The Bin Laden Prism
Spiegel Online has an interview up with US author Steve Coll on his new book: 'The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century'. Steve Coll, who is currently Director of the New America Foundation, states the reasons for his interest in the Bin Laden family in the following way:
What Coll's angle does enlighten is the extent to which Osama Bin Laden and his family have a personal connection to the various conflicts and contradictions in the recent history of the Middle East, showing that history in an overarching frame.
Spiegel Online: 'Osama bin Laden is Planning Something for the US Election'
I believe that Osama bin Laden and the broad contradictions among religion, tradition and modernity in the Middle East, with enmity toward the West on one side and the attractiveness of our ideas and way of life on the other, is best understood through the prism of this clan.There are some intriguing 'did you know that...?' facts in the interview. For instance, both Bin Laden's father and Bin Laden's elder brother Salem died in airplane crashes. The general arguments on the contradictions of modernity in the Middle East, and the conceptualisation of fundamentalist Islam as an essentially modern phenomenon itself are perhaps more familiar.
What Coll's angle does enlighten is the extent to which Osama Bin Laden and his family have a personal connection to the various conflicts and contradictions in the recent history of the Middle East, showing that history in an overarching frame.
Spiegel Online: 'Osama bin Laden is Planning Something for the US Election'
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