“Bin Laden's real audience is the Middle East, his other Muslims. I think he thought that, by this act, he would win large numbers of converts to his cause … [to] bring Arab regimes down. He would perhaps even take power in this or that country, preferably Saudi Arabia. That is where he is looking to; that is who is the audience. That is who his symbols are directed towards. So this is unlike anything else in the history of Islam. Early Muslims, when they left the Arabian Peninsula and entered the [Fertile Crescent], were conquerors. They converted peoples, and they gave them time to convert. So they didn't force them sometimes, and they were perfectly happy ruling over them. They were setting up a state, and then people converted over time. Syria remained Christian for hundreds of years after the Muslim conquest. So something different is going on here. The obvious sense in which the United States is evil is in the cultural icons that are seen everywhere. They are seemingly trivial things, the influence of the America culture, which is everywhere: TV, how women dress, the lack of importance of religion. So these are the senses in which they are rejecting the United States. But you're right; they don't see Americans as people. … They block that out. They only see as people the Muslims they want to convert to their side, and that's terrifying.”

— Kanan Makiya

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

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Kanan Makiya35

American orientalist 1949

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“Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert’s worldview alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story. The convert has to turn away from everything that is his. The disturbance for societies is immense, and even after a thousand years can remain unresolved; the turning away has to be done again and again. People develop fantasies about who and what they are; and in the Islam of converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These countries can be easily set on the boil.”

V.S. Naipaul (1932–2018) Trinidadian-British writer of Indo-Nepalese ancestry

Prologue
Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (1998)

“Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Remarks on death of Osama bin Laden (May 2011)
Context: For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda’s leader and symbol, and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and allies. The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.
Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must — and we will — remain vigilant at home and abroad.
As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not — and never will be — at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.

“Before the [1990 Iraqi] attack [on Kuwait], bin Laden angered Saudi authorities by making a public "prophesy… [that] Saddam was going to invade Saudi Arabia." Sa'd al-Faqih claims bin Laden also sent "secret confidential letters to the King" about the Iraqi threat; according to al-Faqih, "he [bin Laden] was giving talks about it in the mosques. He was giving speeches in the mosques and talking about the dangers of the Ba'ath… having ambitions to invade Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And then his prophesy was correct. And he was never respected or rewarded for that. Instead he was advised to stay in Jeddah; he was put in sort of house arrest.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Through Our Enemies' Eyes (p. 113)
2000s

“Clinton has changed all that. By endowing bin Laden with his new title (i. e. America's Public Enemy Number One), he has given the Saudi dissident what he sought: recognition as the greatest enemy of Western "corruption," the leader of all resistance against US policy in the Middle East. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic, the way America now treats its opponents as if they were Hollywood bandits.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Robert Fisk talks about Usama bin Ladin http://www.robert-fisk.com/fisk_talks_with_usama_bin_ladin.htm, September 21, 1998 <br class="br">1990s

“It is God Who acts, and God Who reacts. It is He Who scoffs, and He Who responds. He is the Creator, the Producer, the Actor and the Audience in His own Divine Play.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

"How to Love God" (12 September 1954).
General sources
Context: When I say I am the Avatar, there are a few who feel happy, some who feel shocked, and many who hearing me claim this, would take me for a hypocrite, a fraud, a supreme egoist, or just mad. If I were to say every one of you is an Avatar, a few would be tickled, and many would consider it a blasphemy or a joke. The fact that God being One, Indivisible and equally in us all, we can be nought else but one, is too much for the duality-conscious mind to accept. Yet each of us is what the other is. I know I am the Avatar in every sense of the word, and that each one of you is an Avatar in one sense or the other.
It is an unalterable and universally recognized fact since time immemorial that God knows everything, God does everything, and that nothing happens but by the Will of God. Therefore it is God who makes me say I am the Avatar, and that each one of you is an Avatar. Again, it is He Who is tickled through some, and through others is shocked. It is God Who acts, and God Who reacts. It is He Who scoffs, and He Who responds. He is the Creator, the Producer, the Actor and the Audience in His own Divine Play.

“In 1993 Osama bin Laden began speaking in detail to Muslim and Western journalists about his beliefs, goals, and intentions, and began publishing commentaries on these matters in the media…. While bin Laden's words have not been a torrent, they are plentiful, carefully chosen, plainly spoken, and precise. He has set out the Muslim world's problems as he sees them; determined that they are caused by the Unites States; explained why they must be remedied; and outlined how he will try to do so. Seldom in America's history has an enemy laid out so clearly the basis for the war he is waging against it.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Through Our Enemies' Eyes (pp. 45-6).
2000s

“It is remarkable that none of these early Arab travellers speak about any Indian converts to Islam. The Merchant Sulaiman explicitly states: "In his time he knew neither Indians nor Chines who had accepted Islam or spoke Arabic.”

Ram Gopal (1925) Indian author and historian

RA Jairazbhoy, quoted in Misra, R. G. (2005). Indian resistance to early Muslim invaders up to 1206 A.D. p.14
Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D.

“Nature has ordained that the man who is pleading his own cause before a large audience, will be more readily listened to than he who has no object in view other than the public benefit.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book III, sec. 68
History of Rome

“Islam uses the notion of taqiyya, where Muslims, consciously or unconsciously, hide their true opinion as they are not in the majority. If I ask a Muslim in the street what he thinks about homosexuality, he will either remain silent or give a politically correct answer. As the number of Muslims increases, even when they are not violent, the ideology of Islam will become more prominent and society will change.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

"Geert Wilders: an interview with the Netherlands' controversial politician." http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Geert+Wilders%3A+an+interview+with+the+Netherlands'+controversial...-a0205111713 Contemporary Review (22 March 2009) <br class="br">2000s

“If bin Laden is fighting enemies of Islam, I am for him. If he is terrorizing the terrorist, if he is terrorizing America – the terrorist, biggest terrorist – I am with him. Every Muslim should be a terrorist. The thing is that if he is terrorizing the terrorist, he is following Islam. Whether he is or not, I don’t know, but you as Muslims know that, without checking up, laying allegations is also wrong.”

Zakir Naik (1965) Islamic televangelist

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