In early 2002, Cable News Networks acquired a collection of one thousand five hundred audiocassettes from Usama Bin Ladin’s former residence in Qandahar, Afghanistan. Focusing on a recording entitled “Interview with a Muslim Jinni” that features an extended recording of a man possessed by a genie in an Afghan Arab training camp, I examine the ways the speaker turns sound production into an ethical resource for evaluating dominant assignations of voice and authorship. Much of the chapter assesses the significance of the audiocassette medium and Bin Laden’s own audio-library for the study of al-Qa`ida and various currents of Muslim activism featured on the tapes. My paper is a draft of a chapter from a forthcoming book manuscript.
For additional background on the meaning and usage of the term “al-Qā’ida” in the same collection of audiocassettes, see my 2008 article “Al-Qā’ida as “pragmatic base”: Contributions of area studies to sociolinguistics.”
