I have lived in London for longer than I have lived in Beirut. Thus, I caught the infection of Democracy so severely that I decided in the autumn of 1996 to hear the other point of view in what regards the terrorist attacks against Egypt at the time: As such, we conducted an interview through third and even fourth parties, with Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the then leader of the Jihad group, and the current deputy of Osama bin Laden. During the interview, I found al-Zawahiri's views and responses to be false or trivial, with a rather abysmal ignorance about Islam itself. Al-Hayat decided against publishing the interview at the time, and he replied by publishing it in a booklet in which he made further allegations against us. At the time, I wrote about this issue in this column and heavily criticized him, where I chose to note down the many grammar mistakes in his writings. He also seems to misunderstand the tolerant nature of religion, and to not benefit from his daily reading of the Koran, I believe, to write his views free of error. Al-Zawahiri's subsequent response was in the form of mail bombs, the story of which is known and that I will not return to here. By virtue of my profession meanwhile, I read because I need to read; but then I also read because it is my hobby, in addition to reading as an editor, and that is when I note down the syntax, grammar and structure mistakes. For this reason, I read Bin Laden's recent letter to the American People, and I noted down some common [Arabic] language mistakes. This is not severely important, and I am not demanding any meaningless contrivance or artificiality in using the language. However, one of the mistakes he made involved a word that was otherwise correctly used in the Koran 140 times, and yet, Osama bin Laden failed to learn it, and then he claims to have understood the message of Islam, the religion of peace and not terrorism. Osama bin Laden also said: “the reason for our disagreement with you is your support for your allies the Israelis, who are occupying our land, Palestine...” In the original Arabic letter, this sentence contains a more important mistake than the common mistakes previously mentioned above. Bin Laden should have instead omitted the preposition in Arabic in a mistake that he made twice. I tried to encourage the reader to bear with me in the above analysis, because bin Laden's letter is too important for us to merely stop at the grammar mistakes made in writing in. Osama bin Laden, Zawahiri and their ilk are all terrorists who murdered innocent people in New York, and caused the death of even greater numbers of Muslims. Al-Qaeda is as such the enemy of Islam of Muslims before being the enemy of “Crusaders and Jews”. In fact, I believe it to be the most dangerous weapon in the hands of the enemies of Muslims. I want to say here as clearly as possible that I support the U.S war in Afghanistan provided that it focuses on destroying al-Qaeda and capturing or killing its leaders, since they are the root of the problem, but not the Taliban. Furthermore, and while I hope the reader will not forget what I have noted down so far, I want to say that bin Laden provided facts in his letter that should not lose their credibility just because a terrorist had mentioned them. He demanded for instance that the Americans hear the views of both parties to the conflict in order to know the truth, and this is true because the Americans only listen to the Israelis. He said that the animosity with the Americans is caused by their support for their Israeli allies who occupy Palestine, and this is also true because it is the Palestinian cause that spawned all other causes up until the terrorism by al-Qaeda and other organizations. He talked about the suffering of the people in Gaza under the fatal siege and the American-made phosphorous bombs, which is again true, as Israel murders Palestinians with American made fighter jets, gunships, cluster bombs along with all the other weapons in Israel's possession. Bin Laden then said that the White House is a hostage in the hands of the pressure groups, especially the major corporations and the Israeli lobby (linguistically speaking, I prefer that he uses the term Israel's lobby because the people who work for it are Americans), and that is again and again one hundred percent true. Also, he told the Americans that they are fighting desperate and losing wars on behalf of others, which is true, and it is enough for us to read the names of the gang of war that planned the invasion of Iraq to know that most of them were American Likudniks who lied and forged because their primary allegiance lies with Israel, all at the expense of the lives of America's youth. My commentary on all of the above is that while the words of bin Laden are true, this will never justify the murder of civilians in New York and other cities. Rather, this is nothing but terrorism, and everyone involved in it, whether by planning, execution or justification deserves the maximum possible punishment. Finally, I want to say that the terrorists who could not learn the correct use of language from the Koran, can never understand the verses: “...Do not kill yourselves for Allah is ever Merciful to you” [4; 29], and “whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind” [5; 32].
