Excerpts from Usama Bin Ladin's 'Will'
As Published in Al-Majallah (London), October 27 - November 2, 2002
[FBIS Translated Text] In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
The Will of One Seeking the Support of Allah Almighty, Usama Bin Muhammad Bin Ladin.
Praise be to Allah and peace be upon the Master of the Messengers, his family, and his companions. We ask for His forgiveness, seek His guidance, and seek refuge from Him for our sins and evil actions. And such as Allah doth guide there can be none to lead astray; to such as Allah rejects from His guidance, there can be no guide. I witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger. We pray to Allah, praise and glory be to Him, to accept us with the martyrs and the virtuous ones among His worshippers and to make us die Muslims.
Allah commended to us that when death approaches any of us that we make a bequest to parents and next of kin and to Muslims as a whole who are in the ill-omened age like parents and next of kin. What grieves them grieves me and what saddens them saddens me and Allah, praise and gory be to Him, is a witness to what I say.
Allah bears witness that the love of jihad and death in the cause of Allah has dominated my life and the verses of the sword permeated every cell in my heart, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together." How many times did I wake up to find myself reciting this holy verse!
If every Muslim asks himself why has our nation reached this state of humiliation and defeat, then his obvious answer is because it rushed madly for the comforts of life and discarded the Book of Allah behind its back, though it is the only one that has its cure and deliverance in the fleeting and after life. The Jews and Christians have tempted us with the comforts of life and its cheap pleasures and invaded us with their materialistic values before invading us with their armies while we stood like women doing nothing because the love of death in the cause of Allah has deserted the hearts.
My mujahidin brothers and I were grieved when we saw our nation in the east and west watching the United States, the head of unbelief, inflicting the worst of torment on the oppressed men, women, and children while the nation watched the painful scene as if it was watching an entertainment movie. The principal cause of our nation's ordeal is its fear of dying in the cause of Allah. The situation was overturned as we saw the coward crusaders and the humiliated Jews remain steadfast in the fighting while the soldiers of our nation lifted a white flag and surrendered to the enemies like women -- may Allah give us strength. Only very few of the students of religion remained steadfast. The rest surrendered or fled before they encountered the enemy. Today, the nation has failed to support us and support the loyal ones from the
students of religion who established the first Islamic state in Afghanistan that applied Allah's shari'ah. The evidence of this is America's hatred for the students of religion and their fundamental laws.
It, in collusion with its agents in the Northern Alliance and other governments who mobilized their intelligence services to serve the United States, Britain, and the infidel West, repealed the fundamental laws that the students of religion's government had enacted. It repealed the laws on veils and growing beards and restored the practices of imitating the infidels.
The nation is guided to the straight path by its clerics. Our disease today is that the nation's clerics have turned away from their mission of guiding the nation. Their aberrance and misguidance have reached a level that the Muslim does not believe. They came to Afghanistan to deter its clerics from destroying the Buddhist statues but the virtuous students of religion's clerics sent them back empty handed.
The argument of shaykh (...) and his companions was the need to satisfy the Jews, Christians, and their public opinion. They forgot Allah Almighty's words "never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee unless thou follow their form of religion."
These clerics betrayed their mission of serving the nation and its causes, championed its enemies, and became hostile to its mujahid vanguards that inflicted on the United States the first defeat in its history, and which, Allah willing, will be like the Mu'tah conquest that was commanded by the Messenger of Allah and led to the disappearance of their state.
The New York and Washington action represented the third of the increasing blows dealt to the United States. The first was the bombing of the Marines in Lebanon and the second was the bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi from where the US invasion of Somalia was launched during which 31,000 of our brothers were killed under the UN flag. Despite the setback that Allah, praise and glory be to Him, has tried us with, this battle will lead to the disappearance of the United States and the infidel West, even after dozens of years.
O youth of the nation. Crave death and life will be given to you. Listen to the few of the nation's clerics who are adhering to the rule, guiltlessness, and loyalty and who are hostile to those loyal to the nation's enemies who have adopted the temporal ideas and the customs and corruptions of the pagan nations, such as borrowing from usurious banks, the criminal penal codes, and the secular dealings and insurances and allowed the establishment of parties, labor associations, women's societies, all of which are unacceptable fads as the ancestral clerics and their successors had unanimously ruled.
O clerics of Islam. You are today a small minority and I know you by name and read your statements and your truthful fatwas. But I do not want to mention you by name so as not to give the enemies of Allah the excuse they are looking for to persecute you in these days that are critical for us.
O women kinsfolk. Do not ever use cosmetics or imitate the whores and mannish women of the West. Be a school that graduates men and mujahidin in the cause of Allah, protect your honor and be a good example for the mothers of the faithful.
O wives. May Allah bless you. You were, after Allah, praise and glory be to Him, the best support and the best help from the first day you knew that the road was full of thorns and mines. You left the comforts of your relatives and chosen to share the hardships next to me. You renounced worldly pleasures with me, renounce them more after me. Do not think of remarrying and you need only to look after our children, make sacrifices, and pray for them.
As to you my children, forgive me because I have given you only a little of my time since I answered the jihad call. I have shouldered the Muslims' concerns and the concerns of their causes. I have chosen a road fraught with dangers and for this sake suffered from hardships, embitterment, betrayal, and treachery. If it was not for treachery, the situation would not be what it is now and the outcome would not be what it is now. I advise you to fear Allah for it is the most precious provision in life. I advise you not to work with Al-Qa'ida and the Front [Islamic Front for Fighting the Jews and Christians], as Umar Bin-al-Khattab advised his son Abdallah, may Allah be pleased with them. He forbade him from becoming caliph and said; "If it is good, then we have had our share; if it is bad, then it is enough for Al al-Khattab what Umar had had from it."
My last advice to all the mujahidin wherever they are: Recover your breath and forget for the time being the fight against the Jews and crusaders. Devote yourselves to purging your ranks from the agents and the weak and the bad clerics who are refraining from jihad and who have let the nation down.
Your brother Abu-Abdallah Usama Bin Muhammad Bin Ladin,
Friday, 28 Ramadan 1422 Hegira corresponding to 14 December 2001.
