Link Banana

When two publications simultaneously carry what is essentially the same — rather long — story, it’s got to be worth noting.

• In The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright has an exhaustive — 14 internet pages — profile of “Dr. Fadl”, who recently published a book admonishing Al Qaeda for it’s tactics.
• The New Republic’s (slightly) briefer article sees a trend of people like Dr. Fadl, who dissent from Al Qaeda’s tactics even if they share some of their aims.

The essential point of both, as stated in TNR:

Although Benotman’s public rebuke of Al Qaeda went unnoticed in the United States, it received wide attention in the Arabic press. In repudiating Al Qaeda, Benotman was adding his voice to a rising tide of anger in the Islamic world toward Al Qaeda and its affiliates, whose victims since September 11 have mostly been fellow Muslims. Significantly, he was also joining a larger group of religious scholars, former fighters, and militants who had once had great influence over Al Qaeda’s leaders, and who — alarmed by the targeting of civilians in the West, the senseless killings in Muslim countries, and Al Qaeda’s barbaric tactics in Iraq — have turned against the organization, many just in the past year.