Bin Laden's Book

Bruce B. Lawrence, professor of Islamic studies at Duke and Bin Laden's editor describes the experience, and what he learned:

The letters reveal him to be a calculating, highly literate polemicist. Stateless, he creates his own image of an Islamic supernation that replaces all current Muslim nation-states. He projects himself as the counterweight to both American hegemony and Arab perfidy. He is the Nasser of the new century, trying to rouse Muslim audiences as much through his rhetoric as his action. He even turns the tables on the Western media. In his view, it is they, not he, who perpetuate terror. "Terror is the most dreaded weapon in the modern age and the Western media are mercilessly using it against their own people," he declares in an October 2001 interview with Al-Ja-zeera. Why is the Western media establishment so anti-humane? Because, in bin Laden's view, "it implants fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States. It means that what the enemies of the United States cannot do, its media are doing!"

And Lawrence has some advice for us:

If I have learned one enduring lesson from months of reflection on the words of Osama bin Laden, it is that the best defense against World War III is neither censoring nor silencing him but reading what he has actually written and countering his arguments with better ones. He has left a sufficient record that can, and should, be attacked for its deficiencies, its lapses, its contradictions, and, above all, its hopelessness.

But ultimately the victory may depend less on us than on who can rise up in the Muslim world and eclipse Bin Laden's legacy as "the most famous/infamous Arab of the 21st century." No matter when or how he dies, Lawrence warns, Bin Laden "will not easily be dislodged from his perch."

The attraction of knights will continue until such time as more-humane heroes can attract the idealism of Muslim youth. Unlike bin Laden and his Al Qaeda cohorts, future Muslim leaders, if they are to succeed, must work within the state system; their task, unlike his, must be to find a better way not only to liberate Muslim homelands but also to forge a brighter future for those liberated. In the meantime, reading the words of Osama bin Laden is a sober reminder of how hard, yet necessary, it is to wage war against Al Qaeda with the pen — through the press, the Internet, and television — and not just with the sword, whether on the plains of Iraq or in the mountains of Afghanistan.

The book Lawrence edited, "Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden," is due out this month.