The Looming Tower

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The Looming Tower “The Looming Tower,” the title of Lawrence Wright’s remarkable new book about Al Qaeda and 9/11, refers not only to the doomed towers of the World Trade Center, but also to a passage in the Koran, which Osama bin Laden quoted several times in a speech exhorting the 19 hijackers to become martyrs to their cause: “Wherever you are, death will find you/even in the looming tower.” Wright’s book, based on more than 500 interviews gives the reader a searing view of the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, a view that is at once wrenchingly intimate and boldly sweeping in its historical perspective The story begins in November 1948 with Sayyid Qutb, a middle-aged Egyptian writer, coming to America amidst a crisis of faith. When he returned to Egypt a couple years later, he did so having become radicalized. In America he saw only what he recognized as depravity and would go on to write screeds decrying the materialism of the West, individual freedoms, etc. He saw America as a "spiritual wasteland" which celebrated sexuality and relegated religion to the backwaters. Qutb serves as a suitable entry point because his views would form the basis of radical Islam as we know it today. One idea of his that became especially important was takfir or essentially the bit of thinking that certain Muslims aren't "true" Muslims and that they can be killed despite injunctions against this in the Quran. This would later be used to justify suicide bombings. For the rest of the book, the dramatis personae are led by Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaeda right hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri, Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia, and John O'Neill of the FBI. The lives of bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are traced from their childhoods. Osama bin Laden grew up in a wealthy Arabian family. His father, Mohammed, created a vast construction empire and was legendary in the country for building roads

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