| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Politix |
| Firm to publish bin Laden's words |
| 2005-07-06 |
| Books to stack on the bedside table this fall: "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," "1776" . . . "Messages to the World – The Statements of Osama bin Laden"? A New York-based publisher of scholarly and general-interest titles, many of them with a leftish political slant, said yesterday that it will release a compendium of the terrorist fugitive's speeches and written tracts to help the American public better understand his bloody guerrilla philosophy. But the project raises questions about whether profit earned, however indirectly, from terrorist activities isn't so much blood money – akin to reissuing a hate-filled screed like Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf." It's revenue "made off the words of a criminal mastermind who murdered 30,000-plus Americans," said Scott McConnell, editor and publisher of The American Conservative magazine. " . . . It's regrettable." Bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, as well as other atrocities. "Messages to the World" nevertheless could find a place on the shelf with kindred notorious products such as Charles Manson's music albums ("Way of the Wolf," "Live at San Quentin," among others) and artwork by Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker. Next month, Morning Star Communications plans to publish "Son of Hope," the prison journals of "Son of Sam" murderer David Berkowitz. Verso Books, which has issued best sellers by the likes of Noam Chomsky, Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Alexander Cockburn, said the 224-page bin Laden hardback will have an initial press run of 20,000 copies selling for $24 apiece. "We've had great interest (in the title) from book chains and university stores," said Amy Scholder, Verso's general manager. Some scholars said yesterday that they were more concerned about where the tome's sales revenue might be funneled than whether the book could be used by militants in the U.S. as a sort of inspirational text. Bin Laden's writings are already well-represented on the Internet, noted Jim Phillips, a research fellow specializing in Middle East affairs at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. "The question is, where does the money go after people buy the book," said Phillips, stressing that the work could serve a valuable educational function if it presents bin Laden's ideology in a balanced fashion. If it has a positive spin and promotes the idea that "people will be happier when the infidels are killed, that's another thing," he added. Verso said yesterday that no money from the book's sales will benefit bin Laden or any terrorist organizations. The publisher "has no interest in supporting" al-Qaeda, Scholder said. "Messages to the World" was translated and edited by Islamic scholar Bruce Lawrence, a professor of religion at Duke University. He has written several books, including "Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age." Lawrence said yesterday that he has no intention of glorifying bin Laden, whom he described as "a devil we need to know." The book traces how the terrorist's message and strategy have evolved in the past year, connecting strands of bin Laden's Koranic scholarship, CIA training, interventions in Persian Gulf politics and messianic anti-imperialism that have come to make up the foundation of al-Qaeda's deadly program. "We've heard more about bin Laden publicly in the last five years than anybody with an Arabic name," Lawrence said. However, most translations of bin Laden's work available in the West have been flat and stale, and rife with misspellings and bad punctuation, Lawrence said. Some of bin Laden's prose "is actually quite dazzling," he said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #7 Whoa now son, that's funny but I was here first. |
| Posted by: whitecollar redneck 2005-07-06 22:19 |
| #6 That's okay, we'll get Bin Laden when he goes to cash the royalty check! |
| Posted by: WhiteCollarRedneck 2005-07-06 21:55 |
| #5 Since this is a war of ideologies by all means let us get Bin Laden's words out into the open. He can't compete with us in the marketplace of ideas; that is why he has to crash airplanes into buildings. However, HO, if you think the American Left will blanch at a massacre in East Timor, you don't know them very well. The facts fit their mindset or they're disregarded. In that regard, they have a great deal in common with Islamists. |
| Posted by: Dreadnought 2005-07-06 13:12 |
| #4 Excellent idea. Publish it. I read both "Mein Kampf" and "Das Capital" for a required philosophy course in college, one of the best classes I ever had. Title of the class -- "Evil in the Modern World". I think Bennie's book could be the third required reading for that class. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2005-07-06 11:18 |
| #3 Verso Books, which has issued best sellers by the likes of Noam Chomsky, Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Alexander Cockburn, said the 224-page bin Laden Anyone see a pattern here? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-07-06 11:14 |
| #2 Publish it. Spread it all over. People will see that he is evil. The las thing Bin Laden wants is to have the American Left read about how Bin Laden supported the genocide in East Timor and so on. |
| Posted by: Hupavilet Omans5865 2005-07-06 11:01 |
| #1 Did we ban the printing of Mein Kampf during WWII? |
| Posted by: Jackal 2005-07-06 10:06 |