Removing books from libraries is always a delicate subject, especially when a country or locale is facing a particularly onerous phenomenon as that created by the threat of extremist terrorism. The Kingdom right now is engaged in a serious campaign to eradicate the kind of deviant ideology that has fueled the rise of Al-Qaeda and authorities are rightfully vigilant regarding accessibility to texts that promote both deviant ideology and the senseless violence it spawns. Nevertheless, the removal of books by Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian intellectual whose ideas, many believe, gave birth to Al-Qaeda decades after his death, and books on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's questionable Islamic group, from Jizan University's library raises questions that should be addressed. The problem with removing books from the public sphere is that such actions not only keep the books out of the hands of those susceptible to their twisted reasoning but it also makes them inaccessible to those with legitimate motives for reading them. Indeed, there may be justifiable reasons for restricting such texts, but with the Internet and ease of international travel, either the books or the information contained in them can be accessed without too much difficulty. The antidote to that, of course, is to allow serious study of the texts so that the public in general can be informed of their content and that content addressed with proper arguments against its validity. For instance, even at the height of anti-Communist fervor in the West, Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto was readily available for anyone to buy or read. In order to understand their adversaries, secondary school students in the West regularly studied it and critiqued it. Despite a trend towards liberalization, Saudi Arabia is not the West and we approach the world from our own unique and valid perspective. Many practices in the West will never have a home here. But understanding the enemy is an important element in waging the war against it. Restricting accessibility to texts can be justified but only if the texts continue to be made available to those most capable of using them to combat their ideas. __
