"And so, a religious war has been brought to a land that no longer cares for religious wars. Even President Bush, who styles himself a religious conservative, cannot bring himself to believe that it is religion that really matters: “[T]his great nation of many religions understands our war is not against Islam or against the faith practiced by the Muslim people.”

Where Bush downplays the differences, bin Laden emphasizes them, contrasting the world of pure Islam and the world of the decadent West in the most extreme way imaginable: “[Tlhe love of this world is wrong. You should love the other world . . . die in the right cause and go to the other world.”