Case file
Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “a 2003 book by jason burke about the history and goals of al-qaeda”. Today it says “a 2003 book by jason burke about the history and goals of osama bin laden's al-qaeda and a loose amalgam of rel”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2005 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since.
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The opening as it read in 2005
Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror is a 2003 book by Jason Burke about the history and goals of Al-Qaeda . Jason Burke also wrote the book Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam v t e1
This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 17078415.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “a 2003 book by jason burke about the history and goals of al-qaeda”. Today it says “a 2003 book by jason burke about the history and goals of osama bin laden's al-qaeda and a loose amalgam of rel”. Read the current article and compare.
| 2005 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | Oct '23 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| terror | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
What Wikipedia says this is
Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2005, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.
Then
a 2003 book by jason burke about the history and goals of al-qaeda
Now
a 2003 book by jason burke about the history and goals of osama bin laden's al-qaeda and a loose amalgam of rel
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.