[b]IMAGINE THIS![/b]
At sundown on December 6 2001, corresponding to 23 Ramadan, 1422 in the lunar calendar used by the Muslims, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, prayer leader of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, made his way to the pulpit in the vast mosque courtyard.
It was no ordinary evening, but possibly the holiest in the holiest month of Islam, the so-called Lailat al-Qadr, or the Night of Power, on which, according to the Koran, God's revelation was sent down to the Prophet Mohammed. On that night, "better than a thousand months," it is believed that all wishes are granted. More than 50,000 people had gathered on the hot pavement of the mosque enclosure and in the streets outside to pass the evening in prayer. Millions of others were watching on a live television broadcast at home.
As Sheikh Abdul Rahman, famous all over the Islamic world for the beauty of his voice, mounted the pulpit, a hand reached up and tugged at his robe. There was a commotion, and in the place of the Imam stood a tall man, unarmed and dressed in the white cloth of the pilgrim to Mecca, and recognisable from a million television screens: Osama bin Laden, flanked by his lieutenants.
In the four minutes before the signal of the Saudi Broadcasting Service was cut, men and women watched an extraordinary scene unfold. "In the name of God the merciful..." Osama began, his Arabic all the more eloquent for having had no seminary training, but it was drowned in the cries of acclamation. The crowd surged forward to the pulpit and in a moment the courtyard was ringing with the pilgrim's shout, "Labaik, Labaik," - I'm with you! Meanwhile, armed young men appeared from the crowd and could be seen padlocking the gates, and taking up firing positions in the galleries.
So began the insurrection that was to overturn the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, undermine several Arab states and provoke a conflagration that was to lead to war. That a single man, unarmed and dressed in two seamless pieces of white cotton, evaded the power of the United States and took over a 100-year kingdom that boasted an armed strength of 200,000 men, a large police force and pervasive intelligence network, and complete control of telecommunications, broadcasting and the press remains one of the most astonishing events of modern history.
Osama's route back from Afghanistan, across 3,000 miles of mountain, desert and sea, has become legend. It is believed that he left his hideout in the Pakhtia district of southern Afghanistan some time in the first week of November 2001, passed out of the country by the lower Helmand river, and crossed the inhospitable Makran desert to the Arabian Sea coast.
From there, a dhow took him across the Gulf to his ancestral home in Wadi Hadhramawt in Yemen. A witness in the mud town of Shibam told the London newspaper Asharq al-Awsat that he saw a group of women being handed down from four heavily-armed Toyota Land-Cruisers, and there is speculation that Osama left his wives and their children in safety before travelling by way of Marib and the Wadi Najran into Saudi Arabia. Once in Mecca, it may have been comparatively simple to hide out in the warren of caves and tunnels, some stretching back to the era before Islam, under the mosque courtyard until the the time was right....
Go see the remainder of this fictitious future event at:[url]www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,590276,00.html[/url]
Eric The(Imaginative)Hun[>]:)]