Sayyid Mahmoud Al-Qimny is an independent scholar who works on early Islamic history. Based out of Cairo, Qimny writes about a range of topic and recently published an essay collection entitled Thank You, Bin Laden!
The satiric title praises Bin Laden for showing the world in the tragic events of September 11 the true face of political Islam, or Islamism, and for waking up America to the fact that the Middle East is in desperate need of intellectual, social, and ethical reform. The final thanks is for giving hope to the Arab world that America will be true its ideals and spearhead reform in the Middle East.
Thank You, Bin Laden! is banned in Egypt, thanks to the censors at Cairo's Al Azhar University and their control over Egyptian intellectual output. (Qimny is careful to avoid charges of apostasy, as he notes in an interview with the Middle East Times, by only using old Islamic primary source documents approved by Al Azhar.)
Nonetheless, a few copies of Thank You, Bin Laden! can be found in American libraries and are worth checking out even if only for the book's cover, which depicts a healthy hand graspying the hand of a corpse. Try to figure out the how Al-Qimny wants you to interpret that.
Qimny is now on trial in Egypt, facing government prosecution for his writings. More updates on the case to come. In the meantime, Qimny needs to be picked up on the reform radar screen.
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