A short but eventful chapter, we see the rise up of Al-Qaeda and Muslim aggression in the US. Eventful doesn’t necessarily mean an interesting chapter but looking at the title of the next chapter: “Paradise Lost” I was just stricken into a state of confusion. As we recall, we had a previous chapter titled “Paradise” and now it’s “Paradise Lost.” If paradise was referring to Al-Qaeda and those muslims, then that would most likely mean “Paradise Lost” refers to something bad happening to Al-Qaeda right? Anyways, I’ll get on with “The Silicon Valley” (definitely a very dramatic title) interaction with Al-Qaeda and the US.
Now as we know, 9/11 was a bombing of the World Trade Center. The chapter starts with the glory of the World Trade Center as it stood for the moment while Abdul Rahman was traveling the US and spreading his “Can rob banks, can kill jews” philosophy. On February 26, 1993, a car bomb was driven straight into the garage of one of the World Trade Center towers and blew up a huge area, leaving a massive crater. Essentially, Abdul had sort of succeeded in getting a large number of Muslims to rebel against America but to be honest, they lacked the experience and the brain power to formulate an extremely successful and devastating attack. After that bombing of the World Trade Center, al-zawahiri decided to move to the US to gain support for al-jihad but obviously couldn’t stay there permanently because of his visa. Just to extend it, he married a US woman, Linda Sanchez quickly. Unfortunately his campaign wasn’t very successful and had to ponder whether or not to merge with bin Laden or not.In 1993, Zawahiri tried to assassinate Egypt’s interior minister. This brought up the idea of suicide bombing, killing, or whatever suicide bombing. Suicide had been considered a taboo in Al-Qaeda for a long period of time but Al-Zawahiri was able to morph the idea into a way that told people, “it’s for the honor of your people.”
It’s crazy to think about how suicide came to be in Al-Qaeda. You can tell that Al-Zawahiri was quite intelligent because he somehow was able to convince millions that suicide was an act of honor instead of just throwing yourself into eternal sleep. It’s also crazy to think that by doing that, al-zawahiri had indirectly influenced the creation of a dark hole in our history.