Following are excerpts from a sermon delivered by Egyptian Salafist Abd Al-Mun'im Al-Shahhat, which was posted on the Internet on May 6, 2011. Al-Shahhat, who ran for parliament on the Al-Nour Party ticket – the political party affiliated with the Al-Dawa Al-Salafiyya movement – gained a majority in the initial round of elections, but lost his seat to the Muslim Brotherhood candidate in the run-offs.
Abd Al-Mun'im Al-Shahhat: "There is no doubt that Osama bin Laden will remain a permanent figure in modern history. History will continue to remember that the man was born into the lap of luxury – perhaps even more luxurious than the White house itself – but despite this, he responded to the call of Jihad.
"He invested this money, over which men of this world fight, as do the countries that come to plunder our resources, under the pretext of granting us liberty and so on… Bin Laden invested these funds in Jihad for the sake of Allah – or rather, in what he deemed to be Jihad for the sake of Allah. He was right in most cases, and was mistaken in a few. […]
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"Where is their respect for human rights? Where is their respect for Islam, claimed by their president [Obama] on the day he assumed the presidency, after eight years of a Crusade war declared by his predecessor? Allah put an end to that war by means of His grace, and by means of the efforts of men like [bin Laden], whom they killed.
"When they wanted to appease the wrath of the Muslims, which had built up in the course of the eight years of the Crusader war, they brought that sweet-talking man, who would say: "I have Muslim roots," and who would embellish his speech with Koranic verses. Then he turned out to be the one directly in charge of the killing, just like the killing perpetrated by the Chicago gangs, and of the cowboy gangs of the past. He boasted of this before the whole world. […]
"We are facing a country [the U.S.] that practices piracy. It wants to take over the world by force, while it prevents us from talking about Jihad. This is the same Jihad that illuminated the world, and did not steal oil, did not tear people apart, and did not kill people in the safety of their homes, along with their women and children.
"We are the ones being asked to erase the word [Jihad] from our dictionaries, while they do these things and even take pride in it. Worse still, they want to consider our entire history a mistake." […]
