`My supervisor, an expert in the Middle East, told me about a rumour circulating about the name of Bin Laden's network. The term "Al-Qaeda" seems to have no political precedent in Arabic, and has therefore been something of a conundrum to the experts, until someone pointed out that a very popular book in the Arab world, Arabs apparently being big readers of translated sf, is Asimov's Foundation, the title of which is translated as "Al-Qaeda". Unlikely as it sounds, this is the only theory anyone can come up with.'
Oh come on, this sounds a bit daft. So what if "Foundation" is translated that way? It seems quite a suitable concept for naming a political movement. Unless the Arabic phrase doesn't exist apart from this coinage in an edition of Asimov, there's no reason to suspect a connection. Has anyone asked what the Arabic phrase *means*, rather than whether it has political connotations per se...?
The Hebrew translation of "Foundation" is titled "Mossad ha-Shemini", literally "Foundation of the Sky". The reason why they didn't just call the book "Mossad" is left as an exercise for the reader.
A quick google search shows 'Al Qaeda' to be arabic for 'The Base'. Must...resist...lame...joke
Isn't Asimov jewish? hmmmm....