We consider ourselves the pioneers in waging the war of ideas against this culture of Ben laden since the late 1970’s. In that time America and West were allies to the Saudis against the late Soviet Union, and Ben laden was serving America in Afghanistan.
Three years before September 11, we had a project in Egypt to reform the Egyptian education by refining religious curricula from fanaticism. In that time, I talked to some one in the American Embassy in Cairo and wrote to him to alert them from the Saudis and their Wahabi ideology. So, it was wake up call, but they ignored it since then and they are still friends with the Saudis.
Regardless of the “war on terror” terminology and affiliated politics, we were and still are pioneer of this war intellectually. We still fight it alone by our bare hands, but we are so successful that we suffer four waves of arrest in Egypt in return with so little support to our people and attention to our cause.