Al-Qaeda Author Slams Mosque Foes, Traces Bin Laden’s Polygamy
Abduallah al-Shehri and Lawrence Wright
Donna Daniels Public Relations via Bloomberg
Abduallah al-Shehri and Lawrence Wright talk in "My Trip to Alqaeda." The movie is a documentary based on his one-man show about his experiences with Muslim extremists.
Abduallah al-Shehri and Lawrence Wright talk in "My Trip to Alqaeda." The movie is a documentary based on his one-man show about his experiences with Muslim extremists. Source: Donna Daniels Public Relations via Bloomberg
Lawrence Wright
Donna Daniels Public Relations via Bloomberg
Lawrence Wright. "My Trip to Al-Qaeda" is a documentary based on his one-man show about his experiences with Muslim extremists, that premieres on HBO.
Lawrence Wright. "My Trip to Al-Qaeda" is a documentary based on his one-man show about his experiences with Muslim extremists, that premieres on HBO. Source: Donna Daniels Public Relations via Bloomberg
Lawrence Wright, who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the roots of 9/11, is disturbed by the outcry against a proposed mosque near the World Trade Center site in New York.
“It’s upsetting to see the rise of this kind of bigotry,” said Wright, whose “The Looming Tower” traces the rise of radical Islam. “Moderate Muslims are the bridge we need to encourage, and antagonizing Islam in general is not a good idea.
“It’s also ironic because there are already mosques in that part of Manhattan and nobody is asking any questions about them.”
Wright, 63, was speaking on the phone from his home in Austin, Texas. “My Trip to Al-Qaeda,” a documentary based on his one-man show about his experiences with Muslim extremists, premieres tonight on HBO.
Warner: The U.S. has ended its combat mission in Iraq, but has increased its presence in Afghanistan. Is a military solution possible there?
Wright: The best we can hope for is stabilizing Afghanistan and even then, the outcome isn’t going to be appealing to most Americans because we’ll be supporting a faux democracy run by warlords and drug lords. The prospects in Afghanistan are grim and deadly.
Welcome Death
Warner: Suicide bombers not only don’t fear death, they welcome it. How can you fight an enemy like that?
Wright: The conditions that create that kind of despair have to be combated. Not just the poverty and political repression in their countries, but the sense of being left out of the world that is so prevalent in so many regions of Muslim civilization.
Warner: The war on terror has included questionable tactics like water boarding and indiscriminate wiretapping. Are we playing into Osama bin Laden’s hands by undermining our own laws?
Wright: One of his goals was to get America to subvert its own tradition of civil liberties. That’s almost always the goal of terrorists -- to create repression and cause people to turn against their own government.
Warner: While researching your book, you became friends with bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Jamal Khalifa, who was later murdered in Madagascar. What insights did he give you about bin Laden?
Wright: When they were young students at King Abdul Aziz University, they decided to become polygamists. Actually polygamy was unpopular in Saudi Arabia then; it was thought to be declasse. But Jamal and bin Laden did it for religious reasons. And, as a way of sealing the deal, bin Laden offered Jamal his favorite sister, Sheikha.
No Playboy
Warner: Unlike most terrorists, bin Laden comes from a wealthy family. He could have led a very comfortable life, but instead chose to sleep in caves and fight the world’s biggest superpower. What motivates him?
Wright: Religion is at the core. He’s always been very pious. After 9/11, there was a rumor that he had been a playboy, but that wasn’t true. He was always sober and serious.
Warner: Were you ever scared when you were dealing with terrorists?
Wright: When you’re a reporter, you try not to think about those things. Otherwise, you can’t do your job. I did take some precautions, though. When I was living in Saudi Arabia, I changed my car a couple of times and tried to keep irregular hours so I didn’t develop a specific routine.
‘The Siege’
Warner: You’re a writer, not a trained actor. How hard was it for you to do that one-man show?
Wright: It was difficult, but I enjoyed it. I liked the intimacy of standing in front of an audience. When you think of it, a reporter is a witness sent out by his community to find out what’s going on and come back and make a report. That’s what the experience feels like to me. It was almost like sitting around a campfire and telling stories.
Warner: You wrote the screenplay for “The Siege,” a 1998 movie about terrorist attacks in the U.S. that led to crackdowns against Muslims. When 9/11 happened, did you feel like a prophet?
Wright: It was very unsettling because it looked like some of the scenes in the movie. I wasn’t a prophet, though. I just looked at what had happened historically and at human nature.
Warner: On a lighter note, I hear you play keyboards in a blues/rockabilly band called WhoDo.
Wright: Yes. We have a 15-year-old fiddle player named Ruby Jane who plays with Willie Nelson. She’s a lot more talented than I am.
Wright will perform “The Human Scale,” his one-man show about the crisis in Gaza, throughout October at the 3LD Art & Technology Center in Manhattan.
WhoDo will perform Sept. 11 at Madam’s Organ in Washington.
(Rick Warner is the movie critic for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own. This interview was adapted from a longer conversation.)
To contact the writer on the story: Rick Warner in New York at rwarner1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.
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