By James Finck, Ph.D.
I think it is safe to say that the most significant event in my lifetime is Sept. 11, 2001. Yet while names like Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda are now household names, the American public at large knows very little about them, how Al-Qaeda works or much about the other founding members or their religious philosophy. Lawrence Wright tackles these issues in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.” Wright not only explains the attacks of that dreadful day but helps readers understand the men behind it that caused so much pain.
One way to combat terrorism is to try to understand its causes; to understand why many in the Middle East hate Westerners so badly. An understanding may lead to dialogue, then to resolution, and hopefully peace. While completely condemning any act of terror, it is important to understand that the Middle East is a region that for most its modern history has been acted upon. For 600 years they were under the thumb of the Turks and when they finally broke free they never quite gained full autonomy as they fell under the influence of the British, French, Soviets and then eventually the Americans. Even when some nations did gain political freedom they were still culturally dominated by the West.
One of the most successful groups formed to fight off imperialism was the Muslim Brotherhood created by Hassan al-Banna in 1928. While there is no denying the important of the Brotherhood to the history of the Middle East, Wright spends the beginning of his book exploring one of al-Banna’s rivals, Sayyid Qutb, who had a much larger influence on bin Laden. Like most Egyptian Islamists of his time, Qutb was radicalized by his hatred of the British Occupation and King Farouk’s inability to confront them. He came to hate the West with one exception, the United States. Qutb had come to America for education but eventually left after seeing what he considered debauchery of American culture, especially its women. Yet his real hatred of America came with their support for Israel, especially after the Arab world’s complete failure in the 1967 war against the Jewish nation. Qutb believed governments of the West, as well as Egypt’s, had failed and insisted the only answer was Islam. Wright when explaining Qutb’s analysis of capitalism said, “[it] attended only the material needs of humanity, leaving the spirit unsatisfied,” continuing that Islam, “is a complete system with laws, social codes, economic rules, and its own method of government. Only Islam offered a formula for creating a just and godly society.”
Wright also introduces readers to Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the man who would organize Egyptians around Qutb’s teachings and become a mentor for bin Laden and who earned a name for himself working with the Mujahideen fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. Al-Zawahiri became obsessed with overthrowing the Egyptian government and creating a real choice among the Islamists. Those who wanted to work within existing systems like the Brotherhood and those like Al-Zawahiri “who wanted to wreck the state and impose a religious dictatorship…[and] impose Islamic law—Sharia. As men like Al-Zawahiri protested, they began to be imprisoned which led to the one of Wright’s key ideas: “One line of thinking proposes that America’s tragedy on September 11 was born in the prisons of Egypt. Human-rights advocates in Cairo argue that torture created an appetite for revenge, first in Sayyid Qutb, and later in his acolytes, including Ayman al-Zawahiri. The main target of the prisoners’ wrath was the secular Egyptian government, but a powerful current of anger was also directed towards the West, which they saw as an enabling force behind the repressive regime. They held the West responsible for corrupting and humiliating Islamic society. Indeed, the theme of the humiliation, which is the essence of torture, is important to understanding the radical Islamists’ rage. Egypt’s prisons became a factory for producing militants whose need for retribution—they called it justice—was all consuming.”
In the third chapter Wright introduces his readers to the young Osama bin Laden, the son of the wealthy construction magnate who built a fortune in Saudi Arabi, The Kingdom, working side by side with the royal family. Bin Laden was always a serious boy but became more so as he fell under the influence of Muslim Brother schoolteachers who had fled Egypt for The Kingdom. He stopped watching cowboy TV programs and refused to wear Western style clothing. It was in college however, that he became radicalized as he began to read Qutb. Wright writes, “His views began to change, however, and it was this fundamental shift—from Hudaybi’s tolerant and accepting view of Islam to Qutb’s narrow and judgmental one—that would open the door to terror.”
Wright then follows bin Laden as he journeyed to Afghanistan to become a major player in the jihad movement against the Russians, mostly because of his financing, and it was there that he became acquainted with Al-Zawahiri. Wright writes, “Each man filled a need in the other. Zawahiri wanted money and contacts, which bin Laden had in abundance. Bin Laden, an idealist given to causes, sought direction; Zawahiri, a seasoned propagandist, supplied it.
After Afghanistan bin Laden returned to The Kingdom where he worked for his family but did not give up his radicalism. He had confrontations with the royal family because of their worldly ways, but where he got into real trouble is when American forces began to arrive in The Kingdom in preparations for their attacks against Iraq during the Gulf War. This became the major turning point as he could not accept infidels in the Holy Land. Bin Laden’s criticism of the royal family grew to the point where he was kicked out of The Kingdom and moved himself and his new organization al-Qaeda to the Sudan. There he began plotting against Americans. He watched the Clinton administration withdraw troops when faced with violence as seen in Black Hawk Down attacks in Somalia. Bin Laden felt that after Vietnam and other failed military attacks that America was weak He began looking for ways to hit America where it hurt.
At the same time Wright begins weaving the story of men like John O’Neill (CIA) and Dan Coleman (FBI). Wright writes, “Coleman had come to the conclusion that America faced a profound new threat; and yet, his reports met with little response outside a small circle of prosecutors and a few in the agency and the bureau who took interest…they [Coleman and O’Neill] were the two men most responsible for putting a stop to bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and yet they disliked each other intensely—an emotion that reflected the ingrained antagonism of the organizations they represented,.. from the start they response of American intelligence to the challenge presented by al-Qaeda was hampered by the dismal personal relationships and institutional warfare that these men exemplified.”
While much of the rest of the book deals with planning for 9/11 and the government’s inability to stop it, what I found fascinating were the terrorists’ theological discussions. Wright spends a great deal of time with Islamic thinkers and investigates how they could justify going against the Quran in the name of Islam. Islam condemns suicide, the killing of innocents and other Muslims, yet al Qaeda did all three. During one such conversation Wright writes, “Abu Hajar addressed the ethics of killing innocent people. He spoke to the men about Ibn Taymiyyah, a 13th century scholar who is one of the primary references for Wahhabi philosophy. In his day, Ibn Taymiyyah confronted the problem of the Mongols, who savaged Baghdad but then converted to Islam. Was it proper to take revenge against fellow Muslims? Ibn Taymiyyah argued that just because the Mongols had made the profession of faith, they were still not true believers, and therefore they could be killed. Moreover, as Abu Hajar explained to the 30 or 40 al-Qaeda members who were sitting on the carpet in bin Laden’s salon, propping their elbows on the bolsters and sipping mango juice, Mongols, who bought good from then or sold to them or was merely standing near them, might be killed as well. If he is a good Muslim, he will go to Paradise; if he is bad, he will go to hell, and good riddance. Thus the dead tourist and the hotel worker would find their just reward.”
Wright does a masterful job of weaving together the ideological, political and personal motivations driving the perpetrators and the counterterrorism efforts of Western intelligence agencies from the inception of Al-Qaeda in the Afghan-Soviet War to its evolution into a global terrorist network, offering valuable insights into the failures and missed opportunities that allowed 9/11 to occur. Moreover, the book provides a thought-provoking analysis of the inherent tensions and contradictions within the U.S. intelligence community and its struggle to adapt to the emerging threat of transnational terrorism. While “The Looming Tower” is a sobering account of the human cost of extremism and the devastating impact of terrorism, it also serves as a poignant reminder of the importance of vigilance, cooperation and resilience in confronting the challenges of the modern world. The length and detail may scare off some casual readers, but overall, Wright’s work is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the origins and consequences of 9/11 and the ongoing struggle against violent extremism.
Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11,” published Aug. 8, 2006, by Knopf Publishing, New York; is available on Amazon.
James Finck is a professor of history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at HistoricallySpeaking1776@gmail.com.
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