Ironically, many of people, including Osama bin Laden and the mujahedeen, were, in fact, nourished by the United States in the early eighties in its efforts to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
Edward SaidThe definition of terrorism has to be more precise, so that we are able to discriminate between, for example, what it is that the Palestinians are doing to fight the Israeli military occupation and terrorism of the sort that resulted in the World Trade Center bombing.
Edward SaidHumanism is the only - I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.
Edward SaidYou cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim onceโthere has to be a limit
Edward SaidThe Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing th orient could not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalistโs work.
Edward Said