Jerry Kindall says:
According to the latest Ansible, when Isaac Asimov’s Foundation was published in Arabic, the title was translated as… “Al-Qaeda.” Apparently Asimov’s future history is as popular among Arabs as it is among English speakers, and one “Middle East expert” thinks it might well be where bin Laden’s terrorist organization got its name. China Miéville notes that the term has “no political precedent” in the Arabic world and says: “Unlikely as it sounds, this is the only theory anyone can come up with."</blockquote
