Pakistan School Names Library After Bin Laden

'He is our hero,' Red Mosque cleric says
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 18, 2014 3:05 PM CDT
Pakistan School Names Library After Bin Laden
Red Mosque cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz shows religious books to media during a news conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, in this, Feb. 7, 2014 file photo.   (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)

You know how memorial libraries are: They're always named after some obscure historical figure, deep-pocketed donor, or international terrorist mastermind. If that last one sounds out of place to you, you must not live in Islamabad, where a prominent Islamic seminary for girls has just renamed its library the "Library of Osama bin Laden, the Martyr," the AAP reports. "He is our hero," explains Maulana Abdul Aziz, the Taliban-affiliated Red Mosque cleric who runs prayer the school. "We do not care if the world calls him a terrorist."

There are no pictures of or books about bin Laden in the library, according to an AP reporter who visited—an administrator says it will carry only religious books. The move is the first public remembrance of bin Laden in Pakistan in recent memory. While the al-Qaeda leader was once a symbol of anti-American pro-Taliban sentiment there, a government crackdown on the Taliban left many too frightened to show his image. (More Osama bin Laden stories.)

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