http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/wcpls/this_i_my_friends_son_being_searched_by_the_tsa/c5cabqo?context=2
Thoughts?
I'd say he's justified in fighting America because of it's imperialism, but he (al qaeda, similar organizations) is not justified in fighting in Bosnia or Chechnia were it was te muslims who started the conflicts. Islam is an inherently aggressive religion, so they can be justified in fighting against imperialists that attacked them, but not in the wars the pious muslims fight all over the world.
It must be remembered Osama bin Laden is just the most famous of two generations of young Arabs who grew up studying the teachings of two very influential thinkers: Mohammed Quttub and Sheikh Abdullah Azzam
Quttub was a prominent ideologue who raised from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood before being marginalized for his "extreme" views: he's often considered the first of the modern Muslim absolutists. To reduce his thought to minimal terms he believed the world to be divided in two parts: dar ul-Islam (the House of Islam, the believers) and dar ul-harb (the House of Hostility, pretty much everybody else). True Islam could only flourish in a wholly Islamic land and Muslims could not receive Divine mercy unless they dwelt in a land ruled by Islamic law. The most alarming notion of Quttub's doctrine was denying Jews and Christians the status of “people of the book” and hence piling them together with all other Infidels, to be given a choice between conversion or death.
Sheikh Azzam was another prominent thinker and probably the greatest influence on bin Laden. A PhD from the oldest and most prestigious university in the Islamic world (Cairo's al-Azhar), he originally fought alongside his fellow Palestinians against the Israeli. However he soon grew disillusioned with the PLO's and other groups' lack of religious fervor and secular views and went into a voluntary exile in Saudi Arabia, where he devoted himself to promoting the Khalifa, or Islamic rule, around the world. He created a slogan which was wholeheartedly embraced by both mujaheedin and Afghani (foreign volunteers fighting the Soviets): "Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences, no dialogues".
In 1979 the House of Saud "encouraged" him to move to Peshawar (more on which later) where was soon "elected" as the mujaheedin's spokeperson: charismatic, immensely learned, well spoken and widely respected he was magnificently cut for the job. His speeches, articles and books inflamed both volunteers and donors across the Muslim world and his frequent visits to Afghanistan could put fire into the most disheartened men. In 1989, a month after the last Soviet soldier had left Afghanistan, he was killed in Peshawar by a powerful bomb. His assassins were never found but he had no lack of enemies, including the House of Saud.
Azzam had made perfectly clear the next step in the Jihad was getting rid of the hated House of Saud, whose presence near the Holy Sites was a stain on the Muslim world. Many Afghani returning home were arrested without any other pretense than owning books or tapes by Azzam. Bin Laden, despite his self-proclaimed admiration for Azzam, was left alone: not only his family was able to bribe the House of Saud, but he was smart enough to direct his wrath towards a different target: Saddam Hussein. Between 1989 and 1991 Bin Laden, then little known outside of Muslim world, buried the Iraqi dictator under a flood of typically Arab bombastic dialectic. As long as he concerned himself with Iraq he was a useful propaganda tool. However the arrival of US troops in the buildup of Operation Desert Storm set off a trigger and he started bringing back Azzam's old ideas.Tipped off by a friend about his imminent arrest he fled the country. And the rest as they say is history.
Much of bin Laden's story has been willingly murked by Western and Saudi propaganda. For example his organization's name was never "al-Quaeda" (the name of a guest house he set up in Peshawar to house Afghani going to and coming from the front) but the impossibly named "World Islamic Front against Jews and Crusaders". It never had more than 500 members. Far from being an high-tech outfit, bin-Laden didn't want to see a phone or even a radio in his presence: apparently he was much impressed by how the Russians had killed the Chechenyan leader, General Dudaiev, by homing on his satellite phone to aim heavy artillery (apparently using tech supplied by Israel). His contacts with outside world were through couriers carrying letters and tapes.
Another little know fact is his ascent to "Public Enemy #1" coincided with the issue of long, rambling and incoherent document in late 1996 which amounted to a one man declaration of war against the House of Saud. Two years later he issued a fatwa calling all faithful Muslims to expel the US from Saudi Arabia, free Palestine from Israel and overthrow both Saddam Hussein's regime and the House of Saud. This fatwa received no attention in the West but sparked a heated debate in the Muslim world: some scholars said bin Laden, having no academic title or religious title, could not issue a fatwa, while others insisted any pious Muslim with good knowledge of the Quran could do it. The reason for such a debate is simple: in the same fatwa bin Laden authorized men taking up the Jihad to kill both Jews and Christians to reach their objectives. Israel's Mossad and Shin Beth both believed this threat to be "believable", as did the MI6 and the Saudi Secret Service. This was not based upon the strength of the "World Islamic Front" but upon the influence of bin Laden's ideas upon a myriad of small groups and individuals: despite lacking Azzam's erudition and dialectic, Osama was the only "militant" Islamic thinker available to the masses. We should talk a lot about why this came into being (hint: a notorious US-backed strongman carries a fair share of the blame) but my time is over for now.