Over the last ten years, Osama Bin Laden has exploited the modern media to considerable effect, issuing a series of carefully tailored public statements. These communications, from interviews with Western and Arabic journalists to faxes and video transcripts, have been crucial in emphasizing Bin Laden's central role in modern Islamic militancy. Moreover, the reception of these statements in the western media has helped transform him into a mythical figure with an extraordinary, unprecedented hold over western political culture. In bringing together the various statements issued under Bin Laden's name since 1994, this volume forms part of a growing discourse, including Jason Burke's "Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam" and Adam Curtis's acclaimed documentary, "The Power of Nightmares", that seeks to demythologize and contextualize, to explain and understand the undeniable challenge posed by Al-Qaeda, both to the world of Islam and to the West. Newly translated from the Arabic originals, annotated and with a critical introduction from Islamic scholar Bruce Lawrence, this collection places the statements in their religious, historical, and political context. It shows how Bin Laden's views both draw on and differ from other strands of radical Islamic thought; it also demonstrates how his arguments vary in degrees of assurance and consistency, and how his evasions concerning the true nature and extent of his own group, and over his own role in terrorist attacks, have contributed to the perpetuation of his own personal mythology.