Posted by NEWS on 13/9/2004, 19:14:18, in reply to "CNN:- 2001 Interview With Shaykh Abu Qatada - Part 1" A: Until now, I don't believe what the U.S. says -- that those it had shown are those who committed these acts. The whole world is asking the U.S. to provide proof of so and so's involvement or an involvement of an organization; until now this has not been clear. To answer your question, I teach people religion. I have books here which I read to them from, but what makes them commit an act later on is something I don't know and don't understand, and the other people are required to answer that. Q: Are you pleased, happy or satisfied that your teachings are discovered in the possession of people who are accused of causing mass terrorism, the September 11 terrorist attack? A: I haven't thought of this before now to be happy or sad. First of all, I don't even know if I have met those people or whether or not I have come across those names before. This is not something I thought about, whether it would make me happy or sad. Q: Do you believe that there are any targets in Britain that are legitimate targets for the kind of terrorism that was witnessed in the United States on September 11? A: I believe that it is the right of every human being to defend his religion and country. After what I have seen on TV -- the killing of Muslims in Afghanistan -- people have the right to defend themselves. In the West, you are no purer or higher (more civilized) than those poor and weak people who are being killed in Afghanistan. So I believe that people have the right to defend themselves. Q: What happened in the United States -- before anyone was being killed in Afghanistan -- do you believe that American civilians were legitimate targets? A: I repeat for the thousandth time, no one has the right to judge those who are absent. Every Muslim has learned that a judge cannot rule in a case where a man came to him with an eye taken out. Maybe his opponent had both of his eyes taken out. How do you want me to condemn this act when I don't know who did it and why? You are crying over the death of 6,000 people when you might have killed 20,000. How do you want us to judge someone who is absent and we have not heard his or her story? Regardless of being a Muslim or not, the question is looking into the facts of the matter. Q: I am not sure I understood your answer. My basic question was, do you believe that civilians, women and children, old men, are legitimate targets in what you call this conflict between Islam and the West? A: When you impose a method of war, and when America bombed a civilian target in Hiroshima where thousands were killed in order to achieve a military target, how can I tie the hand of the other when you apply the same principle? I cannot answer if this act was right or wrong. I have not answered nor condemned nor condoned nor encouraged but I say that the principle of war which is imposed by man has to expect the same return. Q: Experts, people who are familiar with your writings and teachings, say that in the mid-1990s you issued several religious edicts -- not fatwas, but orders -- saying that it is ... justifying the killing of women and children from families who are connected with the government of Algeria. A: In our religion, the killing of women and children is not allowed. This is a matter which is decided and no one can say otherwise, but what has to be known is that if the only way to stop an attack on our women and children is by threatening (the attackers) to kill their women and children, we shall do so. This is allowed under religious laws to treat others to do the same. We don't kill women and children but an attack on their dwellings becomes legitimate if this is to stop the evil deeds of those people. Q: So, it is a legitimate threat -- I don't understand -- what is the difference between threatening and doing it? A: I said to threaten because then they can be stopped. Because a threat is different from the act. To take a child and a women and to kill them, this is wrong and unlawful. But if we threaten them (the attackers) they are scaring them into not killing the women and children and not committing crimes of rape. Q: If you threaten, it can also lead to them being killed -- because if you say, as a respected scholar, and you tell people to threaten the women and children and say that it is legitimate to kill them -- what's to stop any of the people who hear that from going out and doing that? A: I have not said one day that the killing of children and women is allowed but I said that the bombing of the sites where they shelter among their women and children. This is in the case of them continuing to kill our women and children. Q: You were briefly arrested here in England back in February and then released. With the change in climate right now since September 11, do you think that you might be arrested again -- are you concerned about that? A: Everything is expected in this world. As long as you have in America something called secret evidence, everything is possible under your defeated system of justice. Q: What do you teach people about America and about Jihad and about what they can do? A: We teach them religion, and religion requires them to live the life of Muslims and not the life of those who are not Muslims. In turn, it is the duty of a Muslim to live by Islam and not to be subjugated or enslaved by the lives of the others, America or the others. Islam must be lived as it is without mixing with others. This is what I preach. ... The West now wants to impose its way of life upon us. All aspects of life, politically, economically and socially. What I call for is to refuse this newcomer and to live all aspects of life by Islam. Q: There have been videotapes that have come out of Afghanistan -- there has been this man Sulaiman Abu Ghaith who is the spokesman for al Qaeda. I am not asking you whether you know him or whether you are linked to him -- I want to know what you think of what he said. He praised the people who did what they did in the U.S. on September 11; he said the world should expect more of that, and he called these people good men, good and faithful men. And he said they are good Muslims. Is that what Islam teaches -- that it is good to fly a plane into a building killing everybody? A: Listen to me. You have presented to me as a great journalist with the CNN. There is man who lost a sum of money in street No. 1 so he went to look for this in street No. 2. Do you know why? Because street No. 2 was lit. Your problem is over there, don't victimize me. You are dealing with your problem in Afghanistan in your filthy way, which is represented by the American policy and the military. Your problem is not with me and it's not here. Here our role is to teach people and to make a stand as required by our religion. So don't try to find anything here that merits an accusation or a wrong practice.
Q: What is it about your teachings, do you think, that inspire men to commit violence -- for instance, Mohammed Atta; for instance, these people who are in jail in Europe suspected of being linked with the terrorist organisation known as al Qaeda. What is it about your teachings that inspires these men?
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