Or, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the 20th Hijacker"
Apparently, the number 19 has some significance in Islam. Scroll down to Verse 30.
30 Above it are nineteen.31 We have appointed only angels to be wardens of the Fire, and their number have We made to be a stumbling-block for those who disbelieve; that those to whom the Scripture hath been given may have certainty, and that believers may increase in faith; and that those to whom the Scripture hath been given and believers may not doubt; and that those in whose hearts there is disease, and disbelievers, may say: What meaneth Allah by this similitude ? Thus Allah sendeth astray whom He will, and whom He will He guideth. None knoweth the hosts of thy Lord save Him. This is naught else than a Reminder unto mortals.
The problem is, nobody can quite agree what this means, or even if it's very important. Some say that it's the number of Angels Guarding Hell. Some say that it's the number that signifies the Unbeliever (that'd be you and me). Some people go completely 'round the bend and write application letters to succeed Martin Gardner. Loius Farrakhan, who at least thinks he's Muslim, went on a little 19-based riff during his 400,000-Man March speech a few years back.
I'm sure that Salafists and Wahabbists probably have violent late-night Hooka fueled bull-sessions about the importance of the Number 19, at least until the Hanafis barge in and declare them all infidels. Long, mystical, Qat-enahanced tracts probably exist holding forth on this mystery.
Me, I'm guessing scribal error. Squiggle the thing the other way and it probably means, "Snack Bar."
The point isn't who's right. It's that 19 seems to hold an important place in Islam, like 613 in Judaism. It wouldn't suprise me at all to learn that there was no 20th hijacker, because Osama was trying to send a message, the same way the Ahmedinejad was with his letter. Roughly translated as, "Convert, or Die and Be Condemned to Hell." It's only our Western sense of symmetry that makes us assume that someone got caught in traffic on the way to Newark that day, leading us to spend a lot of time worry about the Missing Murderer.
