Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden by Osama bin Laden, Bruce Lawrence (Editor), James Howarth (Translator)

From the Publisher

Despite the saturation of global media coverage, Osama bin Laden's own writings have been curiously absent from analysis of the "war on terror." Over the last ten years, bin Laden has issued a series of carefully tailored public statements, from interviews with Western and Arabic journalists to faxes and video recordings. These texts supply evidence crucial to an understanding of the bizarre mix of Quranic scholarship, CIA training, punctual interventions in Gulf politics and messianic anti-imperialism that has formed the programmatic core of Al Qaeda.

In bringing together the various statements issued under bin Laden's name since 1994, this volume forms part of a growing discourse that seeks to demythologize the terrorist network. Newly translated from the Arabic, annotated with a critical introduction by Islamic scholar Bruce Lawrence, this collection places the statements in their religious, historical and political context. It shows how bin Laden's views draw on and differ from other strands of radical Islamic thought; it also demonstrates how his arguments vary in degrees of consistency, and how his evasions concerning the true nature and extent of his own group, and over his own role in terrorist attacks, have contributed to the perpetuation of his personal mythology.

THe New York Times - Noah Feldman

Putting bin Laden's words on paper helps show him for what he is — a Muslim out of the mainstream, distorting the faith to justify murder. In the end, the most constructive thing one can do with a book like this one is to use it against itself, as a tool in the fight against terrorism.

Foreign Affairs

Following Lawrence's succinct introduction, this short book presents translations of 24 different statements by Osama bin Laden (mainly speeches, but also one long interview), arranged chronologically from December 1994 to December 2004. Some are hardly more than a page, others longer. The provenance and context of each statement are given in a short introductory statement, and copious footnotes identify Koranic and hadith citations, persons past or present mentioned, and other subjects that might need identification. The translations provide an idiomatically smooth English text even while preserving the distinctive tenor of the Arabic (for four of the statements the Arabic original could not be recovered). This is a fine and faithful rendition of the mind of bin Laden as set out in his own words.

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