"It was never an attack on our freedom." You only believe that because you are not listening to what they are saying to you.

Here is the full text of Osama Bin Laden's letter to America:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver

And here is a choice extract that totally contradicts your erroneous belief.

"(Q2) [...] what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(a) The religion of the Unification of God [...] of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to [...] Muhammad...

...It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme."

Him and his kind want to impose a theocracy on the entire world. Under the rules of jihad (outlined in the Koran), once they call you to islam and you refuse to take up islam, they have the right to kill you. http://islamqa.info/en/ref/43087

They are not just opposed to America, but also to buddhism, hinduism and African pagan religions (hence they ran a trade in Black African slaves for 1300 years). http://www.amazon.co.uk/Islams-Black-Slaves-History-Diaspora... The 1951 UN report on slavery documented that 5% of the population of Saudi Arabia and Yemen were slaves. That is almost 100 years after the US fought the Civil War. Non-muslim black Africans are still being taken as slaves in Mauritania and Sudan (which is why the non-muslim south of Sudan seceded from the muslim north last year). Baroness Cox of Britain is still going to Sudan to buy slaves in order to free them. http://groupspaces.com/humanitariancentre/item/205497 Books on sharia law say that slavery is legal under islam.

Over 5,000 buddhists in southern Thailand have been slaughtered by muslim extremists in the past 8 years. That dwarfs the deaths in the WTC, but you probably haven't heard of it.

Bin Laden's letter to America offers up Palestine as a pretext. But his kind have said they plan to take back Spain for islam (it was occupied by jihadis for 700 years, don't you know). It also explains the civil war in Sudan, and the massacres in Thailand. The jihad is also going on in Nigeria, Mali, and Kenya.

It is eurocentric arrogance to ignore what the muslim extremists are telling you they want.

By all means get on with your life, but don't deceive yourself about what they want.

There are far bigger reasons to question Amnesty International's integrity. Search their website for the OIC's "Cairo Declaration" on Human Rights under Islam, and you'll find that Amnesty has completely ignored it. The Cairo Declaration subordinates all human rights to sharia law, and almost every islamic country in the world has signed the Cairo Declaration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Righ...

At the most extreme interpretation, slavery is legal under islamic law - see Sultanhussein Tabandeh, "A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". And the Cairo Declaration says that there is no crime except that proscribed by sharia. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Yemen had slaves well into the 20th century (a 1951 UN report estimated that 5% of the population of those countries were slaves), and they only "outlawed" slavery under duress from the west. There is still slave-taking and trading in Mauritania and Sudan.

There are now plenty of serious works on the 1300 years of the islamic slave trade, e.g. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Islams-Black-Slaves-History-Diaspora... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Christian-Slaves-Muslim-Masters-Medi...

It beggars belief that Amnesty can simply ignore it when the islamic world rejects universal human rights. But as long as Amnesty ignores it, the OIC's Cairo Declaration can fly under the radar, and be ignored by mainstream media and governments.

My understanding of the Cairo Declaration might be wrong. But until it starts to be discussed by organisations like Amnesty, it is not going to be subjected to extensive critical examination.

Where did the "Palestinian arabs" come from? Arabia. What is their language? Arabic. What were they doing outside Arabia? Like the muslim conquest of north Africa, Spain, Persia, India, etc., the area of Palestine was taken by violent conquest. If Arabs had a right to be in Palestine by virtue of conquest, then Britain had the right (again by virtue of conquest) to do what it liked with the land. Why is it there is one standard for Arabs and a different standard for non-Arabs?

You try to use the narrative of colonialism, imperialism and racism, to obscure the fact that the islamic empire used weaponry and war to take control of almost every part of the world that is islamic (certainly all areas of africa, the middle east, europe and the indian subcontinent). And then it imposed its own forms of racism and colonialism on the subjugated people. Let's not even talk about the jews. Here's two books documenting the history of islamic slave-trading in Africa: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Legacy-Arab-Islam-Africa-Inter-relig... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Islams-Black-Slaves-History-Diaspora...

It seems it was every bit as bad as the racism and colonialism of the atlantic slave-trade. Even the UN expert panel on slavery in 1951 said that 1:20 people in Arabia was a slave. That was 1951. Three years after the establishment of the state of Israel.

Let's have some consistency here. At least the jews did not go into Palestine with weaponry and enslave the Arabs living there.