Psychoanalytic Notes on Osama bin Laden and His Jihad Against the Jews and the Crusaders

In 1998 Osama bin Laden declared his global jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders. In order to understand his fatwa (legal decree) from a psychoanalytic perspective, it is helpful to explore some historical underpinnings to his fantasy life which tap into Islam's social memory as recorded in the biography of the Prophet Muhammad referred to in Arabic as the Sira. Several important concepts are explored: concubinage, Dhimmitude, which is a “protected” class for Jews and Christians, and the significance of these for both the life of the Prophet Muhammad and Osama bin Laden. Just as Imitatio Cristi is important to Christianity, Ruthven (2000) notes the Islamic counterpart of Imitatio Muhammadi—that the life and behaviors of the Prophet of Muhammad serve as the exemplary way for a believer to conduct himself. It is not well known to those outside of the faith that the Prophet Muhammad had three famous concubines—two Jewesses and one Coptic Christian. These women played a central role in how Islam relates to non-Muslims of the two other Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Christianity. It has been said that Islam was born in full light of day unlike Judaism and Christianity, meaning that Islam's history has been fully documented from its inception, including their leader's concubines (Lewis, 1998). Like all religions, Islam is intimately tied to a sense of personal identity. Osama bin Laden harbors a fantasy of his mother Hamida being a concubine rather than a “real wife of the Quran.” Osama bin Laden's father's name was Muhammad. Hence the figura of the Prophet Muhammad has weighed heavily in bin Laden's psyche. His sense of embattlement on behalf of his overidealized mother facilitated a splitting mentality of “us” versus “them,” that is, Christian America and Jewish Israel. His hatred is intimately linked to his unresolved inability to mourn the loss of his maternal fusion. The result has been bin Laden's externalization of rage in war that Fornari (1974) understood to b