For more than seven years, the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors and turning its bases in the peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people, using the peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
...These crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger and Muslims. And
ulema [Muslim scholars] have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the
jihad [Holy War] is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries.
On that basis, and in compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:
The ruling is to kill the Americans and their allies is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it, in order to liberate the Al Aqsa mosque [Jerusalem] and the Holy Mosque [Mecca]... This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God...
We call on every Muslim who believes in God and wished to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.