In this interview broadcast by the Al Jazeera television network in December 1998, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden called for jihad against the United States and its allies.

We demand that our land be liberated from enemies. That our lands be liberated from the Americans….

Our enemies roam and meander in our seas and lands and skies, attack and assault without seeking permission from anyone…. The present [Arab] regimes no longer have the power. Either they are collaborators or have lost the power to do anything against this contemptible occupation. So Muslims should immigrate somewhere where they can raise the symbol of jihad [struggle] and protect their religion and world, otherwise they will lose everything. Are they incapable of appreciating the calamity that befell our brothers in Palestine and forgetting how the Palestinian people … have become a refugee people, turned into slaves of those colonialist Jews who dictate their movements? …

Every American man … is an enemy of ours whether he fights us directly or merely pays his taxes. You might have heard those who supported Clinton’s [air] attacks against Iraq formed three-quarters of the American population. A people that regards its president in high favor when he kills innocent people is a decadent people with no understanding of morality….

We are seeking to drive them [the Americans] out of our Islamic nations and prevent them from dominating us. We believe that this right to defend oneself is the right of all human beings. At a time when Israel stocks hundreds of nuclear warheads and when the Western crusaders control a large percentage of this [type of] weapon, we do not consider this an accusation but a right…. We congratulated the Pakistani people when they achieved this nuclear weapon, and we consider it the right of all Muslims to do so….

Those who carried out the jihad [against Soviet forces] in Afghanistan did more than was expected of them because with very meager capacities they destroyed the largest military force and in doing so removed from our minds this notion of stronger nations. We believe that America is weaker than Russia, and from what we have heard from our brothers who waged jihad in Somalia, they found to their greatest surprise the weakness, frailty, and cowardliness of the American soldier. When only eight of them were killed they packed up in the darkness of night and escaped without looking back….

Finally, I advise all Muslims to adhere to the Koran. This is the way out from our present predicament. Our cure is the Koran. When one reads the Koran one wonders: Do they not read the Koran, or do they actually read but not understand as they should?

Source: Michael H. Hunt, ed., The World Transformed, 1945 to the Present: A Documentary Reader (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s), pp. 410–411.

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