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Following are excerpts from an interview with Muhammad Abd Al-Rahman, the son of the Blind Sheik, who is serving a life sentence in the US. The interview aired on LTB TV on October 16, 2011.
Interviewer: First of all, we offer our condolences for the martyrdom of your brother Ahmad in Afghanistan last week. May God bestow mercy upon him.
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Muhammad Abd Al-Rahman: My brother Ahmad was in Waziristan. He called us a few days before Ramadhan. He called several times consecutively, which was unusual for him. He spoke to all of us, as if he was saying goodbye.
He said he wouldn't be able to call before the end of the month of Dhu Al-Hijja, because he was going into Afghanistan, where the American forces were trying to take over several regions, which had been liberated by the Afghan and the Arab mujahideen.
He went there with a group of Arab and Afghan mujahideen to curb the American attack in these regions.
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My brother Ahmad did not go to the US to fight it, and he did not go to another country to target American installations. It was the US that attacked him, and went to Afghanistan in order to take over that land, and kill those persevering mujahideen.
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The Western and American media machine portrayed these people as beasts, as blood-sucking vampires, but...
Interviewer: Just to make it clear for our viewers: There's a difference between what you, your brother, and the mujahideen were doing, and the actions of Osama Bin Laden, for example. Or were you following the same path?
Muhammad Abd Al-Rahman: People who are familiar with Sheik Osama Bin Laden know that he was better than all of us. He was more moral, more humble...
Interviewer: You met him?
Muhammad Abd Al-Rahman: Of course, we were living together. From what I've seen, any Muslim would wish to be like Sheik Osama Bin Laden, or to be a lesser version of him, in the moral sense. There may be slight disagreements...
Interviewer: The Muslims criticize Osama Bin Laden for targeting civilians and attacking targets in Western or Arab countries. If you want to wage Jihad, go to Israel, or to the occupied Palestinian lands, or go to occupied Islamic territories, like Chechnya, and so on. But to attack other targets... I think there is a consensus that the killing of civilians is unacceptable.
Muhammad Abd Al-Rahman: There are several aspects to this. With regard to Sheik Osama Bin Laden, he did not target the Americans at first. It was the Americans who turned Islam into a target.
Following the demise of the Soviet Union, the US began to seek an enemy. Superpowers must have enemies so that they can gain influence and power.
Interviewer: So they made Islam into their enemy.
Muhammad Abd Al-Rahman: Exactly. We did not deem the US to be an enemy at first, and never heard about any Muslim carrying out an attack against the US. The US started it. It began with Somalia, and occupied its lands, before we had even heard of Sheik Osama Bin Laden doing anything. The US attacked civilians in Somalia and occupied Somali lands. There was infinite support for Israel, which killed Palestinians and took over the lands of the Muslims.
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The third thing was the unlimited support for the dictatorial regimes in the region. All this drove many people to respond to this aggression, injustice, and tyranny.
Sheik Osama Bin Laden had his reasons. He said that the people whom he targeted were not civilians. He said that they were the ones who supported their countries' policies, the ones who paid taxes to these countries.
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