Death and Desolation

"This man's purpose was to justify mass murder to Al-Qaeda recruits and to the entire world."
"Amid Al-Qaeda's savage success and the utter chaos of that terrible day, Osama bin Laden turned to this man."
"Al Qaeda cannot replenish its stores of suicide terrorists unless it has authority figures like this man to incite new suicide operatives and to justify Al-Qaeda's mission."
"Without people like him, Al-Qaeda dies with every suicide attack."
"This man was not Osama bin Laden's robot. He was not his puppet ... He was no accidental terrorist."
"During the most important period of time in Al-Qaeda's savage history, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was [his] principal messenger ... He used his fiery oratory to incite Al-Qaeda's growing army of terror in this war with America."
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Cronan

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith sits outside a cave somewhere in Afghanistan Photo: US Attorney's Office/AP

"We are the ones who did it. I want to deliver a message to the world ... I want you to deliver that message", recounted Abu Ghaith in his meeting with the head of Al-Qaeda on that fateful day of September 11, 2001, giving evidence against himself to an American judge and jury at a trial taking place in a civilian court in a Manhattan federal courtroom. From that courtroom a view is accessible of the new World Trade Center tower.

Islam requires a number of important issues to be undertaken from its faithful, aside from five daily prayers and a life of surrender to the tenets of Islam. Muslims must be fruitful; men take their names from their sons, and so do mothers of those sons. Abu Osama, and Umm Osama would have been the polite honorific by which Osama bin Laden's parents would have been addressed by familiars.

Parenthood, siring and rearing of males is vital to Islam. And so is honour, and defending it, and so too above all, is jihad. Muslims are schooled in the knowledge that jihad, the absolute requirement to look into oneself, and to recognize the need to spread Islam throughout the world is an utter imperative for all those who submit to Islam and follow its injunctions. The Kuwaiti cleric, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, was simply being faithful to his spiritual beliefs.

Non-Muslims are given three choices: become Muslim, or pay a non-Muslim tax, or die. The aerial assaults on New York were a response to America agreeing to neither of the first two options, the third was not a scenario they were aware of to agree to, nor would they have. How could Abu Ghaith (father of Ghaith), possibly have refused Osama bin Laden's instruction to represent Al-Qaeda's interests in punishing the enemies of Islam?

And if the liberal left's propensity to moral relativism were to be given politically correct play here, Abu Ghaith would receive an apology for his apprehension, incarceration and the blow to his honour as a devout Muslim by having him stand trial for a crime he did not commit, for the attack on the World Trade towers in New York, by his Islamist reasoning was justified; the Koran demands it be incumbent upon him.

Abu Ghaith informed the trial that he was summoned to meet Osama bin Laden in an Afghan cave complex, so he could be directly instructed it was his duty as a Muslim firm in his belief in the sanctity of Islam and rightness of its justice, that the world be advised that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the horrors inflicted on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Proudly to proclaim that devout Muslims had done honour to Islam.

A video was shown at trial showing Sulaiman Abu Ghaith seated beside Osama bin Laden the day following the September 11 attacks. There is nothing to conceal, and everything to be proud of. The 9/11 attacks had a distinct and direct purpose; to demonstrate that there are Muslims eager to commit themselves to the ultimate sacrifice to do honour to Islam and to their own memory as celebrated martyrs. And by destroying the lives of non-Muslims martyrdom expresses its purpose.

Abu Ghaith, the highest-ranking Al-Qaeda figure yet to stand trial in America now faces life behind bars. Found to be guilty of two conspiracy charges, and one count of aiding terrorism by delivering murderous threats as the officially-designed spokesman for Al-Qaeda. It is an unjust sentence. He would far prefer to be martyred, since that is the hallowed goal of all Islamists.

On the other hand, his suffering, incarcerated for life will also be celebrated as a willing sacrifice for Islam. In the opinion of non-Muslims, kuffirs, Infidels, Jews and the like, Bin Laden and Abu Ghaith represent base, brutish cave dwellers. In the opinion of the enlightened of Islam, followers of the Prophet whose name they bless with every breath they take, they are the champions of Islam, the forerunners of an eventual Islamist world.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office   The jury was shown a photo of defendant Sulaiman Abu Ghaith sitting next to his father-in-law Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan in a video filmed on Sept. 12, 2001.