Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. Part 5 is here. Part 6 is here. Part 7 is here. Part 8 is here. Part 9 is here. Part 10 is here. “Until the end of World War II, there was little precedent in Islam for the anti-Semitism that was now warping” Middle Eastern […]
Looking Back on 9/11 with Lawrence Wright: All in the Bin Laden Family (Part 10)
Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. Part 5 is here. Part 6 is here. Part 7 is here. Part 8 is here. Part 9 is here. “I do not remember him ever doing anything outside of Islamic law,” Osama bin Laden once recalled of his father, as quoted in Lawrence Wright’s 2006 […]
Looking Back on 9/11 with Lawrence Wright: Islam and Infidels During the Gulf War (Part 9)
Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. Part 5 is here. Part 6 is here. Part 7 is here. Part 8 is here. During the 1990-1991 Gulf War, many “Saudis were mortified by the need to turn to Christians and Jews to defend the holy land of Islam,” observed Lawrence Wright in his […]
Looking Back on 9/11 with Lawrence Wright: Saudi Arabia and the West (Part 8)
Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. Part 5 is here. Part 6 is here. Part 7 is here. A “tension between the royal family and religious fanatics was a part of the social dynamic of modern Saudi Arabia from the very beginning,” wrote Lawrence Wright in his 2006 book, The Looming […]
Looking Back on 9/11 with Lawrence Wright: Jihadists as Unfaithful Allies — Afghanistan (Part 7)
Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. Part 5 is here. Part 6 is here. Following the 1989 Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, “cinders of the Afghan conflagration were drifting across the globe, and soon much of the Muslim world would be aflame,” wrote Lawrence Wright in 2006. His book, The Looming […]
Looking Back on 9/11 with Lawrence Wright: Jihadists as Unfaithful Allies — Egypt (Part 6)
Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. Part 5 is here. Jihadists remain ultimately faithful to Islam and not to any alliance, however momentarily beneficial, with anyone who does not share the jihadist vision of establishing an all-encompassing Islamic theocracy. This lesson recurs throughout Egyptian history as Lawrence Wright’s […]
Looking Back on 9/11 with Lawrence Wright: The Deprived Jihadist Myth (Part 5)
Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. Al Qaeda recruits “who came to train in Afghanistan in the 1990s were not impoverished social failures,” observed Lawrence Wright in his 2006 book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. In the twenty-fifth anniversary year of Al Qaeda’s September […]
Looking Back on 9/11 with Lawrence Wright: Osama bin Laden, Out of Islam’s Past (Part 4)
Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Osama bin Laden habitually invoked “images that were deeply meaningful to many Muslims and practically invisible to those who were unfamiliar with the faith,” wrote Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. As bin Laden’s Al Qaeda attacks of September […]
Looking Back on 9/11 with Lawrence Wright: The Savage Wars of Jihad (Part 3)
Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. “Death on a grand scale was a goal in itself. There was no attempt to spare innocent lives, since the concept of innocence was subtracted from al-Qaeda’s calculations.” wrote Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. The twenty-fifth anniversary year of the mother […]
Looking Back on 9/11 with Lawrence Wright: Jihadist Justifications (Part 2)
Part 1 is here. “The Quran is full of references to jihad,” wrote Lawrence Wright in his 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Now that September 11, 2001, the terrorist day of infamy forever known as 9/11, has reached its twenty-fifth anniversary, it is instructive to review jihadist […]