By Kristina Roic
Osama bin Laden is stirring controversy again. But this time, the world’s most wanted criminal is not directly responsible.
Doubleday, an imprint of Random House, is publishing a book tentatively called The Al-Qaeda Reader; a translated compilation of writings, speeches and interviews from bin Laden and Egyptian Jihad founder Ayman al-Zawahri.
It is scheduled for release sometime next year.
Publishing the original writings and thoughts of one of the most notorious terrorists in history has outraged many people. The book has even been compared to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Sept. 11 victims are upset, claiming this will give terrorists a platform to further their agenda. Others are afraid it will incite hate and future attacks, as well as ignite support for al-Qaeda.
There are even rumors of hidden terrorist codes and messages inside bin Laden’s speeches and writings.
Doubleday insists this is just a historical document. It says the book will help Americans understand the mind of their enemy, and perhaps find some answers to the terrorist attacks .
The materials for the book will mostly be drawn from two sources previously published in the Middle East. The first one is The Battles of the Lion’s Den of the Arab Partisans in Afghanistan, which includes bin Laden’s speeches on the history of al-Qaeda. The second source is The Bitter Harvest, al-Zawahri’s treatise on Jihad.
Doubleday says all the royalties will be paid to the translator of the original Arabic material, Raymond Ibrahim, a Library of Congress employee. It has been decided that all the profits will be donated to a charity which will be named before the book is published. In other words, bin Laden and his associates won’t make a penny.
Still, people have their doubts. The book has raised a critical debate about the freedom of speech and censorship.
Should we allow the words and opinions of wanted criminals to be published? To what extent does this forward their agendas?
Joseph Ben-Ami, spokesperson for B’nai Brith, a Jewish advocacy group, says making this kind of material accessible to the public could be beneficial. “We need to be sensitive to the losses of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks and literally hundreds of people in Madrid and Iraq since then,” he says. “On the other hand, how can you not make public the words of these people? If we find out what Osama and his people are trying to accomplish then that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
Randal Marlin, a philosophy professor and propaganda expert at Carleton University, says that while it is hard to assess material he has not read, the book deserves the controversy it has received because subjects like this always merit discussion.
“If the literature contains the ‘manufacturing of contempt’ such as the comparisons of Tutsis to cockroaches in Rwanda or the metaphors used for Jews, then you have deep hatred against certain people or groups, and censorship might be justifiable,” says Marlin.
“But my feeling is that it is probably a good thing if a competent, scholarly translation of bin Laden’s writings is made accessible to the public.
One reason is that people should know what motivates their enemy, and what grievances there are, in case there are grievances to be removed.”
Sorya Gaulin, spokesperson for Indigo Books and Music Inc., the largest book retailer in Canada, says Random House has not yet presented them with this book for unknown reasons.
However, she adds that they have a strict policy on books which could be considered hate literature.
In November 2001, Heather Reisman, the chief executive officer of Indigo Books and Music Inc., banned Mein Kampf from all the Chapters and Indigo bookstores and deleted it from the company’s on-line ordering service.
“That kind of decision is made between the publisher and the buyers,” says Gaulin.
“We have a strict policy for not carrying books that are disseminating or communicating hate propaganda or giving one tools on how to build weapons of mass destruction. Unlike a library, we are an independent body and we reserve the right to decide which books are suitable for our shelves.”
Marlin says that while every bookstore should be able to exercise that right, the problem with big chains is their monopoly on the range of books available to the public.
Ben-Ami says he would probably be inclined to buy The Al-Qaeda Reader, but only if he felt comfortable that the money was not going to support bin Laden and other terrorists.
“I have a copy of Mein Kampf in my library,” he says. “It’s a very difficult read because it’s so incoherent, but if more people in the world had read Hitler’s writings on time then who knows what impact that would have had on world events.”