Link Banana

World opinion diverges enough to shock Blake Houshnell. While the greatest number of people appear to believe that it was Al Qaeda, Israel and America also won big votes. Israel was most often blamed by Arabs, with Egypt showing 43%, Jordon 31, and Palestine a (mere) 19.

Curiously, Mexicans were the second most likely — at 30% of those polled — to blame the United States. Turkey (36%) was the first, Palestine third at 27, and Germany fourth at 23.

Remember that hubbub about how radical Islam was fracturing? Count The Economist as a doubter:

There is no denying that al-Qaeda has damaged its own cause by killing so many Muslims. That is why even Sunni Arabs in Iraq have for now joined the American side. A report from Simon Fraser University in Canada notes an extraordinary drop in support for terrorist groups in the Muslim world.

And yet the impact of this on global terrorism may, alas, be small. Al-Qaeda has compensated for its strategic setback in Iraq by creating a sanctuary in the tribal areas of Pakistan. As for its ideological problems, these may well be outweighed by the continuing current of anti-Americanism in the Islamic world. Besides, the organisation has a simple remedy. It just needs to kill more Westerners and fewer Muslims. For this it does not have to attract millions of people to its cause: a small number of disaffected souls in the right places is all it takes.

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.

I like to see TERRORISM!! reconsidered from time to time. Today (yesterday actually), Josef Joffe does the honors:

Fear, in other words, is a tax, and al-Qaeda and its ilk have done better at extracting it from Americans than the Internal Revenue Service. Think about the extra half-hour millions of airline passengers waste standing in security lines; the annual cost in lost work hours runs into the billions. Add to that the freight delays at borders, ports and airports, the cost of checking money transfers as well as goods in transit, the wages for beefed-up security forces around the world. And that doesn’t even attempt to put a price tag on the compression of civil liberties or the loss of human dignity from being groped in full public view by Transportation Security Administration personnel at the airport or from having to walk barefoot through the metal detector, holding up your beltless pants. This global transaction tax represents the most significant victory of Terror International to date.

A note: “TERRORISM!!” is a single-word expression for the monolithic baddy that haunts our dreams and causes us to act irrationally. “Terrorism” is “the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.”

Andy Borowitz has some (morbid) fun with the soon-to-launch “Ask a Jihadist” column authored by Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Dear Ayman al-Zawahiri:
I am a journalist for the U.S. publication Tiger Beat. When I heard you would be taking Web questions, I was like OMG, I totes have to write to him!!! Here are three questions we’re asking celebrities this month:
1. If you could be any character on “Gossip Girl,” who would you be?
2. Who would be a better friend, Lauren on “The Hills” or Ashley Tisdale in “High School Musical”?
3. Who is hotter, Zac Efron or Joe Jonas? (LOL)
—Stacy in Manhattan

Ayman al-Zawahiri writes:
May you and everyone at your magazine burn in Hell.