Farewell Message from Azzam Publications – for Jihad and Mujahideen. It’s about war between Islam and the West, stupid… [via Red Rock Eaters]

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Islam: ‘Because representative government is a concept that originated in the West in accordance with a non-Muslim worldview, the question of the suitability of democracy for governing Islamic states and peoples has long been up for debate. A number of Atlantic articles from the early to the late twentieth century have addressed the issue from a variety of perspectives.’ The Atlantic

Khaled Abou El Fadl, Distinguished Fellow in Islamic Law at UCLA and author of Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law: The Place of Tolerance in Islam On reading the Qur’an — and misreading it. Boston Review

A Setback for Missile Shield as Booster Rocket Fails Test: ‘A test of a prototype booster rocket for missile defense failed today when the rocket veered off course seconds after liftoff and had to be destroyed over the Pacific Ocean, the Pentagon said.’ Unfortunately, test failures probably won’t prevent deployment, now the ABM Treaty is abrogated. NY Times

Making a MEMRI — ‘Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute spreads hate speech, baseless conspiracy theories and vicious calumny in a blatant effort to discredit Arabs and stir up malice toward Muslims. And they’re providing a pretty valuable service in the process.’ Online Journalism Review (OJR)

My son is prescient. Longtime FmH readers will know he was way ahead of the curve in his fondness for Harry Potter, which entire series we read aloud (admittedly not from the time of publication of the first book, but from slightly before the second book came out). In recent months, we’ve been devouring this series together; it’s starting to be touted as The Next Big Thing A.P. (after Potter). The books are enthralling, but the bulge in the author’s cheek from his tongue and his obfuscation about his identity are abit precious for my taste. Reading increasingly common portraits of the “Who is Lemony Snicket?” ilk tempts one to say “Oh, come off it already” if not something far more rude. Oh, and the series is published by HarperCollins (see below). Guardian UK

The world’s new look: ‘Globalisation creates the conditions for such things. Arguably, it will lead tomorrow to the development of the company-state which, just like Bin Laden, will take over countries that are empty, unstructured and prey to endemic disorder, to use them for its own ends. In this respect Bin Laden may be a terrifying precursor.’ Le Monde Diplomatique

U.S. Recently Produced Anthrax in a Highly Lethal Powder Form. The significance of this revelation is not that Dugway might be the source of the purified anthrax used in the Daschle and Leahy letters — spokespeople say that it is of a different strain, and that none of it has gone missing — but that this is the first disclosure of US biological weapons production since our supposed 1969 renunciation of biological warfare and destruction of our arsenal of germ agents. NY Times

Racism Not Hardwired, Scientists Say

In recent years a number of studies have reached the same thorny conclusion about human cognition: when encountering a person for the first time, our brains automatically make note of the individual’s race. But new research indicates that this is not necessarily the case. Findings reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicate that even brief exposure to an alternative social world can markedly diminish the extent to which people categorize others by race. The results suggest that racism may be an erasable by-product of cognitive adaptations that evolved to detect coalitions and alliances. Scientific American

Michael Moore’s publisher tells him his forthcoming book Stupid White Men and Other Excuses for the State of the Nation will not be distributed, and the print run will be destroyed, because the content is offensive and he is intellectually dishonest for not saying that the President has done a “good job” in recent months. The copyright and publishing rights revert to him in six months; meanwhile, his attorneys are trying to rectify the situation. He told the public gathering where he announced this, however, that he doesn’t want a public outcry because people have more important things about which to take action. IMHO, however, it doesn’t take too much time to write a shaming letter to HarperCollins, if Moore’s version of things is accurate… Update: Two readers comment:

• “why is moore doing business w harper collins anyway? pretty sure it is
  
  owned by fox/murdoch…”

• “I was annoyed to learn too that Gore Vidal’s new book, and an excerpt from it
  
  planned for Vanity Fair, were cancelled by publishers because it was deemed
  
  too critical of the U.S.”

Reading the transcript of the bin Laden video tape, one wonders how the obvious embarrassment to the Saudis will affect the “alliance against terror”. Speaking of the devil, US ties to Saudi elite may be hurting war on terrorism, reports the Boston Herald.

U.S. Considers Restricting Cellphone Use in Disasters. “Federal officials are working on a plan to close cellphone networks to almost everyone but government officials in the event of another major emergency like the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said.

The move is intended to prevent the networks from being so clogged with calls that emergency workers cannot communicate. But there is some concern among cellphone companies about the costs and the possible public outcry if people cannot contact loved ones in an emergency.” NY Times

Rotten in the state of Denmark? Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist has received sensational coverage in proclaiming that we don’t need to fear ecological disaster. In a special issue of Grist magazine, a panel of acknowledged authorities on various environmental topics subjects the book to rigorous scrutiny and finds its thesis seriously wanting. Lomborg is a political scientist and has not published one paper in the areas on which he declaims in the book, they note. tompaine.com

A Long, Strange Trip to the Taliban. Long, typical Newsweek portrait of John Walker, with this interesting, central paragraph about his conversion:

Walker discovered his passion for Islam online, after sampling other possibilities. At the age of 14, under the handle “doodoo,” he was visiting Web sites for hip-hop music with particularly crude raps on sex and violence. In one e-mail posting, he scorned a critic of hip-hop as a “worthless d—krider.” In one e-mail at the height of his fascination with hip-hop, he appeared to pose as an African-American, writing, “Our blackness should not make white people hate us.” But as he got older, he veered to a very different direction. He began visiting Islamic Web sites, asking questions like “Is it all right to watch cartoons on TV or in the movies?” His family says the turning point may have come at the age of 16 when he read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” which describes the conversion to Islam of the famous black militant. Some Internet postings examined by NEWSWEEK show that young Walker soon became pretty militant himself. In a 1997 message to a hip-hop site, he demanded to know why a rapper named Nas “is indeed a ‘God’? If this is so,” Walker indignantly asks, “then why does he smoke blunts, drink Moet, fornicate, and make dukey music? That’s a rather pathetic ‘god’, if you ask me.” He quizzes an online correspondent about the Five Percent Nation of Islam—a small North American sect—about its adherents’ vision of bliss and how to pursue it. “I have never seen happiness myself,” writes Walker. “Perhaps you can enlighten me … where I can go to sneak a peek at it.” Selling off his hip-hop CD collection on a rap-music message board, he converted to Islam.

Bombing Raises Question of Al Qaeda Fate. “If the United States does in the last phase of the Afghan war wage a campaign of extermination against the network’s leaders — for example, by refusing to accept surrenders so it can continue bombing the Tora Bora caves where some al Qaeda members are holed up — it may lose international support by appearing overly vengeful and, some legal experts say, could even find itself accused of war crimes.” Washington Post

Stanley Kauffmann reviews Todd Field’s In the Bedroom, adapted from an André Dubus story. “In the Bedroom leaves us with the happy knowledge that with Field the American film scene, continually deplored as scraggly, can boast another admirable directing talent.” Quite rightly, Kauffmann also alludes to Egoyan’s Sweet Hereafter. The New Republic