Bin Laden's Performance Appraisal

In what follows, take employee to mean servant of God.

1. Please provide your assessment of this individual's performance based on your observations, needs and/or expectations. Whenever possible, include specific examples.

Usama has built al-Qaeda, a global organization to wage war against non-Islamic peoples in general and the United States in particular by using the methods of terrorism to bypass their defenses and to deny them targets at which to strike back effectively. He has set up interlocking networks to recruit people of all levels of ability, to obtain supplies and weapons, and to distribute charity and propaganda to host populations. This organization can now sustain itself without his active leadership.

Usama orders and encourages atrocities committed by al-Qaeda and its sympathizers, and justifies them by lengthy arguments in which he and the mullahs he recruits work step-by-step from statements in the Holy Qur'an, the Sunna (the extra-Qur'anic deeds and words of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him), and Sharia (Islamic Law and Jurisprudence).

In the first, he shows real genius at building a self-sustaining organization, with safehouses, operatives, training facilities and manuals, secure communications methods, all necessary matieriel, etc., but it exists to commit increasingly outrageous acts of mass murder in hope of starting a global war between everyone else and the Islamic world. Ultimately this ill serves the interests of Islam, both as a society of people and as a proselytizing religion.

In the second, he has committed the most meticulous and sustained work of blasphemy in the entire history of ethical monotheism (be it Judaism, Christianity, or Islam) by twisting the words of God and his Prophet to justify manifest and obvious evil.

2. In what areas of performance are the employee's strengths?

Usama is brilliant at marshalling money to make more money, at developing and grooming his personal contacts to maintain support for his organization, at mediating disputes amoung its supporters, and at organizing and motivating people. He has also had experience in agriculture and engineering. If his motives had been genuinely good, he could have been instrumental in raising the standard of living of the Islamic world.

3. What areas of performance should the employee concentrate on developing or improving?

Usama's understanding of God and Islam, the religion to which God has called him, is severely defective. Whether his intellectual failure to understand is what leads him to commit such enormous blasphemy and such atrocious deeds, or whether hate perverts his will so that he misunderstands Islam, or whether he perverted both his will and his understanding because he has become addicted to jihad (idolatrously loving jihad more than he loves God) is immaterial to this review. He needs to work on both his hate and his understanding.

4. What goals or expectations do you have for this individual in this coming review period?

Usama needs to seek teachers who are more connected with God, and less connected with their own hate, or worse still, with the one whom the Qur'an describes as "the Slinking One, who whispers into the hearts of men." He needs to repent of his ways, and stand down his organization, or else convert it to genuinely constructive action and charity.

My expectation is that Usama has set himself up to experience suffering and death as punishment for his crimes against humanity, including his fellow Muslims (which he callously regards as "collateral damage"). From his public statements, I believe he is fully prepared for this. For his crimes against God and God's creatures (his fellow humans), however, I fear that Usama may face a humiliating and sustained (perhaps eternal) punishment on the Last Day (the Day of Judgement), a fate for which he cannot be prepared.

5. Additional comments important to the evaluation of this employee.

Usama utters the most vile blasphemy, the most outrageous distortions of history, and the most viscious threats and orders with a calm and gentle demeanor. He may have tendencies toward a paranoid psychopathy. He seems to have taken on a narcissistic injury (an imagined or construed blow to his self-esteem) on behalf of all Islam and Islamic history, and to blame non-Islamic peoples, particularly Westerners and Americans, rather than to seek both the cause and the remedy from within.