It sure didn't seem like it. Especially when you pictured him dragging a dialysis unit behind him, like an oversized canister vacuum cleaner, from cave to cave. That beggars the question of what, if any, retaliation he expects should his A-Team succeed in detonating a nuclear device.
Is there then a faction within Al Qaeda that has actually obtained or constructed a nuclear weapon?
As Graham Allison reports in Nuclear Terrorism (Times Books, 2004), Israeli intelligence sources claimed that in 1998 bin Laden paid $2 million to a Kazakhstani for a Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM) or "suitcase" bomb -- that most practical of tacticals. A month later, his people supposedly shelled out $30 million and two tons of opium to Chechen mobsters for twenty "loose nuke" Russian warheads.
Yossef Bodansky, head of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, confirmed this. "There is no longer much doubt that bin Laden has succeeded in his quest for nuclear suicide bombs [and] has a collection of individuals knowledgeable in activating the bombs."
In 1999 bin Laden himself said, "If I have indeed acquired [them], then I thank God for enabling me to do so." By 2002, he claimed to have stockpiled forty-eight SADMs.
Not content with procuring, a month before 9/11, he turned his intention to manufacturing and was reported to have bought design plans from two former officials of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.
But how does a religious-based movement justify nuclear weapons, especially first use?
According to Rabia Harris, coordinator of the Muslim Peace Fellowship in Nyack, New York, it doesn't. "It's a spiritual atrocity to consider massacring millions of people," he said in a June 7, 1998 article for Religion News Service by Julia Lieblich titled "Pakistani Enthusiasm."
In the same article, Patrice Brodeur, an Islamicist at Harvard University, asked: "What does it say about the solidarity of Muslim brothers if they're willing to aim a bomb at India, where we find the largest Muslim minority in the world?"
Meanwhile, Muslim and Christian leaders and scholars convened in May for a conference hosted by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Straddling that fine line between important and impotent, they sought to notarize nuclear condemnation with their "Statement Regarding Muslim-Christian Perspectives on the Nuclear Weapons Danger."
"We believe," it reads, "that chemical, biological and particularly nuclear weapons. . . inevitably destroy innocent human life [and] that the ideal response to the nuclear threat is a total and universal ban on all such weapons, including low yield tactical nuclear weapons. . ."
But, as Iran's top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani said, the proof is in the fatwah. For example, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's -- whether or not it was a smokescreen is another question -- forbids the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons. "It is much more important for us to abide by this decree," Rowhani said, "than the articles of the Non-Proliferation Treaty."
But one has only to consult the "Fatwah Bank" on Islam Online to learn that there are fatwahs and then there are fatwahs. Dr. Taha Jabir Al-Alwani's reads, "possessing power and weapons of mass destruction is a test from Allah to humans, to see whether they will restrain themselves from using these weapons against innocent people who are also part of the human family."
Truly the sentiment of a noble mind. However, live by the fatwah, die by the fatwah. Sheikh Faysal Mawlawi says that "in case these nuclear weapons are used against Muslims, it becomes permissible for Muslims to defend themselves using the same weapon. This is based on the words of Allah: 'If ye punish, then punish with the like of that wherewith ye were afflicted.'"
Though the distance from a scimitar to a nuclear weapon is as long and winding as the Abkhaz drug route from Afghanistan through Chechnya, Sheikh Mawlawi leapfrogged from Mohammed to the present. Still, his justification is nothing compared to the one bin Laden secured.
A Fatwah for Fat Boy (the latter-day version, that is)
Is there then a faction within Al Qaeda that has actually obtained or constructed a nuclear weapon?
As Graham Allison reports in Nuclear Terrorism (Times Books, 2004), Israeli intelligence sources claimed that in 1998 bin Laden paid $2 million to a Kazakhstani for a Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM) or "suitcase" bomb -- that most practical of tacticals. A month later, his people supposedly shelled out $30 million and two tons of opium to Chechen mobsters for twenty "loose nuke" Russian warheads.
Yossef Bodansky, head of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, confirmed this. "There is no longer much doubt that bin Laden has succeeded in his quest for nuclear suicide bombs [and] has a collection of individuals knowledgeable in activating the bombs."
Not content with procuring, a month before 9/11, he turned his intention to manufacturing and was reported to have bought design plans from two former officials of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.
But how does a religious-based movement justify nuclear weapons, especially first use?
According to Rabia Harris, coordinator of the Muslim Peace Fellowship in Nyack, New York, it doesn't. "It's a spiritual atrocity to consider massacring millions of people," he said in a June 7, 1998 article for Religion News Service by Julia Lieblich titled "Pakistani Enthusiasm."
In the same article, Patrice Brodeur, an Islamicist at Harvard University, asked: "What does it say about the solidarity of Muslim brothers if they're willing to aim a bomb at India, where we find the largest Muslim minority in the world?"
Meanwhile, Muslim and Christian leaders and scholars convened in May for a conference hosted by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Straddling that fine line between important and impotent, they sought to notarize nuclear condemnation with their "Statement Regarding Muslim-Christian Perspectives on the Nuclear Weapons Danger."
"We believe," it reads, "that chemical, biological and particularly nuclear weapons. . . inevitably destroy innocent human life [and] that the ideal response to the nuclear threat is a total and universal ban on all such weapons, including low yield tactical nuclear weapons. . ."
But, as Iran's top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani said, the proof is in the fatwah. For example, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's -- whether or not it was a smokescreen is another question -- forbids the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons. "It is much more important for us to abide by this decree," Rowhani said, "than the articles of the Non-Proliferation Treaty."
But one has only to consult the "Fatwah Bank" on Islam Online to learn that there are fatwahs and then there are fatwahs. Dr. Taha Jabir Al-Alwani's reads, "possessing power and weapons of mass destruction is a test from Allah to humans, to see whether they will restrain themselves from using these weapons against innocent people who are also part of the human family."
Truly the sentiment of a noble mind. However, live by the fatwah, die by the fatwah. Sheikh Faysal Mawlawi says that "in case these nuclear weapons are used against Muslims, it becomes permissible for Muslims to defend themselves using the same weapon. This is based on the words of Allah: 'If ye punish, then punish with the like of that wherewith ye were afflicted.'"
Though the distance from a scimitar to a nuclear weapon is as long and winding as the Abkhaz drug route from Afghanistan through Chechnya, Sheikh Mawlawi leapfrogged from Mohammed to the present. Still, his justification is nothing compared to the one bin Laden secured.
A Fatwah for Fat Boy (the latter-day version, that is)
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