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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   14093 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

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One of my favorite factoids: Osama Bin Laden was a huge fan of the Foundation series. And a possible English translation of Al Qaeda is "The Foundation."

Which actually makes a lot of sense out of Islamist political philosophy viewed through that lens. Al Qaeda was so angry at ISIS because they were worse than wrong, they were early.

Curious result, the two greatest titans of early SciFi both inspired legendarily evil murderers: Manson was a huge fan of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and obviously modeled himself after the main character.

Al Qaeda

I remain a little disappointed that more people haven’t made “based” jokes about this.

Al Qaeda was so angry at ISIS because they were worse than wrong, they were early.

It'd be funny if Bin Laden actually had read the first Foundation book, and only the first. "I was becoming a military leader who was going to restore the full glory of the Empire Caliphate, but structural-demographic forces caused our own people to undermine themselves! How could we possibly have ever expected something like to happen?! Hush, Marwan; why are you babbling about 'Foundation and Empire'? We don't have time to read now!"

the two greatest titans of early SciFi

Clifford Simak and Murray Leinster?

Only half-joking here - Asimov and Heinlein were the two greatest titans of Golden Age SF, but Asimov at least was very cognizant of and pushed for more long-term recognition of the "Silver Age"/"pulp era" greats preceding them. And Asimov was an utter egotist (in fact, it looks like he backdated a previously-unsalable short story of his own to shoehorn it into that anthology?) so praise from him in his own fields was very high praise.

obviously modeled himself after the main character.

With a few significant divergences. But other than that, Mrs. Tate, how did you like the book?

It'd be funny if Bin Laden actually had read the first Foundation book, and only the first.

In all honesty, I believe that Bin Laden was influenced by Hari Seldon-via-Quranic-End-times and viewed terrorism as creating the forces that would eventually create a caliphate, rather than viewing himself as a likely future Caliph. 9/11 wasn't the moment the Foundation reveals itself as a power, but closer to the Anacreonian revolt that goes off at the right time to set things in motion correctly. You can see this kind of management strategy in Al Qaeda's internal documents, for example their insistence that while it would be very useful to kill Obama or Patraeus, no one should under any circumstances kill Joe Biden, because Joe Biden was incompetent and if they killed Obama and left Biden in charge it would doom the American war effort.

With a few significant divergences.

I see more similarities than differences. Both used altered mental states and a free-love ethic to draw followers into cults which promised their followers an altered state of being that would ultimately make them rulers of the earth. Both professed their own humility as part of their claim to power.

And a possible English translation of Al Qaeda is "The Foundation."

The book was translated into Arabic and called "القاعدة" (Al Qaeda), but not until 2022. I don't think "Qaeda" means that sort of foundation in Arabic -- it can mean a headquarters, or a basis for something, but not the sort of academic organization the original Foundation was supposed to have been (Of course, Asimov meant all three meanings, but if the wordplay wouldn't work, you'd expect the title of a translation to reflect the surface meaning)

The whole bin Laden/Foundation thing seems to have been an invention of The Guardian, which means "the fake news" in British English. The naming of the translation was likely influenced by that, rather than vice versa.

I don't think it's ridiculous to consider that Bin Laden, who whatever your opinion of his morals was clearly a very intelligent and capable person, could view two closely related terms in shades of meaning outside those of the official translation. Bin Laden likely had some competency in English, though he was not known to speak it fluently in public this may have been a political rather than ability based choice.

To be fair, he did call it a factoid, which means a falsehood masquerading as a fact. So technically you're both right.

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