Bin Laden shows his face again

Osama bin Laden has finally ended his longest-ever communications silence, though not entirely on his terms. The half hour video, which was supposed to have been released on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, was somehow obtained by the SITE Institute, which released its pirated copy on September 7. A number of transcripts have been made available by assorted news organizations; the most legible is available here.

This is a somewhat peculiar video. While As-Sahab's make-up team seems to have done a fine job making bin Laden look as healthy and photogenic as possible,
whoever it was that put the speech together did considerably shoddier work. I have read from various sources speculation that Azzam al-Amriki influenced the content; while I am unfamiliar with Amriki's rantings, I am still inclined to agree, because much of the speech does not seem to have been put together by bin Laden, and indeed appears to have something of an American touch. Compare, for example, the following, from a 2006 audio tape:

As for us, we do not have anything to lose. The swimmer in the sea does not fear rain. You have occupied our land, defiled our honour, violated our dignity, shed our blood, ransacked our money, demolished our houses, rendered us homeless, and tampered with our security. We will treat you in the same way. You tried to deny us the decent life, but you cannot deny us a decent death. Refraining from performing jihad, which is sanctioned by our religion, is an appalling sin. The best way of death for us is under the shadows of swords. Do not be deluded by your power and modern weapons. Although they win some battles, they lose the war. Patience and steadfastness are better than them. What is important is the outcome.¹

with this, from the just-released video:

It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of the democratic system and how it plays with the interests of the peoples and their blood by sacrificing soldiers and populations to achieve the interests of the major corporations. And with that, it has become clear to all that they are the real tyrannical terrorists. In fact, the life of all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations, yet despite that, the representative of these corporations in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord, with the knowledge that the statistic speaks of the death and displacement of the millions of human beings because of that, especially in Africa. This greatest of plagues and most dangerous of threats to the lives of humans is taking place in an accelerating fashion as the world is being dominated by the democratic system, which confirms its massive failure to protect humans and their interests from the greed and avarice of the major corporations and their representatives.

Since when does Osama bin Laden care about the Kyoto Accords? He's pissed off at us because of our alleged war against Islam, not our lack of concern for the environment. He cares about the smoke rising from our bombs, not the smoke rising from our smokestacks. These seem more to be the words of a former American Leftist than of a former Arab mujahed. Either Osama spent some time cruising the blogosphere for issues he thought Americans would identify with, or the issues were selected by someone who was himself an American — al-Amriki.

There are also important stylistic differences. Osama is fond of using flowery metaphors like "the swimmer in the sea does not fear rain" and "[George Bush is] like the one who plows and sows the sea: he harvests nothing but failure." This seems to me to be a very Arab way of speaking; I am reminded of the words of the Prophet Muḥammad when He said, "By God, if one man were to be guided at your hands, it would be better for you than red camels." (Bukhari 2942). This presumably made a lot of sense to 'Alí, to whom t was addressed, but it seems a mite peculiar to Americans. Although parts of this speech are in this highly Arab style, other parts seem to be in the much more direct manner of speech characteristic of Americans. This is also noticeable in terminology; compare the above mentioned audio tape's "influential people and war merchants in America" with the new video's much blander "major corporations".

Also present are things that I just can't imagine Osama bin Laden saying on his own. In particular, his depiction of Islam as tolerant of Christians and Jews seems inconsistent with "Every Muslim, from the moment they realize the distinction in their hearts, hates Americans, hates Jews and hates Christians."² Also somewhat curious is the sentence, "This innocence of yours is like my innocence of the blood of your sons on the 11th - were I to claim such a thing." Osama has, in fact, claimed precisely that, and I doubt he would have voluntarily risked drawing attention to
this dishonesty.

It seems to me that this speech was most likely written by Azzam al-Amriki and then sent to bin Laden who, after making some adjustments, read it for the video. As I said, though, I know very little about Amriki other than that he is an American convert to Salafism; a follow up post profiling him should shed further light on the situation.

UPDATE: The follow-up has been posted.