Talk:Fatāwā of Osama bin Laden

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[edit] Title of article

Since fatwa says that the plural of fatwa is fatāwa, shouldn't this article be titled "Fatāwa of Osama bin Laden"? --RCS ^talk 21:12, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

• Done. OCNative 00:13, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Original Language of Excerpt

What language was the original written in? Either this is a very nonliteral translation or the Arabic of the fatwa lends itself quite well to an English translation. I think the source for this translation should be researched, and perhaps it should be noted that the translator has taken great liberties to poeticize the language for the English ear, which makes it unencyclopedic. Just on first read, I doubt that Osama, whose background is not scholarly, is capable of this level of argumentation.

I read the original fatwa just after the African Embassy Bombings in 1998 and I am certain this excerpt is not from the translation I read. I am not of the inclination to go searching for it again however.

Why doesn't the U.S. government make available an authenticated version of this historically important document upon which the media has founded so much of the coverage of Osama as having "declared war on America?" I do not think Wikipedia should assume that this is an accurate version of whatever polemic Osama apparently disseminated. And how the hell do we in the public even know that Osama wrote this thing? Whether or not this is original research, I would be just as inclined to believe that some intelligence agency wrote it to focus world attention on the terrorism thing anyway. I haven't even seen any quote from Osama in which he directly acknowledges his authorship of the fatwas anyway.

As dangerous as this may sound, I think this may be an example of a Protocols of the Elders of Zion type thing that spread very quickly due to the internet. A good compromise on this would be to title the article "Fatawa Attributed to Osama bin Laden" until such time as he is reliably quoted as having acknowledged his authorship of the document(s).

And honestly, to whomever is translating these things, at least do it accurately. Guerilla leaders living in caves don't write like this.

Arkhamite 23:17, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Updated

I redid almost the whole piece, deleting the ominous quotations from the great man, which were clearly selected for the purpose of telling everybody that the world had better starting obeying the instructions of Usama bin Ladin.

The originals were in Arabic, at the Palestinian London paper al-Quds al-Arabi.

Bin Ladin has never denied writing these things AFAIK.

LDH 07:51, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes he has never denied writing them, but has he ever acknowledged writing them? That's an important point. Would anyone believe him if, after what has occurred between al Qaeda and the West, Osama said, "Actually those fatwas just showed up in various places and we figured somebody wanted to go to war against us." When Osama acknowledged the fatwas in the Time interview, he did not say, "I have written and issued a fatwa declaring war on [whomever]." He referred to a terrorist organization - not al Qaeda - and said in the third person that they had issued the fatwa. And never did he say he wrote them. I don't think it is a far stretch to question whether the supposed declaration of war on America was ever made by Osama, and that the 9/11 attacks Osama owned up to were nothing more than extraordinarily destructive terror strikes, rather than in furtherance of any declared war on America.

I see a constant U.S.-led justification of the War on Terror, targeting Islamic extremists, bolstered by the idea that Islamic extremists, and especially al Qaeda, declared war on us. Yet I see no documented proof that they ever did. Perhaps one of our supposed allies declared war on us and signed Osama's name to it, since our allies had as much to fear from to terrorism as we did? You'll not find me defending terrorism, but remember that both the German and Japanese governments formally declared war on the U.S. after the Pearl Harbor Attacks, while not a single government, not even an unlawful government like the Taliban, declared war on the U.S. in relation to 9/11 or any other act of Islamist terrorism.

Perhaps I am a lone voice in the wilderness, but I would still like to see the title of this entry changed to "Fatawa Attributed to Osama bin Laden" until such time as he acknowledges having written or even issued them. As it stands, Wikipedia may in fact be promoting the most destructive act of political libel since those supposed secret Jewish world domination plans that the Czar's henchmen foisted on the public way back when.

Arkhamite 23:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)