THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

A USER-EDITED REFERENCE SOURCE

Wajid Jamil

Wajid “Waj” bin Jamil (born July 8, 1966), a Sunni Muslim, is an Arabian computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur best known as the founder of The Library of Alexandria open-source encyclopedia.

Jamil was born in Tripoli, Libya. His father, Jamil al Sindi, was an IT specialist serving as a technology advisor to state governor Muammar al Gaddafi. His mother Parmita was a mathematician distantly related to legendary Hindu library scientist S.R. Ranganathan.

After attaining dual master’s degrees in computer science and finance from Baghdad University, Jamil became one of the first generation of online day traders, using a software program of his own devising. His profits—which came as much from the sale of his trading software as from his actual investments—served as seed money for his later online ventures . . .

In addition to his work on The Library of Alexandria, Jamil has contributed expertise and investment capital to the eBazaar online auction company, the Hawaladar e-commerce site, and the classified ad site safwanslist. He is also a co-founder of Christian Media Watch, a watchdog group that monitors Western television, radio, and newspapers for anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic propaganda.

Wajid Jamil had originally wanted to name his online encyclopedia the House of Wisdom, after the famous library and translation center established in Baghdad by the Abbasid Caliph Al Mamun. But that URL was already taken, and the cybersquatter who’d grabbed it demanded an absurd sum. So Jamil went with the cheaper libraryofalexandria.org instead, saving the House of Wisdom tag for his corporate headquarters.

The building was located in Al Mansour Square. A mural above the entrance depicted the great scholar Ibn al Haytham lecturing to his students. Auditing the class from the back of the room were two visitors from the future: Wajid Jamil, in his hacker’s djellaba and flip-flops, and beside him, in a gold-embroidered caftan, Muammar Abu Minyar al Gaddafi.

People unfamiliar with Jamil’s family connections could be forgiven for wondering if this was a joke. Al Gaddafi had struggled for decades to be taken seriously as an Arab leader, but outside Libya—where the crooked state election board, staffed by his old National Guard comrades, ensured his return to the governor’s mansion every four years—he was regarded as little more than a comical human interest story: the governor-for-life, who slept in a nomad’s tent and was protected by an all-female bodyguard squad.

His big moment in the national spotlight had come in 2000, when he’d run for president as an independent candidate. Asked during a debate which of his accomplishments as governor he was most proud of, Gaddafi gave a rambling answer about infrastructure projects, including a program that had made Tripoli and Benghazi the first two cities in North Africa to provide free wireless web access. When the governor finished speaking, rival candidate Bandar al Saud inquired in a tone of gentle derision, “I’m sorry, are you telling us you invented the Internet?” Though this was not even close to what Gaddafi had said, the line got a huge laugh and was soon being reported as fact. A few days later, during a Congressional debate over a new anti-obscenity bill, the Speaker of the House appeared to have Gaddafi in mind when he described the Internet as “a series of intestines, laid out by a goatherd’s son, spewing bile at both ends.”

After that it became a full-on Net meme. Someone created a screensaver showing a goat sticking its tongue out above the caption IM IN UR INTESTINES, SPEWIN MAH BILE. Joke posts appeared on technical support boards, crediting the Libyan governor with miracles both positive and negative: “Invoking the name of Al Gaddafi cured my blue screen of death”; “Spoke ill of Tobruk soccer team last night, now I am beset by malware. Halp!” Even as Gaddafi’s presidential ambitions went down in flames—he got less than half a percent of the popular vote, stealing just enough support from the Unity Party candidate to clinch the election for Bandar—the denizens of cyberspace anointed him a king, the Mighty Jinn of the Interwebs.

Remarkably little of this made its way into the Gaddafi entry on the Library of Alexandria. The encyclopedia’s article on the governor was respectful to the point of obsequiousness—and it stayed that way, no matter how many amateur editors tried to spice it up with irreverent anecdotes and LOLgoat photos. The man Wajid Jamil knew as Uncle Muammar might not have real magical powers, but what he did have was the Tarhuna Data Center, the largest state-subsidized server farm in the country, buried under the mountains south of Tripoli: unlimited data storage and the bandwidth to go with it, available at rock-bottom prices to those the governor counted as his friends. Wajid took pains to remain among that number.

The receptionist at the House of Wisdom told them that Waj would be free shortly and invited them to wait in a private cybercafé lounge. While Samir helped himself to pastry and Amal checked out the art on the walls—watercolor landscapes of the Libyan Sahara, painted by the governor—Mustafa got tea and sat down at a computer.

The web browser defaulted to the Library of Alexandria, but a few mouse clicks brought him to the homepage of Christian Media Watch, a site devoted to the proposition that however frightened you were of Jesus’s Western disciples, you weren’t frightened enough. The banner art showed a scene from the Volksaufstand: a screaming Teuton with a bloodred cross on his chest winding up to throw a Molotov cocktail at a line of Israeli police in riot gear. Superimposed on this was the quote “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war . . .” which the tagline attributed to POPULAR CHRISTIAN ANTHEM.

Mustafa remembered the first time he’d heard that song. It was his last year at BU, and he was sharing an apartment with Samir, Wajid, and an Ethiopian exchange student named Kidane Sellasie who spent most of his waking hours building cardboard models at the architecture school. Wajid was similarly dedicated to his studies, but on Thursday nights he liked to unwind by smoking hashish and watching funny videos: cartoons, bad movies, old TV shows.

On the night in question, Waj had rented what he’d thought was a collection of computer-animated shorts from the Tunis Film Festival. But there’d been a mix-up at the video store, and the tape inside the case was actually a documentary about American Christian fundamentalists. On the theory that anything could be entertaining with enough smoke, Waj loaded up his hash pipe and popped the tape into the VCR. Samir joined him on the couch, but Mustafa, who had exams the next week, went to his room to study.

Half an hour later, the sound of raucous laughter drew him back out again. “What did I miss?”

Samir was laughing so hard he was gasping for breath: “Rewind! Rewind!”

Waj rewound the tape. When he pressed play, a children’s choir was singing the anthem:

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war

With the cross of Jesus going on before

Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe

Forward into battle see His banners go!

“I don’t get the joke,” Mustafa said.

Samir made a clumsy grab for the remote: “You went back too far!”

“I know!” said Waj, “I know!” To Mustafa: “Just wait, there’s another song after this one . . .”