The Romans named our familiar constellations, but nearly every star of note in the northern sky takes its name from Arabic. Betelgeuse, Rigel, Aldebaran, Algol, Fomalhaut, Vega, Deneb. Frank Herbert dubbed the setting for his SF epic Dune Arrakis, after the Arabic name for the northern star Mu Draconis, ar-raqis, which means "the dancer." All these names come to us courtesy of the same explosion of learning in the centuries after the birth of Islam that gave us, besides the preservation of Hellenistic knowledge, algebra and our system of numbering, filtered through the three-quarter millennium Moorish rule of Spain. The emblem of Islam itself, after all, is the crescent and star.
One of the first things I took note of in the days after September 11, 2001, was that the moon had just entered its last quarter, and was therefore becoming a crescent in the pre-dawn sky. Further investigation revealed that Venus, the brightest object in the sky after the Moon, was also a morning "star" during that season. They came within a few degrees of each other on the morning of September 15th, when the word of Al-Qaeda's horrific deed would have spread to even the remotest corner of the Muslim world. Crescent and star ascendant.
So it came as little surprise to me that bin Laden should choose this week to reemerge after his three year hiatus. When last we heard from him, he was practicing some reverse psychology to endorse the reelection of Dumbya. Mission accomplished! Time now for some well-earned rest. Why would the bearded one pick this moment to stir up a little dust again from his undisclosed location? This is the second time since 2004 that Venus is a morning "star", the first time in late summer/early fall since the election, and this week the Moon was also in its last quarter once again, so it seems obvious to me that bin Laden has been doing some stargazing recently. Far from city lights as he must be, it surely passes for more than a hobby. The stars themselves are burning reminders to bin Laden and his followers that Muslim civilization, once pre-eminent, has seen better days, and those days may be gone forever.
Does this mean another attack is coming? To listen to talking heads like ABC's Brian Ross put it, you would think it's time to stock up on extra undies. Little in bin Laden's message contained overt threats to America itself, though, confined as they were to our presence in Iraq. But Juan Cole deftly discounts bin Laden's role in fomenting turmoil in Iraq, so on the whole there doesn't seem to be much to see here. Besides, September 11th succeeded beyond any jihadist's wildest dream, if that dream was to provoke America into a self-defeating paroxysm of overreaction. Thanks to its ties to the Bushes, the bin Laden family certainly possessed a fat dossier on Dumbya years before his float to the top of the bowl, and Osama recognized a once-in-a-millennium opportunity, the moment Bush v. Gore was decided, to declare that Islam is a force in our world still, one that could yet bring two superpowers to a calamitous reckoning in the space of a generation. It was all in the timing, and one of the timekeepers, strange as it may seem, is the great orrery that is our Solar System.
Cross posted at Water on the Moon.