Milt Bearden, who has 30 years of experience in the C.I.A.’s Directorate of Operations, claims in today’s New York Times that Al-Qaeda “is an ideological and spiritual movement rather than a cohesive, quantifiable foe.” Without dismissing Bearden’s statement, I want to draw attention to the fact that in his terrorist recruiting video tapes, Osama bin Laden constructs a political, and not spiritual, argument for waging jihad.

In order to both understand the political nature of the jihadist argument, and to gain a sense of the powerful nature of the propaganda, it is helpful to visit the section of the
Columbia International Affairs Online website that examines bin Laden’s recruiting video tape and offers insightful analysis and commentary on the subject.  

Fawaz Gerges, in his article “Eavesdropping on Osama bin Laden,” offers a thoughtful analysis of the bin Laden’s recruiting tapes.  Gerges writes: “portrayal of infant death and malnutrition in Iraq is used effectively to stress America’s brutality and Arab rulers’ culpability in this continuing tragedy.”

Without raising questions about the legitimacy of the above mentioned US actions, I want to underscore the fact that grievances regarding the United States and its foreign policy towards the Middle East and Muslim world that have been effectively co-opted and articulated by Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden does appear in the videotape, he wears the white robes of a sheikh, he delivers speeches, and there certainly is a religious flavour to he video.  However, Richard Bulliet of Columbia University notes:  

“While religious appeals suffuse all three scenes and reference is made to the example of Muhammad and his early followers, the many and complex theological, social, and religious issues that surround discussions of jihad in Islamic intellectual history remain unmentioned.‘

What bin Laden presents in his propaganda is not a complex theological argument to wage jihad against America. Rather, his argument is a political one that draws on powerful imagery — the murder of a very young Palestinian boy named Muhammad Durra, women in Islamic dress being degraded by Israeli soldiers — and political frustration to demand that Muslims unite in an international jihad against impious governments and rescue the international Muslim community that is currently under attack. In bin Laden’s portrayal, the Saudi government is an irreligious puppet that is subservient to America and, as such, both the Saudi and the American governments are subject to jihad.  

To dismiss the call to jihad as a retrograde crusade against the western way of life is to be blind to the political and emotional arguments to wage international jihad that have been heard and answered to devastating effect.  

Mimi Hanaoka