As I joked in December, “Al Didn’t Call It the Assault on Reason for Nothing:”
On the PJM homepage, David Solway reviews Jamie Glazov’s book, Showdown With Evil, in an article titled, “The ‘Unholy Alliance’ Between Islamic Jihad and Utopian Socialism.”
You can see that unholy alliance painted in vivid green with this headline in the Washington Post back in October: “Osama bin Laden embraces his inner Al Gore.” (But remember: no pressure to convert the heathens to either of their respective religions.) Or in this recent L.A. Times story, “Young European man explains why he converted to Islam:”
Why would a left-leaning young man from one of the world’s most secular and liberal countries choose to become a pious Muslim?
The 34-year old Swedish music teacher from Stockholm, who asked that his last name not be published, attempted to explain his decision, describing it as the culmination of a long journey searching for faith and him solidifying his religious beliefs that he couldn’t always place.
* * *
“I have never doubted my faith,” he told Babylon & Beyond while on a recent visit to Beirut. “It feels like I’ve had the same faith all the time but it feels so cleanly formulated in Islam.”
What’s the appeal? In part, Malcolm said, Islam fits in well with his left-wing views. “In that sense, Islam fits me really well,” he said. “I am completely against capitalism.”
As Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote in September of 2002, “9/11 revealed an emerging geopolitical reality: that the world’s most important fault line is not between the rich and the poor, but between those who accept modernity and those who reject it.”
Flash-forward to today; note these passages in the introduction to a new piece at the American Spectator, where Jeffrey Lord explores “Mohamed Atta and the Muslim Brotherhood:”
“One of the main points of his critique (of Egyptian society) was the contrast between a few rich people and the mass of people with barely enough to survive.”
— 9/11 Egyptian hijack leader Mohamed Atta socialist’s beliefs as described by a friend* * *
Mohamed Atta.
An Egyptian, it was he who forced his way into the cockpit of American Airlines Flight 11 after it left Logan Airport in Boston on the morning of September 11, 2001.
An anti-capitalist, it was he, whom friends later described to the UK’s left-leaning Guardian newspaper as being “very critical of capitalistic, Western development schemes… of big hotels and office buildings” — and became infamous for ramming a Boeing 767, flying at 500 miles an hour and loaded with 15,000 gallons of jet fuel, into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. A building that was the very symbol of capitalism mere blocks from the heart of Wall Street.
Read the whole thing.
Related: Lileks on “The liberal wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Update: “Hope for Obama… Jimmy Carter Says Muslim Brotherhood ‘Not Anything to Be Afraid Of’ (Video).”
Well, that’s a relief. Because if there’s one former president who was tough enough to stare down the radicalized Middle East and not blink while in office, it’s Jimmy Carter.
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