've been away so that is why the response is so late, but while I've been away, I have never been that far from the tv, and I have cried with the rest of America.
This information was in The New York Times
September 14, 2001
THE SUSPECT
Bin Laden: Child of Privilege Who Champions Holy War
"Mr. bin Laden turned violently anti- American in 1990
after King Fahd invited the United States and its allies to station forces in
Saudi Arabia to help defend the oil-producing kingdom against an invasion
by Iraq. The presence of American soldiers in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace
of the Prophet Muhammad and the home of the two holiest Muslim shrines,
enraged Mr. bin Laden and other Arab militants. Over time, they increasingly
came to blame the United States for Muslim woes, among them oppression
of Palestinians by Israel."
By JUDITH MILLER
W ith his gentle eyes, skeletal frame,
long black beard and habitual
Kalashnikov, Osama bin Laden has become
the world's most reviled symbol of terror.
While his connection to this week's
devastating attacks in New York and Washington has yet to be definitively
established, his image has evolved in the last decade from that of financier of
terror to its most prominent promoter, catalyst and mastermind.
His goal has been consistent for a decade: victory in a self-proclaimed jihad,
or Islamic holy war, against the United States and its allies. Now he is
suspected of having added thousands of new deaths to an already impressive
terrorist toll.
As he has done before, Mr. bin Laden summoned Arab reporters on
Wednesday to a compound in Afghanistan to deny responsibility for the
stunning strikes while praising those who conducted them.
American intelligence officials now dismiss such denials. While they once
debated Mr. bin Laden's specific connection to the terrorism his networks
have spawned, they now acknowledge that this frail, squeaky- voiced Saudi
has mobilized hundreds of Muslims in far-flung countries to fight and die for
his embittered vision of Islam, if not for him.
But while government experts no longer dispute his influence, they do take
issue with many of the myths that have been cultivated about him.
Though he styles himself as a humble man of the Muslim people, he is, in
fact, an unlikely spokesman for the oppressed and dispossessed. Born in the
mid-1950's, the youngest of some 20 sons of a Yemeni-born Saudi
construction magnate, he enjoyed a youth of wealth and privilege. While
many Saudis of his era sweltered in the desert sun, he had air-conditioned
houses and private stables, and was pampered by servants. His father's close
ties to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia won the family business rich contracts to
rebuild mosques in Mecca and Medina. After his father's death in 1968, Mr.
bin Laden inherited some $300 million.
Mr. bin Laden, who graduated from King Abdul Aziz University in Jidda in
1979 with a degree in civil engineering, was not always interested in religious
politics. Associates portrayed him as a frequent visitor with Saudi royalty to
Beirut, where he drank heavily at night clubs and wound up in bar brawls.
He has said he was galvanized by three events in the late 1970's: the Camp
David peace accords between Egypt and Israel, the overthrow of the Shah
of Iran in a radical Islamic revolution, and the Soviet incursion in Afghanistan.
"I was enraged," he told the newspaper Al Quds al Arabi.
He spent the first years of the Afghanistan war traveling to raise money for
the jihad against the Soviets. He moved to the Pakistani border town of
Peshawar in 1984, by which time Soviet forces were encountering fierce
opposition from Afghan guerrillas.
Mr. bin Laden's money earned him instant access and popularity. Abdullah
Anas, a former Algerian ally who later fell out with him, said that while he
was not "very sophisticated politically or organizationally," he was an activist
with "great imagination." And above all, he said, he was very generous: "He'd
give you his clothes."
Mr. Anas said that in Afghanistan, Mr. bin Laden fell under the influence of
the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, seasoned militants who had helped assassinate
President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981. They persuaded him that the jihad had to
be expanded to other Muslims who were living under autocratic "infidel"
regimes.
In 1986, Mr. bin Laden established the first of more than a dozen training
camps he would eventually sponsor in Afghanistan, Mr. Anas and intelligence
officials said.
About a year later, with the tide turning against the Soviets, he and the
Egyptians founded Al Qaeda, the group base from which they hoped to
stage their global Islamic crusade.
Euphoric about their victory over the Soviets, Mr. bin Laden and his
extremist allies concluded that no secular state could defeat holy warriors.
He opened more camps and spent more of his personal fortune, much of
which the United States and its allies have now frozen, to help finance
training and indoctrination to produce militants for the new borderless jihad.
While the United States had worked alongside him to help oust the Russians
from Afghanistan, Mr. bin Laden turned violently anti- American in 1990
after King Fahd invited the United States and its allies to station forces in
Saudi Arabia to help defend the oil-producing kingdom against an invasion
by Iraq. The presence of American soldiers in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace
of the Prophet Muhammad and the home of the two holiest Muslim shrines,
enraged Mr. bin Laden and other Arab militants. Over time, they increasingly
came to blame the United States for Muslim woes, among them oppression
of Palestinians by Israel.
After Saudi intelligence officials caught Mr. bin Laden smuggling weapons
from Yemen, they withdrew his passport and pressed him into leaving the
country. Mr. bin Laden made his way to Sudan, where, once again, his
money earned him a warm welcome.
After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by Muslim militants, some of
whom had ties to Mr. bin Laden's network, American intelligence began
focusing more intently on him.
After two terrorist attacks on Americans in Saudi Arabia in 1996, at least
one of which was attributed to Mr. bin Laden, the Americans pressed Sudan
to expel him. He found fertile ground for his jihad in Afghanistan, and two
years later, his Qaeda organization formed an international militant Muslim
coalition that formally declared that it was "the duty" of Muslims everywhere
to kill Americans.
Since then, members of his network have been tied to at least a dozen
successful or failed attacks that he ordered. Until now, the most deadly was
the 1998 twin bombings of American embassies in Africa and the attack in
Yemen on the American destroyer Cole in October 2000, in which 17
sailors died.
[In Dallas, F.B.I. officials said yesterday that they were seeking the former
leader of the Islamic Society of Arlington, Tex., for questioning in Tuesday's
attacks, the Associated Press reported. The man, Moataz al- Hallak, 40, has
been under scrutiny for several years because of his link to Wadih el-Hage,
who this year was convicted of conspiring with Mr. bin Laden for his role in
the bombings of American embassies in Africa.]
After the Clinton administration attacked Mr. bin Laden's camps in
Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in response to his
bombings, Mr. bin Laden issued another warning. America, he said, was
weak. "The battle," he said, had not yet begun.
nytimes.com |
