Public censure for bin Laden

A little old, I know; this was published ten days ago, but I just now came across it.  It seems Osama bin Laden has been "read out from the altar", as the Irish would put it, by Saudi preacher and religious scholar Salman al-Oadah.

In an open letter, one of bin Laden's most prominent Saudi mentors, the preacher and scholar Salman al-Oadah, publicly reproached bin Laden for causing widespread mayhem and killing.

"How many innocent children, elderly people, and women have been killed in the name of Al Qaeda?" asked al-Oadah in a letter on his Web site, Islamtoday.com, and in comments on an Arabic television station.

"How many people have been forced to flee their homes, and how much blood has been shed in the name of Al Qaeda?"

[...]

In his statement, al-Oadah holds bin Laden personally accountable for the occupation of Muslim lands in Afghanistan and Iraq, the displacement of millions of Iraqis and the killings of thousands of Afghans, and for deluding young Muslims and tarnishing the image of Islam and Muslims all over the world.

"Are you happy to meet Allah with this heavy burden on your shoulders?" al-Oadah asks bin Laden.  "It is a weighty burden indeed - at least hundreds of thousands of innocent people, if not millions [displaced and killed].  And it is all because of the 'crimes' perpetrated against civilians by bin Laden's Al Qaeda on 9/11."

Al-Oadah also reminds his former disciple that Islam prohibits the killing of any bird or animal, let alone "innocent people, regardless of what justification is given."

Al-Qaeda is suffering serious internal schisms, according to this report, with an internal revolt in Mesopotamia by "Sunni tribes and fighters fed up with its sectarian terrorism and fanaticism", and other major difficulties in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.  bin Laden has responded with a run to the left and Marxist ideology.

By trying to join the debate raging in the United States over the war in Iraq and due legal process, bin Laden thought to broaden his global constituency and score gains in the war of ideas.

But he evidently did not expect a direct rebuke from one of his Salafi mentors.  Dispensing with formalities, al-Oadah assailed bin Laden over the 9/11 spark that lit fires throughout the world.

"You are responsible, brother Osama, for spreading Takfiri ideology [excommunication of Muslims] and fostering a culture of suicide bombings that has caused bloodshed and suffering and brought ruin to entire Muslim communities and families."

Never before has bin Laden been subjected to this sort of censure from a Salafi scholar, and especially from one who cannot simply be dismissed as a vessel of the ruling regime. Al-Oadah's record of defiance of the Saudi royal family speaks volumes for his independence and moral courage.

Granted, this is just one scholar, and granted bin Laden's support is still strong among radicals in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Nevertheless, it appears al-Oadah is not alone in his viewpoint.  Judging by the excerpts quoted in this article, al-Oadah basically stopped only about one step short of outright denouncing bin Laden as an apostate.  This looks to me as though the Arabic-speaking world is starting to wake up to the fact that with "friends" like bin Laden, they have little need for enemies — and judging by his sudden switch to Marxist ideology, one could speculate that bin Laden is aware that his days as a spokesman and figurehead for Islamic jihadism may be numbered.

J. E. Robison on Aspergian light

Reproduced in full at least partly because I want a permanent record of it.  Original article on J. E. Robison's BlogSpot site behind the link (and cut).

( Cut because we like pizza )

I wouldn't take the pill either.  But I fervently, desperately wish there was ... maybe not a pill, but something I could take that would make me much better at understanding neurotypical non-verbal communication.

But if it was a choice between that and the opportunity to physically create some of the things I see in my mind?

Keep the pill.  Just ... for mercy's sake, show me how to run the fabber, before my brain explodes.

WTF is going on with my journal's CSS?

Kindly look at my last three posts.  Note that all three are styling blockquotes in different ways.  The templates for all three are theoretically the same.  Only the first and third of the three are rendering correctly behaving correctly when the quoted, linked text is moused over.

Whiskey tango foxtrot, over.

Update:

Above text edited slightly for clarity and to correct a minor misstatement.

Odd hair day

As I do every month or two, I cut my hair again the other day.  I thought I'd done a decent job, and cymrullewes didn't comment on anything being wrong.  But I guess I can't have gotten it quite right, because now there is a distinct sort of ridge or crest of slightly longer hair across the back of my skull.  Its shape and position would be instantly familiar to any Babylon 5 fan.

I feel like I'm turning into some kind of plush Minbari.

Unlearned lessons

Today's User Friendly strip makes a security point I've commented on myself many a time:  If you make your password policy demanding enough, you can force all of your users to write their passwords down, and the odds are at least some of them will leave their password notes where they can be seen and/or found by someone who shouldn't have them.  At which point your carefully crafted password policy, proof against any but the most massive distributed brute-force attack, becomes vulnerable to the pizza boy who happens to glance at the receptionist's desk while chatting her up on his way through the front lobby.