ABSTRACT
In February of 1998—three years before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and five years before the U.S. invasion of Iraq—Osama bin Laden (or Usamah Bin-Ladin) and four other radical Islamist leaders issued the statement reprinted on the following pages. This statement purports to be a fatwa, a pronouncement of Islamic law by Islamic scholars, that makes the killing of “Americans and their allies—civilians and military—[a] duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.…” As the two preceding selections indicate, the roots of radical Islamism are quite deep. In this fatwa, however, Bin Laden and the other leaders of the “World Islamic Front” concentrate on more immediate grievances that stemmed from the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Bin Laden was killed by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs in 2011 and buried at sea.
