Demystifying Al Qaeda

During a quiet conversation last night, far away from the noise of the festival, my wife and I talked about what was, for us, the most notable session of the day. I thought Basharat Peer made an incredibly cool moderator, for the way he stewarded a session that could have gone anywhere. But the wife was struck by Lawrence Wright. “You know,” she said, “I loved the way he described Al Qaeda. He made them sound like family.”

The more I thought about this, the truer it somehow seemed: Wright demystified the group for a lot of us, and he made them sound like a bunch of guys trying to get their stuff together. It wasn’t the sort of figured-out-to-a-T terror machine that the newspapers made it seem. I felt this first when Wright talked about the desperation with which AQ claimed responsibility for 9/11, but it really sank in when he said this:

“We all think about how frustrating it is for the West to fight Al Qaeda, but it has its own set of problems. Dr Fadl (Sayyid Imam al-Sharif’s nom de guerre) was [Ayman al-] Zawahiri’s [inaudible] in Al Jihad, which was a terror organisation. He wrote the books that Al Qaeda used to indoctrinate its recruits. So he is the main theologian in Al Qaeda. He was picked up after 9/11. He had fallen out with Zawahiri, accusing him of plagiarism. It was a literary spat. As one writer to another, they had a falling out. Writers do that.”

The crowd burst out laughing. Wright had shared this before, but we had never heard it put this way. ‘Al Qaeda’. Just say it again. The name is so synonymous with fear that that’s all most of us feel; we forget its follies. As Wright spoke, a bit like an uncle sharing gossip, I felt lighter. It felt good to know that while they plotted and schemed, they also had problems of their own.

During a quiet conversation last night, far away from the noise of the festival, my wife and I talked about what was, for us, the most notable session of the day. I thought Basharat Peer made an incredibly cool moderator, for the way he stewarded a session that could have gone anywhere. But the wife was struck by Lawrence Wright. “You know,” she said, “I loved the way he described Al Qaeda. He made them sound like family.”

The more I thought about this, the truer it somehow seemed: Wright demystified the group for a lot of us, and he made them sound like a bunch of guys trying to get their stuff together. It wasn’t the sort of figured-out-to-a-T terror machine that the newspapers made it seem. I felt this first when Wright talked about the desperation with which AQ claimed responsibility for 9/11, but it really sank in when he said this:

“We all think about how frustrating it is for the West to fight Al Qaeda, but it has its own set of problems. Dr Fadl (Sayyid Imam al-Sharif’s nom de guerre) was [Ayman al-] Zawahiri’s [inaudible] in Al Jihad, which was a terror organisation. He wrote the books that Al Qaeda used to indoctrinate its recruits. So he is the main theologian in Al Qaeda. He was picked up after 9/11. He had fallen out with Zawahiri, accusing him of plagiarism. It was a literary spat. As one writer to another, they had a falling out. Writers do that.”

The crowd burst out laughing. Wright had shared this before, but we had never heard it put this way. ‘Al Qaeda’. Just say it again. The name is so synonymous with fear that that’s all most of us feel; we forget its follies. As Wright spoke, a bit like an uncle sharing gossip, I felt lighter. It felt good to know that while they plotted and schemed, they also had problems of their own.

About The Author

Rahul Bhatia