Talk:Worldwide perception of Osama bin Laden

I'm moving this to Worldwide perception of Osama Bin Laden soon. WhisperToMe 05:50, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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Osama bin Laden was almost completely unknown in the West prior to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. He gained much greater notoriety following the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks.

Most people in the West hold a negative perception of Osama Bin Laden. Some view him as a power-hungry man who is using religion as an excuse to attack other countries. Some see him as a religious fanatic that is wantonly killing people and threatening the peace of the world.

Some Americans and Europeans do sympathize with him or his motives, accepting his accusations that the US is allied with Israel against Palestinians and Arabs, and that the United States is occupying Saudi Arabia.

Some people in those countries are indifferent to Osama bin Laden.

Osama is often seen as "the man" to get to destroy Al-Qaida. On the contrary, many important men are involved in the attacks, and several important men have been killed, like Mohammed Atef, or captured, like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Of course, several other important figures, such as Ayman Al-Zawahiri, still have not been captured.

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Before the Sept 11th attacks, many Muslims in those regions had come to admire bin Laden for his charity work and his defense of Islam. Some extremist Muslims in those regions sympathize with Osama bin Laden and sometimes protest actions taken against bin Laden by the United States.

However, this support is not unanimous or unwavering: he has been banned from his own country of Saudi Arabia and was supposedly disowned by his family (who use the English spelling Binladin).

Moderate Muslims in those regions look down at bin Laden as too extremist, and do not support his tactics for getting the U.S. to change its foriegn policy.

This is unsourced, weasel words, and completely uninformative. Some people this, most people that, ... no. Give me numbers. Give me statistics. Give me polls. Give me the numbers that attended pro-Osama and anti-Osama rallies in various countries. Give me the CIA's assessment of his level of popular support in the Middle East. Tell me something I don't know. Martin 01:47, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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Contents

1 VfD Archived discussion 2 9/11 to september 11 3 Attention 4 Dark Future 5 extremely positive view of Bin Laden?

VfD Archived discussion

Article listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion Apr 21 to Apr 29 2004, kept as consensus was not reached. Discussion:

• A pointless page - no content apart from two silly pictures. Deus Ex 21:36, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
• redirect to Osama bin Laden and merge whatever is merge-worthy there. --Jiang 22:21, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
• The January 15th version of the article has reasonable content, but that content seems to have been totally deleted. RickK
• Delete - nothing here not better covered under Osama bin Laden. -Sean 02:23, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Exploding Boy 08:21, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)
• Keep the Jan 15th version (which I've restored). Lefty 23:38, 2004 Apr 22 (UTC)
• I don't think the January 15th version is worth keeping. It is full of generalisations which have no way of being proven like 'Some people in those countries are indifferent to Osama bin Laden' and 'Some Americans and Europeans do sympathize with him or his motives'. There is little or no factual material. Deus Ex 18:26, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. A waste of perfectly good electrons.
  • You may wish to bear in mind that anonymous votes don't count. Wile E. Heresiarch 00:08, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
• Keep: important subject, not too hopeless in its present form. I don't think it would be too hard to substantiate claims about what people think of Osama. Needs work. Wile E. Heresiarch 00:08, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
• Keep but modify. I agree with Wile E. Heresiarch that this subject is far too important to simply be deleted. Still, the general lack of any factual substantiation of the suppositions presented as facts in this article tends to reduce the credibility of the article. Dated references to various accepted opinion poll results and to various other source articles would certainly act to enhance the credibility of the article. Scott P. 18:02, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)
• Keep but clean up. -- Graham :) | Talk 21:11, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
• Delete - No way to make this stable - will end up being POV one way or the other - Tεxτurε 15:30, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

End archived discussion

9/11 to september 11

I have just changed all occurrences of 9/11 to September 11, just like I've just done in the main article on Osama Bin Laden (see the talk section for an explanation). This is more according to the rules and it is also the way it is used in the main September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks article.

DirkvdM 10:24, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)

Attention

This article is in bad shape. For instance: "...Fatwah (religious oath of destruction)..." That's not what a fatwa is. A fatwa is a decree or legal opinion (on any subject) given by an Islamic religious authority. I'm adding an {{attention}} tag. Mr. Billion 04:13, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I mean, serious attention. The criticisms above from various users are pretty much spot on, but this article still can be improved. This is an interesting topic, and I'd like to see it given a better treatment. We should certainly add something about the Pashtun, the people indigenous to the Afghanistan/Pakistan border who are apparently sheltering bin Laden because of an "honor code" imbedded into their society that dictates that honorable people must grant asylum to anyone who asks for it. Quotes, interviews, and statistics, as Martin suggested above, would greatly improve this article. Mr. Billion 04:15, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Dark Future

Muslims are brainwashed by Osama bin Laden's radical beliefs in the form of propaganda and they will not stop even after bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda/Taliban leaders are captured or killed until they get revenge and restore their empire. The worse thing is, if i meet an Al-Qaeda/Taliban or any other racist/International terrorist leader or an enemy national leader and form a friendship with them, they will help me complete my fall to the dark side of humanity, thus transforming me into someone else that people do not know and like who will lead to a vengeful victory over the United Nations in the War on Terrorism and launch a purge of the U.N. in order to help build the Global Racist Empire. I might remain like this for 38 years until one of my own children turn me to the light side in which i kill the rulers of this empire and then die completely. I vow not to let this future come true! - John V 10:34 A.M. 30 April 2005 (UTC)

Uh, OK. Mr. Billion 21:56, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

extremely positive view of Bin Laden?

I contend that there is no statistically significant group of people in the West (i.e. America, Europe, Canada, etc) that holds an "immensely positive" perception of Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda. I challenge anybody to produce a single, unretracted comment made by a widely respected figure that unambiguously depicts Bin Laden or Al Qaeda in a positive light. (And even if the phrase "perceptions in the West run somewhere in between immensely positive and extremely negative" were not inaccurate, it is still a meaningless vacuity. Of course opinions are somewhere between immensely positive and extremely negative; what else can they be? It's like saying that the temperature outside is somewhere between immensely hot and extremely cold.)

"Accepting...[Bin Laden's] accusations [to a certain degree]" is very different from "sympathiz[ing] with him or his motives."

Some explanation is in order. Some (though not all) things that Bin Laden refers to in his public pronouncements are indisputably true. The United States does strongly support the Israeli government's policies in the West Bank and Gaza and has for several decades. The United States is extremely dependent on oil from the Middle East, which is provided by governments that are corrupt, autocratic, and unpopular, both in the U.S. and in the Middle East.

Other things that Bin Laden says in these pronouncements are more opinionated. He believes, for example, that the Israeli government is conducting a military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza that is brutal and immoral.

It is possible to agree with these statements, as many people in the west do, but to disagree strongly with the conclusions Bin Laden draws from them (i.e. that terrorist attacks must be launched against the west, etc.), as virtually everybody in the west does. For example, many people who oppose the Israeli government's policies in WB/Gaza feel that the problem can be resolved through peaceful, mutual negotiations rather than military action and terrorist violence. Analogously, it is possible to agree with George W. Bush that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were an awful atrocity and disagree with him that the war in Iraq was an appropriate response to the threat.

I edited this article to reflect more nuance. Major edits included changing...

"As a result of the September 11 attacks, and fueled by patriotism, outrage and the media, perceptions in the West run somewhere in between immensely positive and extremely negative." to "As a result of the September 11 attacks and the subsequent outpouring of patriotic ferver and outrage, western opinion of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda is extremely negative."

"Up until that time such incidents were remote and occurred elsewhere." to "With only a few spectacular exceptions (such as the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995), terrorist attacks on American civilian targets were remote and occurred elsewhere."

It became difficult to track and summarize my many content edits and gramatical changes. I hope my cursory review of them can be forgiven. --Dkostic

Good edits. Thanks. Mr. Billion 22:03, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)