The Ultimate Reason for Muslim Hostility to the West Is Not Israel 11/28/2023 by Raymond Ibrahim

The Stream : As the war between Israel and Palestinians rages on, the eyes of many tiktokers were recently “opened” by a 21-year-old letter from Osama bin Laden, wherein he claimed that U.S. support for Israel was the primary reason why Muslims hated and terrorized America.

Tiktokers might be surprised to learn that this 2002 “Letter to Americans” is only one of many such communiques (some 100 pages of messages to Westerners are contained and analyzed in my 2007 The Al Qaeda Reader).

Moreover, this Ladenese theme never wavered.  As late as 2009, for instance, after once again rehashing the claim that jihad against America wholly revolved around U.S. support for Israel, bin Laden concluded with the following musing: “You should ask yourselves whether your security, your blood, your sons, your money, your jobs, your homes, your economy, and your reputation are more dear to you than the security and economy of the Israelis.”

In that same communique, bin Laden, yet again, made it perfectly clear that should U.S. support for Israel cease, so too would Islamic terrorism cease: “Let me say that we have declared many times, over more than two and a half decades, that the reason for our conflict with you is your support for your Israeli allies, who are occupying our land of Palestine [emphasis added].”

While these observations and questions require an answer, some context is first needed. As clearly demonstrated by Islam’s doctrines and history — the former regularly manifesting themselves in the course of the latter — it is a historic fact that Islamic hostility for and aggression against non-Muslims transcends any and all temporal “grievances.” Islam, according to the classical — not “radical” — schools of jurisprudence, is obligated to subjugate the world.

This is why prudent non-Muslims have for centuries been finding the question of achieving permanent peace with the Islamic world a vexatious problem. Professor of law James Lorimer (1818-90) succinctly stated the problem over a century ago:

So long as Islam endures, the reconciliation of its adherents, even with Jews and Christians, and still more with the rest of mankind, must continue to be an insoluble problem. … For an indefinite future, however reluctantly, we must confine our political recognition to the professors of those religions which … preach the doctrine of “live and let live” (The Institutes of the Law of Nations, p. 124).

In other words, political recognition — with all the attendant negotiations and diplomacy that come with it — should be granted to all major religions/civilizations except Islam, which does not recognize the notion of “live and let live.”

Now while most Muslims may not go around invoking Islamic law’s dichotomized worldview that pits Islam against the rest of the world, bin Laden, the “man of grievances,” always did.  For example, for all his talk of Israel being the heart of the problem, bin Laden exposed his true convictions in the following excerpt, which he directed to fellow Arabic-speaking Muslims not long after the 9/11 strikes:

Read it all here........