Naming a library

This appears to be the first time that a library has been dedicated to the name of the man who founded al Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden was killed in a raid conducted by the Americans in Abbottabad in May 2011. He has been memorialised with assorted stores and places of business — sons, even — being named after him but now he has a library dedicated to his name. It is not unusual for great men and women to be immortalised post-mortem with the foundation of a library in their name; the world is full of such repositories of knowledge but this appears to be the first library dedicated to the name of the man who founded one of the world’s leading terrorist organisations — al Qaeda. The single room, which is newly constructed, has been built by Maulana Abdul Aziz in the compound of the Jamia Hafsa madrassa for women in Islamabad. A simple paper sign written in Arabic on the entrance reads ‘Maktaba Osama bin Laden Shaheed’ — or ‘Library Osama bin Laden Martyr’. There are no portraits of bin Laden inside, nor books authored by him, and Maulana Abdul Aziz tells curious media personnel that it is a fitting memorial to a hero, and will contain only books on Islamic teaching.

As an icon, Osama bin Laden has been fading from view. The new library would have gone unnoticed by the wider world had not local people seen the sign outside and alerted the media — who were swiftly on the trail both nationally and internationally. As an entity, al Qaeda is no longer the power in the land it once was, with operations moving to other parts of the world such as the Arabian peninsula and Africa. Anti-American sentiment still runs high in Pakistan, today fed by drone strikes which are themselves fading as the talks with the TTP stutter on and we enter a tense hiatus, neither at war nor at peace, and with the violence seemingly happening in slow motion rather than on fast-forwards. Bin Laden dedicated his life to the overthrow of both the states of Pakistan and Afghanistan, failing in both instances. Perhaps, that should be the most fitting memorial — a library dedicated to bloody failure, a puerile legacy at best.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 21^st, 2014.

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