MetaFilter posts tagged with NYT and Islam

Intruders in the House of Saud, Part I: The Jihadi Who Kept Asking Why

y2karl — Sun, 07 Mar 2004 13:15:04 -0800

The Jihadi Who Kept Asking Why - An unlikely group of onetime religious jihadists have recently stepped into the midst of the debate on Saudi Arabia's future. They belong to a larger circle of liberals, intellectuals, professors, former Wahhabi scholars, judges and even women who are discussing subjects in the media that were taboo before 9/11 -- questions about terrorism, about Wahhabi discrimination toward Muslims of the Shiite and Sufi sects (whom they consider apostates), about alcohol, about AIDS, about the rights of women to drive and work. The ex-jihadists are fluent in Islam and, more important, in the lingo of the underground terrorists, and they've surfaced from the extremist subculture with a message for the Wahhabi official clerics, the royal family and even their complicit American allies: Wake up. It's you who created us. We are not an aberration.
From The Agonist--where the editorial comment this is an absolutely excellent article and a must read is quite indisputable. From entering Salafiyya in Google comes the fascinating polemic The Salafi Cult. better known as the Khawarij.

semmi — Wed, 24 Apr 2002 16:27:37 -0800

An Algerian defendant tells a court of his transformation from an irreligious drug dealer on the streets of Germany to an Afghanistan-trained militant, and the psychic journey of some young Muslim slackers in England to become fighters for Al-Qaeda (NYT).

semmi — Fri, 16 Nov 2001 08:49:58 -0800

(NYT) It is not just the poverty, the illiteracy and the absence of any commonly accepted social contract that define our sense of wretchedness; it is, rather, the increasing awareness among us that we have failed as a civil society by not confronting the historical, social and political demons within us. . .

semmi — Sat, 27 Oct 2001 18:07:10 -0800

Naipul thinks the causes of Sept. 11 are religious, not American foreign policy. (NYT) "There is a passage in one of the Conrad short stories of the East Indies where the savage finds himself with his hands bare in the world, and he lets out a howl of anger. I think that, in its essence, what is happening.The world is getting more and more out of reach of simple people who have only religion. And the more they depend on religion, which of course solves nothing, the more the world gets out of reach."