Muslim writer: ‘We are all bin Laden’

A former top Kuwaiti official says the Islamic world’s inability to criticize Osama bin Laden leaves the impression Muslims universally support the al-Qaida terrorist leader.

Dr. Sa’d Bin Tefla, a journalist and former Kuwaiti minister of information, wrote an article in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat titled “We are all bin Laden,” reports the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Tefla said much damage has been caused to Muslims because the world is contrasting Muslims’ tepid approach to bin Laden to their overwhelming response in the 1980s to British author Salman Rushdie and his controversial book “The Satanic Verses.”

Against Rushdie, Tefla wrote, “We rattled and sharpened all of our rhetorical sabers, our religious legal rulings [fatwa], [alerted] our guards, our ports, our airports and our border crossings in order to prevent his entering [our countries] and the distribution of his book, since it does damage to Islam.”

Protests erupted at British embassies all over the Islamic world and Rushdie dolls were burned along with copies of his book, he recalled. In a protest in Pakistan, nine people were killed and others were injured by police.

“Religious legal rulings were disseminated one after another banning Salman Rushdie’s book and calling for him to be killed,” Tefla said. “Iran earmarked a reward of one million dollars for whoever would implement Imam Khomeini’s fatwa and kill Salman Rushdie.”

But where are the fatwas against bin Laden? he asked.

“Despite the fact that bin Laden murdered thousands of innocents in the name of our religion and despite the damage that he has caused to Muslims everywhere, and especially to innocent Muslims in the West whose life is much better than the life of Muslims in Islamic lands, to this date not a single fatwa has been issued calling for the killing of bin Laden, on the pretext that bin Laden still proclaims ‘there is no God other than Allah,'” Tefla wrote.

He points out no protests have been held to condemn bin Laden, though “perhaps there were some that demonstrated in his favor.”

Muslim satellite television channels “competed amongst themselves in broadcasting his sermons and fatwas, instead of preventing their dissemination as they did in the case of Rushdie’s book,” Tefla wrote.

“Have we earmarked a reward for anyone who kills bin Laden as we did for anyone who kills Rushdie on account of his book?

“With our equivocal stance on bin Laden, we from the very start left the world with the impression that we are all bin Laden.”