488 Annabelle Böttcher
er the Egyptian bestselling novel “The Yacoubian Building” (ʿImārat
Yaʿqūbiyān) by ʿAlāʾ al-Aswānī is much more outspoken. The novel’s
character Ṭāhā al-Shādhilī saw his aspirations for entry into the police
academy frustrated and he became a Muslim orthodox. In the end,
after sexual abuse and severe beatings at the hands of the Egyptian
security forces, he resorted to violence.^126 The Qatari TV channel al-
Jazeera has also addressed the topic of detention and torture on several
occasions. In 2006, it aired a series entitled “Literature of the Prisons”
(Adab al-sujūn) dealing with the prison and torture experience of Arab
intellectuals.^127 With the “War on Terrorism”, the situation worsened
and Salafis have become its main target. Their lives are strongly influ-
enced by this experience of persecution, combat, arbitrary detention,
interrogation, and torture. Ayman al-Ẓawāhirī (b. 1951), one of the
religious authorities of al-Qāʿida, seems to have been radicalized dur-
ing his imprisonment in the 1980s in Egypt. During these torture ses-
sions, he divulged information leading to the arrest, torture, and trial
of his closest friend.^128 Al-Ẓawāhirī’s public statements often include
remarks about torture.^129 A document allegedly used as a training man-
ual for members of al-Qāʿida entitled “Military Studies in Jihad against
the Tyrants”, also referred to as the “Manchester Document” because
it was found by the British Manchester Metropolitan Police during
a search, includes references to torture: some are directed specifically
at the Egyptian regime, which is addressed as “apostate rulers” who
“threw thousands of the Haraka Al-Islamiyia (Islamic Movement)
youth in gloomy jails and detention centers that were equipped with
the most modern torture devices and [manned with] experts of oppres-
sion and torture”.^130 According to the author, it was unbelief, that
126 Al-Aswānī, ʿAlāʾ: The Yacoubian Building, Cairo and New York 2004.
127 Mishbāl, Muḥammad: Tajribat al-iʿtiqāl wal-taʾdhīb; online: http://www.aljazeera.
net, accessed May 17, 2006; al-Mukhtār, Ḥamīd: Riwāyāt min qalb al-muʿtaqal;
online: http://www.aljazeera.net, accessed May 8, 2005.
128 Al-Zayyaat, Montasser: The Road to Al-Qaeda. The Story of bin Laaden’s
Right-Hand Man, London 2002, pp. 30–31, 106–107; Wright, Lawrence: The
Looming Tower. Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, New York 2007, pp. 51–58.
129 Zambelis, Chris: Is there a Nexus between Torture and Radicalization?, in:
Jamestown Terrorism Monitor 6 (June 13, 2008); online: http://www.james-
town.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2374266, accessed July 15,
2008.
130 Declaration of Jihad against the Country’s Tyrants Military Series. UK/BM-7
Translation; online: http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/manualpart1_1.pdf,
accessed August 2010.
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