Reply #3: Lot's of questions for me regarding al-Qaeda... [View All]

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Dolnik and McCloud - who first started studying terrorism at the prestigious Monterey Institute of International Studies in California - claim it was Western officials who imposed the name 'al-Qaeda' on to disparate radical Islamic groups and who blew Osama bin Laden's power and reach 'out of proportion'. Both are concerned about the threat of terror, but argue that we should 'debunk the myth of al-Qaeda'

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So where did 'al-Qaeda' come from? Dolink says there are a number of theories - that the term was first used by bin Laden's spiritual mentor Abdullah Azzam, who wrote of al Qaeda al Sulbah, meaning the 'solid base', in 1988; or that it derives from a bin Laden-sponsored safehouse in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when he was part of the mujahideen fighting against the Soviet invasion, again referring to a physical 'base' rather than to a distinct organisation. But in terms of 'al-Qaeda' then being used to define a group of operatives around bin Laden - that, says Dolnik, originated in the West.

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http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1422


on edit:

disclaimer, i have no idea what that site that i linked is all about, and I've posted it before, i just know that it came when i was googling around trying find out more about al-qaeda. it's for discussion purposes only. (i don't normally link to sites that claim to be "the voice of the right"). :)