Believe it or not, the world’s most infamous terrorist
Osama Bin Laden was inspired by
Mahatma Gandhi – a preacher of peace. Honestly, you don't often mention those two names in a single sentence!
While you might find it hard to believe,
Osama Bin Laden in a speech from 1993 elicited
Mahatma Gandhi’s methods of peaceful protest by asking his supporters to boycott American goods.
"Consider the case of Great Britain, an empire so vast that some say the sun never set on it," says Bin Laden.
"Britain was forced to withdraw from one of its largest colonies when Gandhi the Hindu declared a boycott against their goods. We must do the same thing today with America," he says.
According to the tapes Osama makes no mention of violence till 1996.
This shocking revelation came after
US invasion of
Afghanistan in 2001. Osama had to flee Kandahar and several buildings were quickly vacated, including one opposite the Taliban foreign ministry where 1,500 such cassettes were found. This huge depot passed from an Afghan family to a cassette shop to a
CNN cameraman and finally to the Afghan Media Project at Williams College in Massachusetts. They asked Flagg Miller, an expert in Arabic literature and culture from the University of California to interpret them.
After almost a decade, Miller has written a book about his shocking findings, titled '
The Audacious Ascetic'. The collection he was handed had records that date back to the late 1960s, and feature more than 200 different speakers, including Osama.
Osama was killed in Pakistan’s
Abbottabad on May 2nd, 2011 in a
US Navy SEALS raid.
Image credit: Indiatimes
