Sinner or Saint?
July 22, 2007 7:03 AM Subscribe
Her first thought as the furious young man came running towards her?
"Wow - you're gorgeous," she says.
"He had those amazing green eyes that are peculiar to that region of Afghanistan and a beard with a life of its own.
Methinks reporter lady converted to Islam to get laid...or something. I am confused.
posted by KokuRyu at 7:15 AM on July 22, 2007
"Wow - you're gorgeous," she says.
"He had those amazing green eyes that are peculiar to that region of Afghanistan and a beard with a life of its own.
Methinks reporter lady converted to Islam to get laid...or something. I am confused.
posted by KokuRyu at 7:15 AM on July 22, 2007
Stockholm Syndrome -> Kabul Syndrome?
Or Burka Fetishism? Mabye she had a thing for her bee keeper Uncle? The mind works in mysterious ways.
posted by homodigitalis at 7:18 AM on July 22, 2007
Or Burka Fetishism? Mabye she had a thing for her bee keeper Uncle? The mind works in mysterious ways.
posted by homodigitalis at 7:18 AM on July 22, 2007
"formerly hard-drinking Sunday school teacher"
This was already a confused person.
posted by fleetmouse at 7:24 AM on July 22, 2007 [1 favorite]
This was already a confused person.
posted by fleetmouse at 7:24 AM on July 22, 2007 [1 favorite]
Reintroducing Ayaan Hirsi Ali and also Wafa-Sultan who is another intresting female personality on the other spectrum of the islam debate.
Not hating or anything, just showing two sides of the coin here.
posted by ItsaMario at 7:24 AM on July 22, 2007
Not hating or anything, just showing two sides of the coin here.
posted by ItsaMario at 7:24 AM on July 22, 2007
Hmm, this sounds a little familiar.
Didn't this guy have a sudden change of heart under less than ideal conditions?
posted by John of Michigan at 7:45 AM on July 22, 2007
Didn't this guy have a sudden change of heart under less than ideal conditions?
posted by John of Michigan at 7:45 AM on July 22, 2007
George Galloway's speech before at the US Senate (?) was supreme. His war with Hitchens always a rhetorical feast.
posted by homodigitalis at 7:47 AM on July 22, 2007
posted by homodigitalis at 7:47 AM on July 22, 2007
"formerly hard-drinking Sunday school teacher"
This was already a confused person.
You've clearly never known too many Sunday School teachers.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:55 AM on July 22, 2007
This was already a confused person.
You've clearly never known too many Sunday School teachers.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:55 AM on July 22, 2007
Yeah. Conversion from one sort of daffy mythology to another hardly tugs at my heart strings or convinces me that there is much or any merit in this woman's conversion. So Freakin' What.
If the message is "we should tolerate those aomong us regardless of belief" I've had that train of thought since I was 12 and asked not to come back to my local parish church (I was caught reading the Koran, coincidentally).
The universal values taught by religions are surely what we all aspire to. It's the temporal hoo-haw that ends up with us all twisted in our huge black flappy knickers.
posted by beelzbubba at 8:20 AM on July 22, 2007
If the message is "we should tolerate those aomong us regardless of belief" I've had that train of thought since I was 12 and asked not to come back to my local parish church (I was caught reading the Koran, coincidentally).
The universal values taught by religions are surely what we all aspire to. It's the temporal hoo-haw that ends up with us all twisted in our huge black flappy knickers.
posted by beelzbubba at 8:20 AM on July 22, 2007
LOL MUSLIMZ.
Maybe she discovered a spirituality that works for her.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 8:48 AM on July 22, 2007
Maybe she discovered a spirituality that works for her.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 8:48 AM on July 22, 2007
She sounds very superficial ("the Taliban are so cute!" and "the hate-filled cleric isn't so bad, he sent me a nice card!"), although everyone sounds superficial in a news article.
posted by Falconetti at 9:14 AM on July 22, 2007
posted by Falconetti at 9:14 AM on July 22, 2007
Maybe she discovered a spirituality that works for her.
Maybe. But since her first positive thought in that vein was, "Wow, you're gorgeous," I have to wonder. Even now, she talks about how friendly her fellow Muslims are - not so much about what Islam means to her (though I acknowledge the interview could have been edited to suggest that). If Islam works for her, great! It sounds like she's viewing this whole thing as a special club, though, and that kind of happiness doesn't typically last - especially not if she's deceiving herself into believing it's Islam she's interested in rather than acceptance by a particular community.
posted by katillathehun at 10:14 AM on July 22, 2007
Maybe. But since her first positive thought in that vein was, "Wow, you're gorgeous," I have to wonder. Even now, she talks about how friendly her fellow Muslims are - not so much about what Islam means to her (though I acknowledge the interview could have been edited to suggest that). If Islam works for her, great! It sounds like she's viewing this whole thing as a special club, though, and that kind of happiness doesn't typically last - especially not if she's deceiving herself into believing it's Islam she's interested in rather than acceptance by a particular community.
posted by katillathehun at 10:14 AM on July 22, 2007
She worked for the Sunday Express, switched one form of nonsense-peddling to another. I wonder what'll be her substitute for liquor.
posted by Anything at 10:35 AM on July 22, 2007
posted by Anything at 10:35 AM on July 22, 2007
She just comes across as an idiot who's been looking for direction in her unhappy life for a long, long time.
posted by squidfartz at 10:47 AM on July 22, 2007
posted by squidfartz at 10:47 AM on July 22, 2007
Neither black or white, saint or sinner. Just disturbed.
She was an alcoholic single parent. Her child, she says, was the result of a burst condom and she perceived the child as an obstacle to succeeding. I find it horrible she would speak about her child that way and that she has said this in the global press. Despicable as a parent. So, now what, her daughter is to live for the rest of her life thinking of herself and being known by others as a condom mishap? ugh. I truly feel sorry for her child.
It sounds like this is a bitter, lonely woman, whose priorities are her own self-aggrandisement and receiving support from others because she felt she didn't get enough of that from her own social circle.
"What has impressed Ridley more than anything else is the sisterhood among Muslim women. "They are always helping each other in matters such as childcare, fundraising and studying. They want each other to do well. I hadn't expected this. In the west we're all too busy pinching each other's boyfriends, and criticising each other's clothes or weight."
Oh yeah, that sisterhood of women, like those in Egypt who genitally cut 97% of their daughters. Or the Muslim women infibulators.
"The daughter of a miner from Durham, Ridley started in provincial newspapers before progressing to jobs with the Daily Mirror, the News of the World, the Sunday Times and the Daily and Sunday Express. "I reached the rank of editor by being one of the boys, although I didn't recognise this until much later," she says.
Things changed when Ridley had her daughter, Daisy - the result, as she bitterly regrets admitting, of a burst condom. Suddenly, she couldn't do the after-work drinks where all the networking was done and deals were struck. For her, motherhood was "like being in a three-legged race with a ball and chain on the legs". Her solution to the problem was to send Daisy, now 11, to boarding school in the Lake District. (Daisy's father and grandparents live close by and provide a stable home life for her.) In the holidays, Daisy often flies out to join her mother and the two of them take off on travel expeditions."
She says of her child, "In my bleakest, blackest moments I look at Daisy and I think: 'Porsche Boxster!'"
Say wha?! She sounds ill, itching to be noticed and using public speaking about peace as a topic to achieve this, which is skeevy.
"Ridley, now swathed in dramatic black robes, eats little and instead puffs cherry tobacco from a large, ornate hookah."
But then, on her site, on the "Spooksville" page, there are some interesting articles, cell phones can be used as eavesdropping devices, even when they are turned off. yikes.
posted by nickyskye at 11:34 AM on July 22, 2007
She was an alcoholic single parent. Her child, she says, was the result of a burst condom and she perceived the child as an obstacle to succeeding. I find it horrible she would speak about her child that way and that she has said this in the global press. Despicable as a parent. So, now what, her daughter is to live for the rest of her life thinking of herself and being known by others as a condom mishap? ugh. I truly feel sorry for her child.
It sounds like this is a bitter, lonely woman, whose priorities are her own self-aggrandisement and receiving support from others because she felt she didn't get enough of that from her own social circle.
"What has impressed Ridley more than anything else is the sisterhood among Muslim women. "They are always helping each other in matters such as childcare, fundraising and studying. They want each other to do well. I hadn't expected this. In the west we're all too busy pinching each other's boyfriends, and criticising each other's clothes or weight."
Oh yeah, that sisterhood of women, like those in Egypt who genitally cut 97% of their daughters. Or the Muslim women infibulators.
"The daughter of a miner from Durham, Ridley started in provincial newspapers before progressing to jobs with the Daily Mirror, the News of the World, the Sunday Times and the Daily and Sunday Express. "I reached the rank of editor by being one of the boys, although I didn't recognise this until much later," she says.
Things changed when Ridley had her daughter, Daisy - the result, as she bitterly regrets admitting, of a burst condom. Suddenly, she couldn't do the after-work drinks where all the networking was done and deals were struck. For her, motherhood was "like being in a three-legged race with a ball and chain on the legs". Her solution to the problem was to send Daisy, now 11, to boarding school in the Lake District. (Daisy's father and grandparents live close by and provide a stable home life for her.) In the holidays, Daisy often flies out to join her mother and the two of them take off on travel expeditions."
She says of her child, "In my bleakest, blackest moments I look at Daisy and I think: 'Porsche Boxster!'"
Say wha?! She sounds ill, itching to be noticed and using public speaking about peace as a topic to achieve this, which is skeevy.
"Ridley, now swathed in dramatic black robes, eats little and instead puffs cherry tobacco from a large, ornate hookah."
But then, on her site, on the "Spooksville" page, there are some interesting articles, cell phones can be used as eavesdropping devices, even when they are turned off. yikes.
posted by nickyskye at 11:34 AM on July 22, 2007
I suppose since she converted to Islam she has to be crazy. It's a good thing you guys took the time to settle that. But it's still good to see religion remains the last resort of the hopeful. If they didn't join up these free radicals would almost certainly cause tons of problems.
posted by nixerman at 9:55 PM on July 22, 2007
posted by nixerman at 9:55 PM on July 22, 2007
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posted by Henry C. Mabuse at 7:08 AM on July 22, 2007 [2 favorites]