Forensic Theology

When I first read excerpts of bin Laden's videotaped speech broadcast just before the 2004 US Presidential Election, my mind jumped to this verse of the Qur'an, the whole of which has also been translated thus:

For the prohibited month, and so for all things prohibited, there is the law of equality. If then any one transgresses the prohibition against you, transgress ye likewise against him. But fear Allah, and know that Allah is with those who restrain themselves.

That appears to me to be a central statement of the Islamic view of symmetrical morality in warfare, and as I say, prior to reading the full text provided by ABC, I thought I'd detected echoes of it in the OBL text in question – which is not too surprising, perhaps, given that my own analytic process leans heavily on analogy and symmetry.

A few other parts of bin Laden's speech seemed similarly attuned… The comments about "punishing the oppressor in kind" by destroying towers in the US, since towers in the Lebanon had been destroyed (which seems a pretty literal-minded reading of "transgress ye likewise"):

And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.

The passage pointing up analogies between the Bush dynastic presidencies and similar dynastic rulerships in "our countries":

… we haven't found it difficult to deal with the Bush administration in light of the resemblance it bears to the regimes in our countries half of which are ruled by the military and the other half of which are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents. Our experience with them in lengthy and both types are replete with those who are characterized by pride, arrogance, greed and a misappropriation of wealth.

And lastly, the comment translated in one version:

Your security is not in the hands of [Democratic presidential nominee John] Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked.

All four of these excerpts from bin Laden's speech are couched in an analogical, symmetrical format, some of them more and some less close in tenor to the Qur'anic verse to which my mind jumped when first I read them – and right from the first I wanted to make a DoubleQuotes pairing up whichever of the quotes I decided was most apt from bin Laden's speech with all or part of Qur'an 2. 194.

Until the US Government translation – presumably from FBIS – was made available by ABC, and I realized for the first time (I'd by now read at least three other versions which omitted it) that the Quranic quote was present in the text itself.

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I don't know whether bin Laden used that verse himself, or whether it's "framing matter" added by Al-Jazeera, but either way it confirms my association – and to my mind, reinforces the significance of "forensic theology" as described by Stephen Grey in his "Follow the Mullahs" report in a recent Atlantic.

The analyst is engaged in a new and increasingly important aspect of the fight against terrorism—one that might be called forensic theology. Authenticating terrorist documents is just one of its uses. It can also help identify perpetrators, and targets for surveillance, sometimes far more effectively than conventional intelligence practices. Its greatest potential, however, may be strategic: with theologians at the center of the battle, forensic theology may help us pinpoint the groups that present the greatest threat.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200411/grey