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The Economist, Al-Qaeda. How jihad went freelance:

“TERRORISTS are a bit like you and me, or so Marc Sageman suggests. It might be comforting to think that angry young Islamists are crazed psychopaths or sex-starved adolescents who have been brainwashed in malign madrassas. But Mr Sageman, a senior fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, explodes each of these myths, and others besides, in an unsettling account of how al-Qaeda has evolved from the organisation headed by Osama bin Laden into an amorphous movement—a “leaderless jihad”.

Mr Sageman is a leading advocate of what is called the “buddy” theory of terrorism. He has spent much time asking why well-educated young men, from middle-class backgrounds, often with a secular education and wives and children, become suicide bombers. He suggests that radicalisation is a collective rather than an individual process in which friendship and kinship are key components.”

Timothy Garton Ash, What does a free society require of believers and non-believers alike?:

“We do, however, need to be clearer about the difference between secularism and atheism. Secularism, in my view, should be an argument about arrangements for a shared public and social life; atheism is an argument about scientific truth, individual liberation and the nature of the good life. Today’s debate around Islam is bedevilled by a confusion between the two. Atheists must be free to say to Muslims, Christians or Jews: “Your mind would be much more free if you gave up your ridiculous belief in God.” Believers must be free to argue back: “You would have a more profound sense of personal freedom if you did believe.” But neither is entitled to demand that of the other as a condition for participating as a citizen in a free society. The public policy argument about freedom for religion and the private conviction argument about freedom from or in religion should operate on different levels.”

Simon Kuper, The crescent and the cross:

“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was written in the 1890s, possibly by the Russian-French journalist Matthieu Golovinski, and spread by the Tsarist secret police. A forgery, it claimed to be the manual of a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.

Bat Ye’or, author of the little-read but influential book Eurabia, repeatedly mentions the Protocols. Well she might, because Eurabia has been described as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in reverse. Bat Ye’or is Hebrew for “daughter of the Nile’’, the pseudonym of a woman who fled Egypt as a Jew in 1957 and now lives in Switzerland. In Eurabia, she purports to reveal an Arab-European conspiracy to rule the world.

Though ludicrous, Eurabia became the spiritual mother of a genre. Ye’or’s genius was to bridge two waves of anti-European books: those of 2002-03, which said Europe had gone anti-Semitic again, and those of 2006-07, which say Europe is being conquered by Muslims.

The four books here provide a fair summary of the “Eurabia’’ genre. False as they are, their existence reveals something about the geopolitical moment.”

(via)

Slate V:

“A Magnum photo essay. During his coverage of the fall of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime in 2002, photographer Thomas Dworzak discovered a stash of pictures showing male Taliban members in curious, effeminate poses.”

“Prostitutes are known for their skimpy attire, but Kenya’s coastal port of Mombasa is witnessing a controversial fashion makeover.

The twilight ladies, as the city’s residents refer to the sex workers, have traded their revealing outfits for the more austere buibui - a loose, floor-length gown and head covering favoured by Muslim women.”

(…)

Some female residents say it is a big disgrace.

“I feel so embarrassed that sometimes I contemplate removing my buibui and throwing it away. The buibui has lost its respect,” Mariam Salma says.

BBC: Sex clothes anger Kenyan Muslims (via)

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