Osama bin Laden as SF fan

[Ken Brown]

Ken McLeod posted the following to rec.arts.sf.fandom

> Forwarded with permission from China Mieville, fantasy writer 
> and student of international relations:

>> ------- Forwarded message follows -------

>> My supervisor, an expert in the Middle East, told me about a
>> rumour circulating about the name of Bin Laden's network.
>> The term 'Al-Qaeda' seems to have no political precedent in 
>> Arabic, and has therefore been something of a conundrum to 
>> the experts, until someone pointed out that a very popular
>> book in the Arab world, Arabs apparently being big readers
>>  of translated SF, is Asimov's _Foundation_, the title of
>>  which is translated as 'Al-Qaeda'.

>> Unlikely as it sounds, this is the only theory anyone can come up with.

Ken [the other one - not me ] added:

> This hypothesis raises some interesting possibilities. One is 
> that bin Laden has a number of video appearances prepared in 
> advance, which without being too specific give the impression
> that he knows what has just happened at the time they're shown.
>  They could continue to appear at intervals long after his reported death.

> Another is that there's a Second Al-Qaeda, somewhere else.


Ken Brown (thanks to John Dallman for showing me this on Cix)