“Artist/Activist” Mos Def, a hip-hop musician and actor, matched Rosie O'Donnell Friday night on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher in espousing a bizarre 9/11 theory which absolves Osama bin Laden as he also characterized George Washington and the Catholic church as “terrorists,” maintained that terrorists have legitimate grievances and trashed America as the threat to the world. [Be warned, this posting includes numerous profanities in accurate quotations.] Def contended that “George Washington and all them dudes was terrorists as far as the Queen was concerned,” charged that “the Catholic church's stance about child molestation is a form of terrorism in and of itself” and when asked by Maher if bin Laden was behind destroying the World Trade Center, declared “absolutely not.” Def asserted that “highly-educated people in all areas of science have spoken on the fishiness around the whole 9/11 theory.”

A few minutes later, Def defended terrorism as a response to America's misdeeds: “Let's deal with the fact that there are valid reasons even to a lot of terrorists' arguments, quote unquote, terrorists' arguments about why are they frustrated with colonial presence, imperial presence. The way that this government has pursued its foreign interests has been meddlesome, murderously meddlesome.” Directing his ire at President Bush, Def asserted that “this administration and this government has sought to suppress everyone and no one has sought to suppress America in quite the same way,” yet the U.S. goes “to these places and fucking kill[s] people.”