Osama bin Laden: Terrorist, scholar and poet?
newyorker: Close Reading Dept - O.B.L.
Bruce Lawrence, a professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, lives near Durham, North Carolina, with his wife, Miriam Cooke, a scholar of modern Arabic literature. "Our house is on a hill, and we have a guesthouse-library that we use as a retreat," he said the other day. "We sit up there a couple of nights a week, and we meditate and sometimes we read poetry aloud. I'll say, 'Let's read some of what we're working on,' and then I'll read some of the stuff from O.B.L.."
By "O.B.L.," Lawrence means Osama bin Laden. By "stuff," he means bin Laden's speeches, interviews, and statements. Lawrence, a respected Arabist, has agreed, at the request of Verso Books, to edit and write an introduction to "Messages to the World," a compendium of bin Laden's communiques from 1994 to 2004. (This is the first time that the major texts will be available in English in their entirety.) In November, Verso-an independent press known for publishing leftist writers such as Slavoj Zizek and Alexander Cockburn-will issue twenty thousand copies of the book, in paperback, to be sold at $16.95 each. (Lawrence has accepted a smaller than usual fee, of five thousand dollars.)
"I'm really not a fan of O.B.L., but I'm not happy with the reporting on him, because it's been so piecemeal and generalized," Lawrence said. He believes that the project will afford readers the opportunity to understand bin Laden in his own words. "He has to be decoded if he's going to be defeated." Besides, as Lawrence explained, "Osama may be the world's worst terrorist, but he's also one of the best prose writers in Arabic." (The historian Bernard Lewis has called bin Laden's prose "eloquent, at times even poetic.") Read more
Bruce Lawrence, a professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, lives near Durham, North Carolina, with his wife, Miriam Cooke, a scholar of modern Arabic literature. "Our house is on a hill, and we have a guesthouse-library that we use as a retreat," he said the other day. "We sit up there a couple of nights a week, and we meditate and sometimes we read poetry aloud. I'll say, 'Let's read some of what we're working on,' and then I'll read some of the stuff from O.B.L.."
By "O.B.L.," Lawrence means Osama bin Laden. By "stuff," he means bin Laden's speeches, interviews, and statements. Lawrence, a respected Arabist, has agreed, at the request of Verso Books, to edit and write an introduction to "Messages to the World," a compendium of bin Laden's communiques from 1994 to 2004. (This is the first time that the major texts will be available in English in their entirety.) In November, Verso-an independent press known for publishing leftist writers such as Slavoj Zizek and Alexander Cockburn-will issue twenty thousand copies of the book, in paperback, to be sold at $16.95 each. (Lawrence has accepted a smaller than usual fee, of five thousand dollars.)
"I'm really not a fan of O.B.L., but I'm not happy with the reporting on him, because it's been so piecemeal and generalized," Lawrence said. He believes that the project will afford readers the opportunity to understand bin Laden in his own words. "He has to be decoded if he's going to be defeated." Besides, as Lawrence explained, "Osama may be the world's worst terrorist, but he's also one of the best prose writers in Arabic." (The historian Bernard Lewis has called bin Laden's prose "eloquent, at times even poetic.") Read more
posted by exoplanet at 11:37 AM
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