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.

In Part 2 of David Brooks’s 2007 Sidneys, I found an excellent story from the too-often drunk and strident Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens had supported the American invasion of Iraq, and his writings saying so were part of what convinced Mark Daily to enlist. When Hitchens learned of Daily’s death “in theater” he felt the expected doubt and regret.

This Vanity Fair story is about Hitchens’s efforts to work through his feelings, and will probably make you cry. Well, at least it made me cry.

David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times, has an tradition of giving out annual awards for good magazine pieces. In 2006, he described the prize as such:

The Sidney Awards, named for Sidney Hook, are a nice way to honor the best magazine essays of the year and to pass along a few nutritious holiday reading recommendations.

2007 was the first year I came across the columnist’s winners, and they’re pretty solid — and an excellent way fill the void caused by a lack of other good journalism. And I wouldn’t deny that seeing this great idea was part of the reason I started Link Banana.