ABSTRACT
‘We have been fighting you because we are free men who cannot acquiesce in injustice. We want to restore security to our umma. Just as you violate our security, so we violate yours … You should remember that every action has a reaction’. With these words in October 2004 the terrorist financier and ideologue Osama Bin Laden admitted responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and explained why they were carried out. His words were contained in a longer statement – designed both as a message to the people of Europe and as an intervention in the US elections – which whilst certainly propaganda, was about as close to diplomacy as the movement now known as al Qaeda will ever come (Lawrence, 2005: 146–9). If violence can be thought of as a form of communication as much as coercion, Bin Laden was trying to be heard: to communicate the purpose and meaning of the attacks, to speak of causes and effects, and ultimately to produce an effect.
