Following are excerpts from a TV debate with Moroccan author Khanatha Banouna and Palestinian author Ahmad Abu Matar. The debate aired on Al-Jazeera TV on September 12, 2006.

Khanatha Banouna: Allah be praised, this nation is fertile. The Arab Muslim woman is fertile, and gives birth to real men, and these real men are essential in this day and age.

Host: Real men like who?

Khanatha Banouna: Bin Laden, Hassan Nasrallah, Al-Zawahiri, that Jordanian guy who died in Iraq...

Host: Al-Zarqawi.

Khanatha Banouna: Al-Zarqawi, and anyone who bears arms against the American Zionist tyranny, and anyone who supports [them], in any possible way, even through prayer, like Hassan Nasrallah said.

[...]

We need millions of Osama Bin Ladens and millions of Hassan Nasrallahs, and millions like them, because the battle is one of life and death. The law of survival forces us to... We have no choice, because they push us to this. Allow me to say that the events of 9/11 - we were not the ones responsible for them. It was America that did it, and made us do it.

[...]

Ahmad Abu Matar: I am completely convinced that the events of 9/11 are barbaric and criminal acts of terrorism par excellence, of the highest degree of shame.

[...]

Khanatha Banouna: The acts carried out by Osama Bin Laden and his group, and by the mujahideen - and for which we are grateful - are the result of the American Zionist policy in the region, and a result of their attempt to destroy Islam and Arabism.

[...]

They carried out operations in America, and you denounced them, right?

Ahmad Abu Matar: Yes.

Khanatha Banouna: When they carried out operations in our own countries, you denounced them. When they carried them out in planes in the sky, you denounced them. So where are they supposed to carry them out?