Recovered Bin Laden Letters Show a Divided Al Qaeda

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/world/recovered-documents-show-a-divided-al-qaeda.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, May 4, 2012 at 10:19 AM
Subject: re: Recovered Bin Laden Letters Show a Divided Al Qaeda
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   Osama bin Laden was no religious scholar. But how different our world would be if al-Qaeda kept even to his understanding of Sharia!  As he wrote "it is not permissible in Islam to betray trust and break a covenant".  Recall that all nineteen bombers of 9/11 had entered the U.S. on valid visas. Each of them therefore broke trust and violated the hospitality of the U.S. in the gravest fashion. Scholars at al-Azhar laid this out soon after 9/11. By their action, the bombers had put themselves outside the community of Muslims and deserved to be treated as "bandits". They were certainly neither martyrs not paragons to be emulated.

Barry Haskell Levine