From the lastest ish of Ansible, a science fiction zine:

China Mieville has the inside story: `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.’

Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)