Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T12:19:47.330Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

VICIOUS DUTY: THE ETHICS OF OSAMA BIN LADEN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2011

Get access

Extract

Osama bin Laden means well. This is evident from his declarations, juridical decrees, lectures, epistles, and written reminders, which Bruce Lawrence has made available in Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden (2005; hereafter referred to by the page numbers in parentheses) a single volume. Duty, Osama claims, compels Muslims' support for jihad against the ‘Crusader–Jewish Alliance’ (7, 23). But many attack his goals and behavior as immoral. Initiatives he has supported or directed represent his strategy for fulfilling his duty and demonstrate its apparent immorality at the same time: notably, attacks on U.S. embassies, the 9/11 attacks, and more recently an alleged plot to detonate hydrogen peroxide bombs in public transportation venues. Moreover, his willingness to kill innocents generally is self-evidently wrong, as is his blanket hatred of Jews, Americans, and Christians (56, 87); although on one occasion he has declared that ‘many in the West are polite and good people’ (142).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)