Bin Laden's "Letter to America" (2002)
ceu.suI guess this was written in the early 2000s, while OBL was hiding in Afghanistan?
> It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression. Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge.
27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
One may note that the idea of violent resistance to oppression is deeply present in USA too : Right of Revolution and Second Amendment.
It seems you are trying to show the peacefulness of the Christian Bible vs the Quran, but cherry-picking creates a selection bias. If one wants to find verses justifying violence, the New Testament has them too (let alone the old one)
> Matthew 10:34: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."
> Revelation 19:15: "And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron..."
> If one wants to find verses justifying violence, the New Testament has them too
You are saying verses that do justifying violence but the ones you provided are just having the word 'sword' in them. Are you really saying that they tell me as a Christian to do violence?
I'm basically saying cherry-picking creates a selection bias, which invalidated the point trying to be made. However that's a powerful technique to strengthen the idea of those already convinced.
Regarding the verse I'm not sure if they imply you should do the same at home, however it's a possible interpretation.
First message looks more reasonable to me and think that second option is not sustainable. But being a Muslim I am biased towards what I am taught.
TLD checks out
Bin Laden:
Separation of church and state, jews, homosexuals, gender equality, and America are bad. Every failure and every war in the arab world is because of the West. Therefore my terrorism is all your fault.
He really makes some astute points.I don't agree with bin Laden or his methods, but that's not in this letter.
In the first section of the letter, "Why are we fighting and opposing you?", he describes atrocities committed by the United States and its allies. I think that part is what people reference as "astute points."
You don't have to love a person to understand or consider their ideas. Ted Kaczynski is a good example of an American intellectual with many philosophically worthy ideas, even if you find his methods horrific.
The points in my comment are in the letter, albeit in doublespeak (eg: "You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women.")
I omitted the reasonable points from Bin Laden's letter to focus on those that show what a wingnut he was.
People who resort to violence against civilians are largely wingnuts. I'm saying that most people who seriously consider his ideas are engaging with his geopolitical analyses, not his religious fanaticism.
You exemple supports Bin Laden's sanity, isn't ? It's a pertinent idea that is already discussed in our western society : the usage of woman corpse to produce sexual arousal may not be aligned with a better condition for the others women.
Whether you agree or not doesn't matter, neither if the proposition has been debunked.
> Ted Kaczynski is a good example of an American intellectual with many philosophically worthy ideas
I read a bit of his manifesto once. You have to be very generously looking for the worthy ideas.
Here's the Wikipedia page, it's a good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Fut...
It's relevant today more than ever:
> [It argues] that the Industrial Revolution began a harmful process of natural destruction brought about by technology. Furthermore it states that forcing humans to adapt to machinery creates a sociopolitical order that suppresses human potential and freedom. [...] The manifesto states that the public largely accepts individual technological advancements as purely positive without accounting for their overall effect, including the erosion of local and individual freedom and autonomy.
> many philosophically worthy ideas,
Would you mind spelling them out? Because all I find hovers between old fashioned reactionism and bat shit craziness. What is the philosophical value in that?
Parent poster probably should have mentioned Ellul, who the unabomber was heavily influenced by. Makes it easier for people who simply pattern match based on culturally enforced taboos instead of reading the source material and drawing their own conclusions.
To begin, I'm most interested in his argument that technology can become autonomous to the point that human beings can no longer control it and will become reliant on it, undermining human agency. AI will accelerate this issue and will be used by elites to subjugate lower classes.
From the Wikipedia page for Industrial Society and Its Future:
> [He argues] that the Industrial Revolution began a harmful process of natural destruction brought about by technology. Furthermore it states that forcing humans to adapt to machinery creates a sociopolitical order that suppresses human potential and freedom. [...] The manifesto states that the public largely accepts individual technological advancements as purely positive without accounting for their overall effect, including the erosion of local and individual freedom and autonomy.
This leads to some interesting questions. Do human beings still have autonomy if we allow our decisionmaking to be offloaded to machines? Is technological progress for the sake of progress a good thing? Does it serve humanity? If it does serve humanity, who does it serve and at what cost? What does our society become when human beings no longer have purpose?
Independently, Bill Joy quoted Kaczynski in a Wired article in 2000, arguing that unregulated technology can lead us down a dystopian path: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_Future_Doesn%27t_Need_...
At the end of the day it’s envy and hate. He considers Westerners lesser and it fills him with rage that the West is so prominent and his culture is not. It’s a tale as old of Islam itself. Any prominent culture must be attacked and conquered
Man, I haven't seen propaganda like that in decades. "They hate us for our freedoms," quality stuff.
Not even lying, the current administration could learn a thing or two from the neocons. They started off strong with "Make America Great Again," and Trump used to be able to end someone's whole career with a snarky quip, but now they're just shitposting memes and your racist uncle sounds more coherent when he's drunk than Trump does sober.
I would normally also roll my eyes at "They hate us for our freedoms", but a couple passages of this letter reasonably could be paraphrased as "We hate you for your freedoms".
The paragraph beginning with "the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind" is a good example.
Apart from the references to Allah, that paragraph and the ones that follow are practically indistinguishable from the beliefs of many evangelical and conservative Christians, that America is an evil and secular empire corrupted by sin and vice that has turned away from God and His holy book. It just disagrees about which holy book.
And that aside, many of the criticisms of the US made there are valid. The United States is a deeply hypocritical culture, presenting itself to the world as a paragon of Christian virtue while being rife with racism, misogyny and failing to actually uphold Christian values (apart from some uniquely American strain of "Christianity" that considers capitalism a virtue but empathy a sin.) The US is a violent hegemonic empire that doesn't respect international law while claiming to be the world's moral leaders. The US has undermined democracies around the world while claiming to be "leaders of the free world." The US does do vast ecological damage to the world in the name of capitalism.
Granted, Bin Laden was a millionaire Saudi who funded mass murder so he was talking out of his ass on a lot of things (I wonder if the Koran has an equivalent to "take the plank out of your own eye before you complain about the speck in another's eye",) but he wasn't entirely wrong about the US. I wouldn't say the US is "the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind" but it probably would be in the top ten.
Similarities between extremely conservative Christianism and extremely conservative Islamism? I am shocked!
Seriously, has anyone ever argued that evangelicals and islamists would disagree about conservative ideas such as the role of sexuality or feminism in society? That sounds like a straw man among straw men.
Did you have a salient point to make or was this just some weird reflex on your part?
ctrl-f search for "Israel"
Yeah there's a strong theme in this letter.