To the extent that the speech made the American president more credible to Muslims, it proved a success, Telhami says. “But that raises expectations even higher and with every new speech people are going to expect more beef.”

Flagg Miller, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of California who has studied hundreds of orations attributed to bin Laden, said, “Obama’s discourse is far more about building consensus and bin Laden’s is more polarising.” He cautioned, however, not to count bin Laden out in the war of words. What many in the West overlook, he says, is bin Laden’s effective use of poetry in his speeches; many young Muslims find that appealing.

Osama bin Laden is a poet with a persuasive mastery of classical Arabic. His imagery leaps out from the 12th century, dripping with blood and featuring steeds carrying warriors wielding swords and lances.

“His poetry is didactic,” Miller says, “always with a political message, but sometimes very moving.”

Still, things have changed: Osama bin Laden’s image is no longer on T-shirts peddled in the kasbahs. A few years ago, he could have beaten the king of Saudi Arabia in a fair election; now, according to a poll, 88 per cent of Saudis want their government to crack down on Qaeda followers in their land. In Iraq, Sunnis have run their own Qaeda clone out of most of the country, disgusted by the militants’ preference for civilian targets, as well as by their puritanical interpretation of Islam.

... contd.