On Feb. 23, 1998, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Quds
al-Arabi published a piece titled "Declaration of the World
Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and the Crusaders." Osama
bin Laden and other leaders of militant Islamic groups in Egypt,
Pakistan and Bangladesh were among the signers.
The declaration, a translation of which appeared in an article
by Bernard Lewis in the November-December 1998 issue of Foreign
Affairs, began by quoting several militant passages from the Koran
and sayings of Muhammad, then continued:
"Since God laid down the Arabian peninsula, created its
desert, and surrounded it with its seas, no calamity has ever befallen
it like these Crusader hosts that have spread in it like locusts,
crowding its soil, eating its fruits, and destroying its verdure
[foliage]; and this at a time when the nations contend against
the Muslims like diners jostling around a bowl of food."
The statement continues, condemning the United States for three
main reasons:
"First-For more than seven years the United States
is occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of its territories,
Arabia, plundering its riches, overwhelming its rulers, humiliating
its people, threatening its neighbors, and using its bases in the
peninsula as a spearhead to fight against the neighboring Islamic
peoples ...
"Second-Despite the immense destruction inflicted
on the Iraqi people at the hands of the Crusader-Jewish alliance
and in spite of the appalling number of dead, exceeding a million,
the Americans nevertheless, in spite of all this, are trying once
more to repeat this dreadful slaughter ...
