An open letter to Osama Bin Laden

Five years ago today on the western calendar, the skies were blue and a warm sunny day was just getting under way. You intended to darken the skies that day, and for a short time you did. But today, just as it was that day, the skies are blue and the morning has heralded a warm sunny day. Perhaps the fact that God has seen fit to deliver today exactly the kind of day you interrupted five years ago is his way of demonstrating how impotent you really are.

I know you intended to make us live in fear that day. You certainly brought grief and anguish – there are many people in New York and elsewhere who miss the touch of hands they can no longer hold, and smiles they can no longer see except in the comfort of their memories. And certainly you, Osama, have experienced the fear you sought to bring. I read yesterday that you will not even wear a watch, for fear that the CIA can track you with it. What a miserable life you must live that you have to fear wearing a wrist watch!

But I want you to know that I do not live in fear of you, or people who make cause with you. Statistically, I really have no reason to fear you – for if statistics do mean anything, I have more reason to cower from a deer grazing by the road then I ever would from you. But I do not wish to tell you of statistics.

I began a spiritual journey that year that has only deepened with the passing of time. I know you know something of spiritual journeys from the CNN special that described your early life. But your spiritual journey led you to the philosophy some of your acolytes portrayed with these words: “You love life, we love death.”

You are right to suggest that I love life. For God created life – he created life when he uttered the words, “Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures, and on the earth let birds fly beneath the dome of the sky.” The mere fact that life exists at all owes itself to the sacred act of God's love, the great artist expressing his heart's desire in the form of living flesh. God saw all that he had wrought and said that it was good.

I do not fear death – certainly not death at your hands – but you are right to say I love life. While you have been busy embracing death, I have been busy embracing life. I know your interpretation of Islam forbids most singing, but in the words of one of our singers (Tim McGraw), “I loved deeper, and I spoke sweeter, and I gave forgiveness I’d been denying.” I have laughed. I have cried. And I have loved, silently, without saying a word at all. I have sung my heart out to God on Sunday nights, and he has listened to me, and I have been in his tender arms.

But you – you will never know God, even though it was in trying to find God that you began your transformation.

It is as you say, you love death. Your heart – when it is not full of fear of being found by the CIA – is filled with thoughts of hurting people, as though you were Ozymandias toiling in the desert to erect a pillar that might stand and impress wanderers of the distant future. But your legacy, a treasure you cherish, is a thing that moths consume and rust destroys. You will never enjoy your seventy two raisins in heaven. You will never meet God. Instead, you will only know the prison of anger and fear you have created for yourself.

It is almost enough to make a person hope that they never find you, although they probably will someday. Your pitiful and miserable existence must be more punishment than most men can possibly endure. Your life is bereft of tenderness and gentleness. You have become full of the very fear you sought to create.

Ultimately, all I want to say to you is that I do not share your fear, nor do I share your hate and anger. You sought to make a great statement. But in the lives of so many like me, your great statement vanished like a puff of smoke from a pipe. You have become a fearful figure of ridicule. To be honest, all I feel for you is pity.

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(“Ozymandias,” by Percy Shelley)