The Worth of a Picture

They say a picture's worth a thousand words, but what are a thousand words worth, and isn't this picture worth more?

Remember?

Remembering 9/11 . . .

Sara Low

On September 13, 2006, I first blogged on Sara Low. Some readers may recall those words from back then:

On my 9/11 post, my brother Tim left this comment:

It's hard to believe it has been five years since 9/11. Thinking about Sara, a flight attendant I knew from Batesville, who died on Flight 11.

Astonished, I responded:

Tim, I had no idea that you knew someone who died in the 9/11 attacks.

I'm sorry to hear this. Was she a close friend?

To which, Tim said:

I know Sara's father well and knew Sara when she was in her teens and early 20s. She was an intelligent and beautiful person who deserved better than her tragic end.

Five years have passed, but only now have I learned that one of my own brothers knew someone not far from our hometown of Salem who was killed on September 11, 2001.

Sara died when she was only 28 and deserves a far better tribute than I can give, for I didn't know her, but I can at least add this post to her memory.

That's what I wrote back then, posting those words five years after 9/11. We the living are now heading into the tenth year since I first posted on this particular 9/11 tragedy. I think that this year's blogpost on the memory of Sara Low will be my last public memorial, though I'm sure that I will always think of her on 9/11 because of the personal link through my brother Tim.

Peace to all of good will . . .

Sara Elizabeth Low: 9/11

Sara Low's Life Stone
Google Images

Regular readers will know that each year I recall Sara Elizabeth Low, a flight attendant who perished on American Airlines Flight 11, the first airliner crashed by the terrorists into the World Trade Center, as I learned on September 13, 2006, when my brother Tim told me that he had known her and her family when he lived and worked in Batesville, Arkansas, her hometown:

It's hard to believe it has been five years since 9/11. Thinking about Sara, a flight attendant I knew from Batesville, who died on Flight 11.

Sara has been remembered more for her life than for her death, or that is at least the intention behind the "Life Stone" in her hometown. That is also my intention today, as well as my brother's intention in remembering her, as I'm sure he does each year on this date.

As for those who perpetrated the horror of 9/11, let's not forget that others like them are still out there actively looking for their chance to strike . . .

Sara Low: 9/11 Memorial for 2013

Sara Low Memorial 5k

Every year on the anniversary of 9/11, I devote a blog entry to Sara Low, a young woman with whom my brother Tim was acquainted. She was a native of Batesville,  Arkansas and was working as a flight attendant on the first plane hijacked by the Al Qaeda Islamist terrorists and used as a missile to destroy the World Trade Center.

Her hometown also remembers her annually, by hosting a five-kilometer race through its city streets because Sara was a runner on the track team when she attended school there. Here is a photo of Sara from her high school graduation:

This photo was first shown on my 2008 commemoration of Sara, so if you click on the link you can read what I wrote then. You can also search my blog for yearly entries on Sara, if you have time and inclination.

I didn't know Sara personally, so these blog entries are just a small part of her legacy, and I wanted to show that others also remember her, and in a way far greater than my small, annual commemoration.

Sara Low: Perished in First Plane to Strike WTC on 9/11

Alyson Low Mourns Sister in 2010

Google Images

This year is 2012, and for six years now, since 2006, I've annually set aside September 11th to commemorate Sara Low, a flight attendant from Batesville, Arkansas who died on the first airliner to crash into the World Trade Center. I do this each year because my brother Tim knew her and her family when he worked for several years in a Batesville hospital where Sara's father had an administrative position. I never knew Sara myself, so I always rely upon the words of others who did know her, and this time, I found some words from 2010 by a woman who calls herself "Mrs. Nix" on her blog and who was two years younger than Sara when they both attended school in Batesville:

I read the timelines and remember the events of that morning on purpose every September 11th. After I do that, I try to remember everything I ever knew about Sara Low. She was two years older than me. My stepbrother had a crush on her his freshman year of high school. She was beautiful. She was so, SO kind. She had striking eyes that were sharp and almond shaped. She smiled a lot. I'm pretty sure she was in the band because I remember her in the marching band uniform. I think she played the flute. I'm not sure . . . it was a long time ago. She ran track (so did my brother) and she was a cheerleader and she was an honor student. That's all I can remember because we were children the last time I saw her . . . but I feel like the least I can do for her is remember her.

The reports online say that she was not originally scheduled to work on flight 11. After the hijacking began, she tried to call her parents, but she dialed the phone number they had when she was growing up instead of the current number. She didn't reach them that morning, but she gave one of the other flight attendants her calling card. The card was used to place five calls out with warnings before it was over. The report said Sara's father speculates that maybe because of the stress and fear . . . her childhood phone number was the only one she could remember. Every time I think about that, it makes my stomach knot. She was too good -- in every way too good -- to suffer that kind of fear. I hope she wasn't scared for a long time, and I hope someone was holding her hand.

Every September 11th, those of us connected by some memory of Sara Low are bonded by brief memorials to her. Strangers searching the web for memories of Sara sometimes find my memorial and compose a message. My brother Tim usually stops here to remember the girl he knew. I expect to hear from "Toddler," who drops by every year on this date to think of Sara, and I in turn visit him, though we never knew each other personally and have only this connection. I've promised to buy him a beer or two if he ever happens to be in Seoul, and I'd like to do that for him since he grew up in Batesville and knew Sara, but I don't know if that'll ever happen.

And I offer thanks to "Mrs. Nix" for her words, which I've borrowed without asking, and hope that she'll be understanding if she happens upon my blog entry for this 9/11 anniversary.

Robert Spencer Implying a Treasonous Obama?

President Obama

9/11 Memorial Service in NYC

(Image from US Embassy, Seoul, Korea)

I learn a lot about radical Islam from reading Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch, but I'm careful to remain my own man and keep my own counsel. I therefore read the posts on his site with a critical eye, especially when I come across a blog entry such as this recent one (September 12, 2011) by Mr. Spencer:

Obama reads Biblical passage at 9/11 ceremonies implying that 9/11 was an act of God

Obama reads Psalm 46, including verse 8: "Come, behold the works of the LORD, how he has wrought desolations in the earth."

The only people who think that 9/11 was an act of the Supreme Being wreaking desolations on the earth are . . . Islamic jihadists.

So why did Barack Obama pick this psalm out of 150 psalms, and out of innumerable appropriate Biblical passages, to read at the 9/11 ceremonies? 9/11, after all, was a day when there were indeed wrought desolations on the earth. Did Obama really mean to say that God did it, that it was an act of divine judgment, rather than a monstrous and unmitigated evil?

Or is this just another one of those funny coincidences, of which there are so very, very many when it comes to Barack Obama and his remarkable, unqualified and obvious affinity for Islam? 

In taking verse 8 of Psalm 46 as a reference to the destruction of September 11, 2001, Mr. Spencer has allowed his distaste for President Obama to cloud his better judgment. Here is what the President actually said in quoting the entirety of the scriptural passage:

Remarks by the President at the September 11th 10th Anniversary Commemoration

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear,
even though the earth be removed,
and though the mountains be carried
into the midst of the sea.
Though its waters roar and be troubled,
though the mountains shake
with its swelling,
there's a river
whose streams shall make glad
the City of God,
the holy place of the Tabernacle
of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her.
She shall not be moved.
God shall help her
just at the break of dawn.
The nations raged,
the kingdoms were moved.
He uttered his voice.
The earth melted.
The Lord of Hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come behold the works of the Lord
who has made desolations in the Earth.
He makes wars cease
to the ends of the Earth.
He breaks the bough
and cuts the spear in two.
He burns the chariot in fire.
Be still and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations.
I will be exalted in the Earths.
The Lord of Hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge. 

If we read the above passage carefully, we see that the only lines that might refer to the destruction of 9/11 are the following ones, and these clearly present God as a place of safety in troubled times when the earth is unstable and even the heights are brought down to the level of the seas:

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear,
even though the earth be removed,
and though the mountains be carried
into the midst of the sea. 

This upheaval described above can be read as destruction by enemies, and therefore as a parallel to the 9/11 attacks, but the terrible destruction is countered in the verses that follow below by gladdening streams of water, a metaphor for God's blessing upon his people in a time of trouble, which can be applied to mean blessings upon America by drawing upon long-held traditions about America as a shining city on a hill, a new Jerusalem:

[T]here's a river
whose streams shall make glad
the City of God,
the holy place of the Tabernacle
of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her.
She shall not be moved.
God shall help her
just at the break of dawn.

In the verse that Mr. Spencer objects to, which follows in the verses below, President Obama is much more likely referring to God's assistance on America's side in defeating Al-Qaeda, for the term "nations" is used scripturally to refer to enemies, such as Al-Qaeda, which is indeed a multinational terrorist group:

The nations raged,
the kingdoms were moved.
He uttered his voice.
The earth melted.
The Lord of Hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come behold the works of the Lord
who has made desolations in the Earth. 

In the context of this psalm, the Lord's desolation would far more likely be wrought upon America's enemies than upon America herself, for the God of Jacob could hardly be a refuge for Americans if He is attacking the United States. President Obama could more plausibly be accused of jingoism than treason in quoting this psalm, but I'll give him a pass on both. He's simply drawing upon scripture to offer comfort by reaching to metaphors of divine blessing upon those who have suffered from the 9/11 attacks. Here's the video of the entire ceremony (27:24), which includes Obama's recitation of scripture (starting at about 9 minutes).

The problem raised for Mr. Spencer is that his unlikely scriptural reading here in this psalm calls into question his general ability to provide sound hermeneutics of scripture, whether the Bible or the Qur'an. I don't think him incapable of a proper interpretation, for he's an intelligent and well-educated man, but I do think that his 'distastes' can cloud his judgment, so I advise a degree of caution in accepting his views.

In short, learn from him, but think for yourself, which is good advice in general.

Heather Mercer on Personalizing Relations with Muslims

Heather Mercer with Kurdish Woman

(Image from Christianity Today)

Ten years ago, Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry were Christian social workers assisting Afghans through Shelter Now, a housing outreach organization, and had been arrested by the Taliban, ostensibly for proselytizing among Muslims. The charges were probably accurate, in a general sense -- though the two did not explicitly attempt to convert Muslims -- for they believed that living for Christ would draw Muslims to Jesus. Both Heather and Dayna were threatened with capital punishment, but I had the impression from the news reports that the Taliban weren't sure what to do with them. Eventually, they were rescued by anti-Taliban forces as Nato's intervention overthrew the Islamist government in the aftermath to 9/11.

According to Timothy C. Morgan, "How Heather Mercer's Hostage Stint Turned into Global Hope," Christianity Today (September 12, 2011), Heather relocated to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2003 and has continued relief work among Muslims. Her experiences seem to indicate that despite the clash of civilizations, cordial relations can be forged across cultural fault lines. Individual Muslims seem to respond well to personalized religious overtures, as we see from the following interview conducted by Morgan:

What can American Christians do to better understand Muslims?

Muslims are people just like us. They have the same desires, the same ambitions. They want to raise their family to be healthy, happy, and whole. The first point is bringing a human face to Muslims. Many Muslims are god-fearing people. They believe in a monotheistic God. They want to experience the promise of eternal life. But they have been handed a religious system and tradition that does not allow them to know the God we know.

Muslims come to know Christ through an authentic relationship with a follower of Jesus, through reading the Scripture in their language, and through having a personal encounter with Christ -- through a dream, or a vision, or through supernatural healing.

Evangelicals in this country can take their experience with Christ and share that with their Muslim neighbors. For the most part, Muslims are very open to that. They love relationship; everything rides on the spirit of hospitality. They love prayer. Engage them on those levels.

Do you believe that relations between Christians and Muslims are improving?

I don't think we're as far as we need to be. There are 1 billion Muslims around the world and 88 percent of them have never met a follower of Jesus. The church needs to rise up with love and humility, and have a willingness to lay its life down for the Muslim world.

Where should a Christian leader start?

It can feel very intimidating. Start a conversation with a Muslim. Find out what they believe. Talk to them. Understand their life. Ask questions. Try to understand their worldview. Get training. In this country, helping to train the American church to reach Muslim neighbors is an organization called Crescent Project.

Another step is pray like crazy. Start a prayer ministry at the church praying for the Islamic world. Visit the local imam and ask him for dialogue. I've never once had a Muslim deny prayer in the name of Jesus. I always ask them, "May I pray for you in Jesus' name?" I want them to know who it is I worship. It's not an easy assignment. But it's a worthy one. If God can use a 20-year-old, blonde, blue eyed, single American girl then he can use anybody.

Heather is no longer just 20, of course. A decade has passed, and she has undoubtedly learned a great deal since 2001. What I find interesting about her remarks is the statement that Muslims "love relationship; everything rides on the spirit of hospitality." That suggests to me that everything is personalized for Muslims. They take nearly everything personally, which might also explain their tendency to easily take offense at perceived slights. Or at real insults.

This tendency toward offense, the personalized coin's other side, doesn't work well in the West, where many Muslims are migrating these days -- that old clash of civilizations again -- for the West is largely based not on personal relations but on rational-legal ones. Evangelicals, however, offer friendship and helpful assistance based on relationships patterned after the personal relationship that they believe themselves to have with Jesus, and they offer Muslims the possibility of enjoying this same divine relationship. Muslims often find that combination irresistable.

I, too, have found Muslims to be very friendly on a personal level, though I've also learned that I have to be careful in what I say, for their honor compels them to an affronted defense of Islam, especially among Arab Muslims.

Heather's emphasis upon friendship with Muslims is a significant insight, but the West expects more of individuals than personalized relations, and a rational-legal system can't work without ignoring personal connections, so the larger problem remains.

Heather and Dayna, by the way, are Baylor alumni, which partly explains my interest in their story.

Sara Elizabeth Low: Flight Attendant on American Airlines Flight 11

Sara Elizabeth Low

(Image from Guardian Unlimited)

Five years ago, as I was remembering 9/11 on this blog, my brother Tim posted an unexpected comment:

It's hard to believe it has been five years since 9/11. Thinking about Sara, a flight attendant I knew from Batesville, who died on Flight 11.

Astonished to learn of this so late, I responded:

Tim, I had no idea that you knew someone who died in the 9/11 attacks.

I'm sorry to hear this. Was she a close friend?

Tim replied:

I know Sara's father well and knew Sara when she was in her teens and early 20s. She was an intelligent and beautiful person who deserved better than her tragic end.

Five years had passed since 9/11, and only then did I learn that one of my own brothers knew someone from Batesville, Arkansas, a place not far from our hometown of Salem, who was killed on September 11, 2001. Sara died when she was only 28 and deserves far better tributes than those I have annually given, for I didn't know her personally, but I try to remember her memory.

As Tim mentioned, Sara was a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, and that plane was only fifteen minutes into its flight when Mohamed Atta, an Al-Qaeda member who had trained as a pilot, took over the plane with the assistance of three other hijackers and flew it off course toward New York City for about thirty minutes until reaching the World Trade Center and crashing it directly into the North Tower between the 93rd and 99th floors at 8:46 a.m. in the first terrorist strike of what quickly became that day of tragic horror.

In those thirty minutes between the hijacking and the crash, though the hijackers were surely unaware, the flight attendants did not passively wait for events to develop, but immediately took action to deal with the emergency and thereby resist the hijackers. Sara Low gave her father's calling card to another flight attendant, Madeline Sweeney, who used it to make a call on an Airfone and contact Logan Airport to convey crucial information about the hijacking. Through that card, we have Sweeney's report down to the final instant of impact. Without Sara's help, that report wouldn't exist.

There's no real closure to the story of 9/11, not even with the killing of Osama bin Laden, for the memory of that terrible day will continue to come up every year on this date. The best that we can do is to carry on the struggle against Islamism and never forget those who died on that day, one of those being a young woman from Batesville, Arkansas named Sara Elizabeth Low.

Saudi Sheikh Wajdi Al-Ghazawi Recalls 9/11 Celebrations

Wajdi Al-Ghazawi

(Image from MEMRI)

Courtesy of MEMRI's Special Dispatch No. 4116 (September 7, 2011), Saudi Sheikh Wajdi Al-Ghazawi, owner of Al-Fajr TV, recalls the popularity of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden after 9/11 and the radicalism of Saudis only a few years ago in a video posted to YouTube on August 4, 2011, the transcript of which can be read in English here:

"When Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were at the height of their might, they were extremely popular in Saudi Arabia. From mosque pulpits across Saudi Arabia, preachers would pray for their success. Moreover, from the pulpits of the most important mosques -- the Al-Haram Mosque in Mecca and the Nabawi Mosque in Al-Madina -- direct prayers for the success of Al-Qaeda were made, during the days of the bombing of Tora Bora: 'Oh Allah, help our brothers in Afghanistan.' These supplications were made during evening prayers, as well as Friday prayers. The preachers would pray for them, in violation of the ministry's instructions."

Al-Ghazawi implies that the Saudi government was embarrassed by the popular support for an enemy of Saudi Arabia's main ally, the United States. The destruction of the WTC occasioned heartfelt celebrations:

"When the twin towers in New York were attacked, they handed out sweets on the streets of Mecca. By Allah, they did. I witnessed this myself. The young people bowed in prayer and hugged one another out of joy. People were in heaven because of these young men, who 'destroyed America and bombed this idol.' Am I right or not? Was it like that or not?"

Speaking of idols:

"Back then, when the Taliban broke off a piece of the nose of the Buddha statue, which was hewn in the mountain, an entire sermon was dedicated to it in the mosque in Mecca, and the preacher was later reprimanded for this sermon. The entire Saudi people supported and loved Al-Qaeda."

Only a nose? The entire statue is gone. The Saudi government again looked embarrassed, but only when Al-Qaeda turned on the Saudi kingdom itself did the Saudi people begin to change their minds about Al-Qaeda:

"This went on until our brothers in Al-Qaeda -- and I don't know what was going through their minds -- began to carry out operations inside Saudi Arabia. That's when we all raised our hands, and said: 'You've gone too far. We won't support you in this.'"

Sheikh Al-Ghazawi can find out "what was going through their minds" if he reads up on salafi literature and the concept of takfir. That should clarify the relevant issues. But I think that the sheikh already knows "what was going through their minds" and is simply expressing irony at Al-Qaeda's stupid brutality. At any rate, he opposes Islamist radicalism. Saudi Arabia, by the way, wasn't the only Muslim society that revealed positive support for the 9/11 attackers. I recall Egyptians and Palestinians cheering at the news and also handing out sweets. These facts have often been denied, or explained as soccer celebrations, but they happened.

The days that followed 9/11 were a glorious time for anti-Americanism among even non-Muslims. I was a professor at Hanshin University then, and in a master's class that I was teaching to high school instructors, one student told of her leftist husband smiling as he watched the Twin Towers come crashing down. I find that so hard to imagine, smiling broadly while watching hundreds of innocent civilians crushed in the rubble -- and that smile coming even after watching scores of individuals leap from the flaming upper floors to escape being burned alive, only to hurtle hundreds of feet to certain death on the streets and sidewalks below. I'll never forget the report of one witness in the WTC who was on a level just below impact. He was thrown to the floor, but as he stood up and looked through the window to see what had happened, he glimpsed a woman fall past, her face expressing terrified bewilderment as she clutched at the empty air for anything to hold on to. That horrifying image has remained with me these past ten years.

After such knowledge, who can smile at the WTC Towers' collapse except to express a profoundly pathological, heartfelt hatred?

E. B. White's 'Prophetic' Words?

E.B. White

(Image from Wikipedia)

Between teaching two groups of students yesterday afternoon how to paraphrase, I had an hour to myself from 2:30 to 3:30, so I made time after reviewing my lesson plan for reading some articles in the New York Times and came across the following lines from E. B. White's essay "Here is New York":

A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.

These words were penned 63 years ago, in 1948, and as noted by Roger Cohen in his article "New York and the Planes" (July 2, 2011), White "had chiefly in mind" some form of "nuclear Armageddon," but who can now read these lines without thinking of 9/11?

I found myself sitting with the article unfinished before me on my borrowed desk in that classroom between classes on the 4th, some 235 years after America's Declaration of Independence on July 4th in 1776, reflecting how the numerals in 9/11 had always reminded me of the 9-1-1 emergency call, and I calculated that if one counted the fourth of July and the eleventh of September, then precisely 70 days remained, merely 10 weeks, until the 10th anniversary of that day the Twin Towers fell.

In some numerological scheme, all these figures probably make sense, in a weirdly significant, nonsensical way, but I find their configuration merely stochastic, the meaningless indices of an outrageous world-historical event, the most momentous terrorist act in history, intended -- by the suicidal Islamists who planned and carried it out -- to ignite a renewed jihad for setting the world aflame and forcing their god's hand to initiate that series of catastrophes marking the end of days.

From the look of things these days -- unending suicidal jihadist attacks, wars throughout the world, and a global economic crisis, not to mention earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, and floods -- maybe they succeeded . . .

Osama bin Laden Unarmed?

Boeing 767

(Image from Wikipedia)

The news that Osama bin Laden was unarmed has given pause to some who otherwise would have supported the targeted kill of this terrorist mastermind.

But consider this. Generally speaking, a Boeing 767 like the first one to strike the World Trade Center is a mid-sized, wide-body, twin-engine airliner that can carry upwards of 350 passengers, it has an overall length of around 160 feet and a wingspan of about 155 feet, and it contains a fuselage with a width, height, and length of approximately 17 feet, 18 feet, and 150 feet, respectively, that will hold up to 25,000 gallons of highly combustible jet fuel.

Thus although true that Mr. Bin Laden looked to be unarmed, even his 'mansion' -- capacious though it may be -- is no aviation hangar and would not readily have housed a Boeing 767, so even though he might have appeared to be entirely unarmed during the recent raid on his home, Mr. Bin Laden may likewise have seemed unarmed on September 11, 2001, probably also having no airliner ready to hand even in his far more capacious Al Qaeda headquarters in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, he was heavily armed with a passenger airliner that day -- in fact, with four of them -- and such a resourceful individual should be considered armed and dangerous despite appearances.

US Navy SEALs, Osama bin Laden, and my Stepfather, Charles Miller

US Navy SEALs Insignia

(Image from Wikipedia)

When my stepfather Charles Miller died several years ago, I learned that he had been a Navy SEAL (United States Navy SEa, Air and Land), or perhaps one of the US Navy's early special forces that later became part of the SEALs, possibly the Naval Combat Demolition Unit (N.C.D.U.), but I'm not sure because I don't know precisely when he served in the military, though probably the 1950s since he was around 35 when he met my mother in the latter 1960s.

I recall a picnic that he and my mom had with me and some of my brothers on South Fork River at a deep swimming hole under a steel bridge on the Moko Road north of my hometown Salem (Arkansas). Since we were all wearing swimming trunks, I couldn't help but notice that Charles had huge muscles and a big chest and could stay under water for a long time, which was pretty impressive for me since I was a skinny little kid of about 12 who couldn't swim worth a lick.

I have to acknowledge that he and I didn't get along so well at the time. I was soon getting to the age when one conforms to the expectations of one's rebellious peers, which meant letting one's hair grow wild back then, and Charles was the sort of man who'd get out his electric razor and cut my hair down to a crewcut. I didn't like that.

We got along better after I left for college because I was gone most of the time, off on my own in Texas, supporting myself, and he appreciated that sort of thing in a man. By the time that I married Sun-Ae, Charles and I had grown close enough to actually carry on a conversation that didn't involve him growling some order at me and me grudgingly following orders. But all joking aside, I can say that we had grown to understand each other better and could actually talk to each other.

Anyway, he came to my wedding and was utterly charming. He appeared to like Sun-Ae, and he told us how much he had enjoyed our unconventional wedding ceremony -- Sun-Ae wore a tight black dress in which she looked absolutely stunning, the abandoned Ozark church had a large hole in the floor, and we had written our own vows to reflect our two different traditions -- and Charles remarked as he shook our hands, "I'll remember this!" From him, that was high praise.

Not long after 9/11, I was speaking to a US naval officer whom I met in Osan, South Korea, and we were talking about the Special Forces that were already in Afghanistan. At the time, they were advising the Northern Alliance of Turkic-speaking tribes opposed to the Taliban and were fighting alongside them in battle, even riding horses in midnight charges across the dry Afghan plains -- if I recall correctly. I mused that such men must have special qualities to want to be in Special Forces since they'd often be operating behind enemy lines in small groups under intense pressure.

"What kind of a man does it take?" I wondered aloud.

The naval officer agreed that the men who tried out for the special forces were indeed special -- they had to be tough, strong, intelligent, able to endure pressure, and willing to put their lives in danger without losing focus on their mission. Or something like that, for I don't recall his exact words.

Some time after that, I don't know exactly when, my brother John -- who's a Baptist minister and who conducted our stepfather's funeral -- mentioned to me that Charles had been a Navy SEAL. I thought of Charles yesterday when I learned that the Special Forces team sent to get Osama bin Laden had been SEALs.

And I kind of had an answer to my question. What sort of man? One like Charles Miller, I guess. A smart, athletic man of toughness and courage who won't shirk hard work and who'll stay focused on a task till he gets the job done even under intense pressure. That sort of man.

I imagine bin Laden wouldn't have lasted long in a confrontation with Charles, and yesterday's events support my hunch . . .

Osama bin Laden Killed

Dead Man No Longer Walking

(Image from Yahoo News)

The news came to me yesterday afternoon that Osama bin Laden had finally been hunted down and shot dead, so I scrounged around on the internet and found this on Yahoo News:

A screen grab from FBI's Most Wanted website taken May 2, 2011 shows the status of Osama bin Laden as deceased. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden waskilled in a U.S. helicopter raid on a mansion near the Pakistani capital Islamabad early on Monday, officials said, ending a nearly 10-year worldwide hunt for the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. officials said bin Laden was found in a million-dollar compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, 60 km (35 miles) north of Islamabad. After 40 minutes of fighting, bin Laden was among several people in the mansion killed. A source familiar with the operation said bin Laden was shot in the head.

Head shot, eh. From my familiarity with horror films, I understand that's the only thing that'll take down a zombie, which is what bin Laden had been for the past ten years, a dead man walking.

To be honest, I'd half-figured that he was already dead past any walking since we'd heard so little from him since 9/11, and the few words attributed to the man were so out of touch that he scarcely seemed alive.

I find celebration difficult, and not merely because I know that we'll be inundated with conspiracy theories about how this wasn't really bin Laden but more because I know that this war against Islamist jihadis is far from over . . .

Remembering 9/11: Sara Elizabeth Low

Sara Elizabeth Low

(Image from Legacy.com)

I was not personally acquainted with Sara Low, a flight attendant from Batesville, Arkansas who died when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 on September 11, 2001, but when my brother Tim lived and worked in Batesville, he got to know her and her father, possibly her mother and sister as well, and that's why I try to remember her on anniversaries of 9/11.

I see from checking online that others are also remembering her at this time. A Legacy site reveals that Sara Low's only sister, Alyson Low, remembered her on September 7, 2010 with a poignant quote from Emily Dickinson:

"I would like more sisters, that the taking out of one, might not leave such stillness."

These words are ultimately borrowed from a letter written in 1859. The entire letter, which clarifies for us that Emily Dickinson's beloved sister, Vinnie, had been 'taken' only in the sense that she had been required at the home of a sick aunt, can be found in The Letters of Emily Dickinson. In that same letter, Dickinson goes on to say of her sister:

"Vinnie has been all, so long, I feel the oddest fright at parting with her for an hour, lest a storm arise, and I go unsheltered."

From this letter, one can see that Emily Dickinson not only deeply longed for her sister's presence, but even needed her as well, and could scarcely wait until her sister should eventually return to fill the stillness of her temporary absence.

For those like Alyson Low who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001, however, that stillness will always remain, and if you go to the Legacy site, you can look at the Guest Book Photos posted there that demonstrate just how much she and her sister loved each other.

Christine Brim on Imam Rauf: Admirer of Qaradawi?

Christine Brim

(Image from Andrew Breitbart Website)

Through a sequence of links too tedious to hat-tip, I came upon a web entry by a certain Christine Brim at Andrew Breitbart's website. I've heard of Breitbart, though I don't recall precisely where, but I know nothing about Ms. Brim, who says this about Imam Rauf:

"[J]ihad-supporter Sheik Qaradawi . . . [is] so admired by Imam Rauf."

If Rauf admires Qaradawi, then that is problematic since the latter supports suicide bombings against Israelis, as I noted in a recently posted blog entry about Qaradawi based on Paul Berman's information.

But when I check the link provided by Ms. Brim, I find a New York Times article by Laurie Goodstein from October 12, 2001, "Muslim Scholars Back Fight Against Terrorists," which reports on Qaradawi's fatwa allowing Muslims to join non-Muslims in the fight against terrorism. In that article, Imam Rauf is quoted by Goodstein as stating:

"This fatwa is very significant. Yusuf Qaradawi is probably the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today . . . . The armed forces of other countries now have behind them a legal standing in the eyes of a noted legal authority to be part of the coalition against terrorism."

Based on this quote alone, I'd say that Ms. Brim appears to be rather overstating the significance of Rauf's words, which seem simply a statement of fact, not necessarily an expression of admiration.

Like many individuals, including Christopher Hitchens, I am curious about the character of the man pressing for this mosque near Ground Zero. Imam Rauf might be a supporter of sharia down to its hudud penalties, for all I know.

But I don't know, and I'd therefore like to see a good deal more rigor on the part of individuals like Ms. Brim in their reports on Imam Rauf. I've not checked her other links, but her apparently exaggerated remark about Rauf in this instance leads me to distrust her larger judgment.

However, I'll check further into her evidence and report back if I find something blogworthy.

Christopher Hitchens on the 'Ground Zero' Mosque

Christopher Hitchens

Photograph by John Huba

(Image from Vanity Fair)

As can be seen from the photo above, Christopher Hitchens is suffering side-effects from the chemotherapy that he's undergoing as treatment for his cancer, and he writes about this in an article, "Topic of Cancer," for the September 2010 issue of Vanity Fair:

The oncology bargain is that, in return for at least the chance of a few more useful years, you agree to submit to chemotherapy and then, if you are lucky with that, to radiation or even surgery. So here's the wager: you stick around for a bit, but in return we are going to need some things from you. These things may include your taste buds, your ability to concentrate, your ability to digest, and the hair on your head. This certainly appears to be a reasonable trade.

The tradeoff so far appears to be mainly hair loss since Hitchens is still quite lucid in his powers of concentration, as is also apparent from another article that he's recently penned for Slate, a piece titled "A Test of Tolerance" (August 23, 2010), for he raises there some clear-headed, pertinent questions about 'tolerance' in Islam(ism) in response to those who defend the proposed 'Ground Zero' Mosque against its sometimes vociferous critics:

Emboldened by the crass nature of the opposition to the center, . . . defenders [of the mosque] have started to talk as if it represented no problem at all and as if the question were solely one of religious tolerance. It would be nice if this were true. But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism. As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything "offensive" to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter . . .

Hitchens elides from Islamism to Islam in this passage, but he's making a subtle point, I think, on the difficulty of cleanly separating the two, for Islam itself too often elides into Islamism as we find so-called 'moderates' to be less than moderate. Hitchens thus wonders aloud about the moderate Imam Rauf, first quoting the imam's earlier advice on how President Obama should treat Iran:

He should say his administration respects many of the guiding principles of the 1979 revolution -- to establish a government that expresses the will of the people; a just government, based on the idea of Vilayet-i-faqih, that establishes the rule of law.

About this, Hitchens remarks:

Coyly untranslated here (perhaps for "outreach" purposes), Vilayet-i-faquih is the special term promulgated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to describe the idea that all of Iranian society is under the permanent stewardship (sometimes rendered as guardianship) of the mullahs. Under this dispensation, "the will of the people" is a meaningless expression, because "the people" are the wards and children of the clergy. It is the justification for a clerical supreme leader, whose rule is impervious to elections and who can pick and choose the candidates and, if it comes to that, the results.

Narrowly construed, Hitchens is correct to note that the expression Vilayet-i-faquih is here untranslated, for in the passage quoted from Imam Rauf, it is untranslated, but more broadly considered, Hitchens is not quite right on this point, for in the text from which Imam Rauf's quote is lifted, the imam has already translated the expression:

After the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took the Shiite concept of the Rightly Guided Imam and created the idea of Vilayet-i-faqih, which means the rule of the jurisprudent. This institutionalizes the Islamic rule of law. The Council of Guardians serves to ensure these principles.

But Hitchens is still correct to note that this "rule of the jurisprudent," which "institutionalizes the Islamic rule of law" -- two euphemistic juridical expressions along the lines of "lapidation" -- really means "that all of Iranian society is under the permanent stewardship (sometimes rendered as guardianship) of the mullahs," thereby rendering "the will of the people" void of any substance. Hitchens therefore rightly observes:

I do not find myself reassured by the fact that Imam Rauf publicly endorses the most extreme and repressive version of Muslim theocracy.

And Hitchens is equally justified in expecting Imam Rauf to answer a few questions:

I would like to see Imam Rauf asked a few searching questions about his support for clerical dictatorship in, just for now, Iran. Let us by all means make the "Ground Zero" debate a test of tolerance. But this will be a one-way street unless it is to be a test of Muslim tolerance as well.

And that would need to be tolerance by Western rather than by Islamist standards . . . or even than by Islamic ones, depending on which camp the imam belongs to. I'm assured by many, of course, that Imam Rauf is a moderate, and perhaps he is, but the statements of his that I've read appear opaquely ambiguous to me in the way that Tariq Ramadan's suggestion of a moratorium on stoning is ambiguous. When Imam Rauf advised Obama to respect the institution of the Vilayet-i-faqih established by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, perhaps he was offering purely pragmatic advice on dealing with a bitter foe with whom one must negotiate. But what if he truly believes in the supremacy of sharia (i.e., "the Islamic rule of law") as interpreted and enforced by the "rule of the jurisprudent"? That wouldn't be very moderate, would it? Would Imam Rauf's views then respect the will of the American people?

I'm with Hitchens on this. Let's pose a few "searching questions" to this imam about his fundamental religious views to see if we can locate his own personal 'ground zero'.

Paul Berman: Treason of Western Intellectuals?

Tariq Ramadan

Illustration by Kim Bost

(Image from International Herald Tribune)

Paul Berman has a new book out, The Flight of the Intellectuals, which I've not yet read but intend to. Meanwhile, I have read a review of it by Anthony Julius, "The Pretender," in the International Herald Tribune (May 16, 2010), so I can report on that. Mr. Julius reminds us that:

Over the past 10 years, Paul Berman has been exploring a theme: the repudiation by liberal intellectuals of their values and ideals. The theme has been elaborated in several books -- "Terror and Liberalism," "Power and the Idealists" and now "The Flight of the Intellectuals." Berman himself is a man who identifies "with the liberal left."

I've read Terror and Liberalism. I recall reading it in 2003, the year that it was published -- reading it on long bus and subway trips as I commuted to Seoul and back while I was living in Osan and teaching at Hanshin University, which has campuses in both places.

A year before, I had given a talk on 9/11 that was well attended at the Osan campus but that had also raised some controversy. I was branded a right-wing ideologue because I went against the grain of the times and the spirit of Hanshin University in arguing that Al Qaeda had attacked the US on 9/11 not just because they didn't like American foreign policy but also because they were radically opposed to democratic principles. Much of my audience held only to the former reason and blamed the US for provoking Bin Laden. I showed that this was not true by quoting Bin Laden himself on his anti-democratic reasons for the attack, but the quotes had little effect. Al Qaeda was seen as the victim. I knew that I needed to learn more about this mindset, so I turned to Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism, which had been recommended to me and was precisely what I needed to read, for as Mr. Julius notes:

For Berman, the contemporary intellectual's temptation . . . . consists of the following elements: the false identification of liberal values with an oppressive West, and of political Islamism with an oppressed third world; an unreflective, unqualified opposition to every exercise of American power; a certain blindness regarding, or even tenderness toward, contemporary expressions of anti-Semitism.

In the current book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, Mr. Julius informs us that:

Berman has two targets. First, he takes on the Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, whom he contrasts with the admirable and courageous secularist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (Ramadan, a professor at Oxford, was recently permitted to enter the United States after being barred for six years under the Patriot Act.) And second, Berman challenges the commentators Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash for their qualified endorsements of Ramadan and their disparagements of Hirsi Ali, noting the "tone of contempt that so frequently creeps across discussions" about her, the "sneering masculine put-downs of the best-known feminist intellectual ever to come out of Africa."

Tariq Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and while one can't ever choose one's pedigree, one could repudiate what a grandfather stood for. Mr. Ramadan doesn't clearly do so:

Berman identifies duplicity as part of the problem with Ramadan, that is, his tendency both to say different things to different audiences and to speak with such equivocality as to be understood in different ways by those audiences. There is "a dark smudge of ambiguity" that "runs across everything he writes on the topic of terror and violence." In consequence, Ramadan cannot be trusted to know his own mind, and therefore cannot be trusted when he claims to speak it. Further, his language of accommodation, his project of defining a minority Islam at peace within liberal democracy, emerges as somewhat phony, the more hard-line stance that he advocates from time to time more accurately reflecting his true views.

Ambiguity is not a particularly admirable virtue at a time when:

. . . intimidation and violence [is being] directed at that "subset of the European intelligentsia -- its Muslim free-thinking and liberal wing especially" -- who "survive only because of bodyguards." This, Berman concludes, has been unheard of in Western Europe since the fall of the Axis. "Fear -- mortal fear, the fear of getting murdered by fanatics in the grip of a bizarre ideology -- has become, for a significant number of intellectuals and artists, a simple fact of modern life."

Against such intimidation, one must speak out, so Mr. Berman does, and so should we.

Anwar al-Awlaki: Moderate Terrorist

Anwar al-Awlaki

(Image from New York Times)

Scott Shane and Souad Mekhennet have a recent, interesting article, "Imam's Path From Condemning Terror to Preaching Jihad" (May 8, 2010), published in the New York Times. Though the headline speaks of "path" in the singular, this imam seems to have been on a dual path all along, or at least was long an ambivalent figure. He first shot to national attention immediately after 9/11:

In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, the eloquent 30-year-old imam of a mosque outside Washington became a go-to Muslim cleric for reporters scrambling to explain Islam. He condemned the mass murder, invited television crews to follow him around and patiently explained the rituals of his religion.

"We came here to build, not to destroy," the cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, said in a sermon. "We are the bridge between Americans and one billion Muslims worldwide."

At first glance, it seemed plausible that this lanky, ambitious man, with the scholarly wire-rims and equal command of English and Arabic, could indeed be such a bridge. CD sets of his engaging lectures on the Prophet Muhammad were in thousands of Muslim homes. American-born, he had a sense of humor, loved deep-sea fishing, had dabbled in get-rich-quick investment schemes and dropped references to "Joe Sixpack" into his sermons. A few weeks before the attacks he had preached in the United States Capitol.

Nine years later, from his hide-out in Yemen, Mr. Awlaki has declared war on the United States.

"America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil," he said in a statement posted on extremist Web sites in March. Though he had spent 21 of his 39 years in the United States, he added, "I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding on every other able Muslim."

So says Mr. Anwar al-Awlaki, but there's another story, one beginning with a youthful interest in jihad and a salafi interpretation of Islam (see the article) and leaving tracks in Colorado, San Diego, and Falls Church, Virginia, all before 9/11:

A contrasting version of Mr. Awlaki's story, explored though never confirmed by the national Sept. 11 commission, maintains that he was a secret agent of Al Qaeda starting well before the attacks, when three of the hijackers turned up at his mosques. By this account, all that has changed since then is that Mr. Awlaki has stopped hiding his true views.

There's at least a bit of circumstantial evidence that Awlaki already supported suicide bombing even prior to 9/11. According to Shakir Muhammad, who attends a mosque in Fort Collins, Colorado and listened to the CD sets that Awlaki started recording in 2000, one passage gave him pause. Mr. Awlaki was discussing suicidal violence but did not explicitly condemn it. Mr. Muhammad recalls thinking, "This guy may be for it . . . . It bothered me."

There's more circumstantial evidence, concerning some overlap between the end of his time in San Diego and the beginning of his time in Viginia:

One day in August 2001, Mr. Awlaki knocked at the door of Mr. [Lincoln W.] Higgie, his neighbor [in San Diego], to say goodbye. He had moved the previous year to Virginia, becoming imam at the far bigger Dar al-Hijrah mosque, and he had returned to pick up a few things he had left behind.

As Mr. Higgie tells it, he told the imam to stop by if he was ever in the area -- and got a strange response. "He said, 'I don't think you’ll be seeing me. I won't be coming back to San Diego again. Later on you’ll find out why,'" Mr. Higgie said.

The next month, when Al Qaeda attacked New York and Washington, Mr. Higgie remembered the exchange and was shaken, convinced that his friendly neighbor had some advance warning of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Merely circumstantial, of course, but rather troubling. There's more such evidence, and some of it goes back further:

In fact, the F.B.I. had first taken an interest in Mr. Awlaki in 1999, concerned about brushes with militants that to this day remain difficult to interpret. In 1998 and 1999, he was a vice president of a small Islamic charity that an F.B.I. agent later testified was "a front organization to funnel money to terrorists." He had been visited by Ziyad Khaleel, a Qaeda operative who purchased a battery for Osama bin Laden's satellite phone, as well as by an associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik, who was serving a life sentence for plotting to blow up New York landmarks.

Still more disturbing was Mr. Awlaki's links to two future Sept. 11 hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi. They prayed at his San Diego mosque and were seen in long conferences with the cleric. Mr. Alhazmi would follow the imam to his new mosque in Virginia, and 9/11 investigators would call Mr. Awlaki Mr. Alhazmi's "spiritual adviser."

The F.B.I., whose agents interviewed Mr. Awlaki four times in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, concluded that his contacts with the hijackers and other radicals were random, the inevitable consequence of living in the small world of Islam in America. But records of the 9/11 commission at the National Archives make clear that not all investigators agreed.

One detective, whose name has been redacted, told the commission he believed Mr. Awlaki "was at the center of the 9/11 story." An F.B.I. agent, also unidentified, said that "if anyone had knowledge of the plot, it would have been" the cleric, since "someone had to be in the U.S. and keep the hijackers spiritually focused."

I'm surprised that the FBI and other investigators didn't follow up more on this guy after 9/11, especially since the world of Islam in America isn't all that small, given that there are several million Muslims, nor were Alwaki's encounters with the 9/11 perpetrators merely random, since he was seen in long discussions with at least two of them, serving as spiritual advisor to one of the two. Again, circumstantial, but very troubling. At any rate, whatever the path Awlaki was really on, we know where it led him, namely, to hatred of all kuffar, or non-Muslims, as caught on video in London, where he moved in 2002 before returning to Yemen in 2004:

"The important lesson to learn here is never, ever trust a kuffar," he said, chopping the air, his lecture caught on video. "Do not trust them!"

The unbelievers are "plotting to kill this religion," he declared. "They’re plotting night and day."

If he had the same knowing tone and touches of humor as in earlier sermons, his message was more conspiratorial. You can't believe CNN, the United Nations, or Amnesty International, he told his students, because they, too, were part of the war on Islam.

If Awlaki had been radicalized solely against America because of its putative ill treatment of Muslims in the wake of 9/11, then he wouldn't have been preaching already in 2002 against all non-Muslims.

That alone suggests an obscured but radical path long trod, whatever ambivalence Awlaki might sometimes have felt.

Sara Elizabeth Low of American Airlines Flight 11: Tracey Alderete Remembers

Sara Elizabeth Low

(Image from Boston Herald)

Eight years ago, American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 local time, killing hundreds in the tower and all 92 people aboard the plane, including flight attendant Sara Low, a 28-year-old woman from Batesville, Arkansas whom my brother Tim knew.

Every year since my brother told me that he knew Sara Low, I've posted a 9/11 memorial entry about her. Today, I want to draw readers' attention to a memory of Sara Low posted on my blog March 7th this year by Tracey Alderete, a woman who met Sara Low in San Francisco two days before 9/11:

I was with my best friend, who is an American Flight attendant and worked the flight to San Francisco two days before 9/11. I got to know Sara along with several other flight attendants from Boston on that flight. I must say it was my most favourite flight in memory (I fly a lot with my friend) as they all were so fun and just plain hospitable to me. I joked with Sara to stop bringing me food (all the crew were filling me up with drink and food) and asked her if she was trying to fatten me up like a Christmas goose! I rode with them all to the Hilton here in SF and later that night met for drinks at Red Room on Sutter. We ate at a little Thai restaurant around the corner. I took several photos of the group and one that haunts me still -- Sara looking so beautiful in SF. Sara wanted to go dancing and through much talk and some of the crew being tired, we didn't go but I wish we had now. The following day we all somehow ended up biking in Golden Gate Park, by chance running into each other at different locations. The day was so beautiful with perfect warmth and sunshine. We ate at Cha-cha's and then headed back to the hotel to get the crew van to SFO and back to Boston. Again the flight was super fun with the crew (in my opinion the best Hub of crew in American) laughing and having great conversations. When we landed at about 7 am in Boston, the weather was gorgeous as if San Francisco had come back with us. We were all on the train platform going back to the city. Sara was excited because she had just moved into a new place and her mom was coming up to help decorate it. Sara said she was going home to sleep as she was picking up a flight to LA the next morning for someone else. We all hugged and said we should all get together for drinks soon or on another flight which ever came first.

Sara was one of the most naturally beautiful women I had the greatest fortune to have met, though briefly, and she is permanently etched in my heart. She was a radiant person and we all have been robbed of a very unique, extremely kind young woman.

I lost several flight attendant friends that day and they each are so special in my heart. I wish I had met Sara earlier I know we would have been friends, you just got that feeling when talking to her. Luckily my best friend, who like Sara picked up a flight for someone else, . . . ended up getting grounded in Vermont.

We talk about Sara and the others when we fly together, they are always in our thoughts. Thank you for posting this page with regards to Sara!

As I told Ms. Alderete when she posted this, all thanks is due her for this heartfelt story about Sara Low the final two days before September 11th, 2001. I am merely the messenger.

For some, the vivid memory of that dreadful day is fading, and I suppose that it is with me as well, but take some time at least to think of Sara Low and the others who died eight years ago today.

Support for Bin Ladin: "Lies, Damned Lies, and . . . Statistics!"

World Trade Center Towers Burning

National Park Service Photo (9/11)

(Image from Wikipedia)

Recently, my blog had a visiter by the name of "Ahmed" who had followed a link from Malcolm Pollack's fine blog, Waka Waka Waka. Ahmed posted a comment to my blog entry on President Obama's speech in Cairo, from which I had excerpted the remarks on Al Qaeda's role in the 9/11 attacks, and he made the following claim about the Muslim reaction to 9/11:

"99% of Muslims, didn't like what happened on Sept 11. I know that because i am a Muslim and full aware of what my people think."

Ahmed's statistics surprised me, so I responded:

"The 99% disapproval sounds a bit high, compared to statistics that I've seen, but I won't quibble."

Ahmed asked for my figures:

"I think you are wrong, but i would love to see your statistics. Please provide them as i could be the wrong one."

That sounded reasonable, so I replied:

"As for the statistics on Muslim support for Al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks, I'll have to do some Googling, but I am certain that I've seen statistics as high as 20 to 30 percent . . . though I don't expect that to be accepted as fact unless I provide confirmation."

Ahmed immediately requested that confirmation:

"With all due respect, you cannot just through 'I've seen statistics as high as 20 to 30 percent' without clearly substantiate it with a creditable reference. I am sure that you are aware of the fact that 30% out of +1.5 Billion is a lot, and the US is in deep trouble if that is the true. That is a +450,000,000 . . . . throwing numbers like that without consciously thinking about them doesn't really help at all."

I replied that I would try as soon as I had time:

"Ahmed, you are correct to ask for 'a creditable reference' for the numbers that I said that I'd seen. In fact, you may recall that I myself stated that 'I don't expect . . . [the numbers] to be accepted as fact unless I provide confirmation.' So, I wasn't 'throwing numbers [around] . . . without consciously thinking about them.' I Googled on this statistics issue yesterday for about an hour but couldn't find any statistics at all. I'll try again when I have time, but I'm in the midst of grading final papers and tests, so I can't devote much time to this issue."

Ahmed responded with generosity:

"Numbers: I am not really in a hurry, i will be back here in few days to see if you can provide something, or even longer if you wish, so please take your time."

I promised again:

"As for statistics, I will look further. I know that I've seen reports of 20 to 30 percent support for 9/11. Now, whether those reports were based on reputable sources is another thing to be considered even if I find the numbers. Doubtless, the statistics would also differ over time."

After some time, maybe half a day, I posted some stopgap data:

"A Pew Global Attitudes Project Report (2007) offers some interesting statistics -- and change in statistics -- posted in 2007. In the table 'Confidence in Bin Ladin to do the right thing regarding world affairs,' we find these numbers:

'In Morocco, just 26% of the public now say they have a lot or some confidence in bin Laden, down sharply from 49% in May 2003. In Indonesia, the public is now about evenly split, with 35% saying they place at least some confidence in bin Laden and 37% saying they have little or none; that represents a major shift since 2003, when 58% expressed confidence in bin Laden. In Pakistan, however, a narrow majority (51%) places some measure of confidence in bin Laden, a slight increase from 45% in 2003. And in Jordan, support for the Al Qaeda leader has risen over the last two years from 55% to a current 60%, including 25% who say they have a lot of confidence in him.'

Now, this isn't explicitly a confirmation of support for 9/11, but support for Bin Ladin would, presumably, correlate strongly with support for the 9/11 attacks carried out by Al Qaeda.

I'll try to find something in the next few days to supply some numbers."

Some anonymous poster left a comment at this point:

Why are Jews against Obama? i hope the don't kill him like they did with Rabin.

To that anonymous poster, I replied:

"[A]s for 'the Jews' -- they're hardly monolithic on Obama, nor were they on Rabin.

The Jewish Task Force site that you linked to represents a small number of Jews and has been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center."

To my surprise, I heard not from the anonymous poster, but from an irate Ahmed:

"So those Jews who openly call for the death of Obama, calling him a Muslim -- just to insult him -- which is clear racism and hateful, you so anxiously calling them a small minority within the Jewish faith, but when it comes to Muslims you seem to be loose on figures and eager to point out that they are sympathizers of Al Qaeda. You went as far as using a 30% figure (!!??). This is a clear bias on your behalf Jeffery, a bias against Muslim and for Jews. On one hand you are trying to prove how bad Muslims are 'I Googled on this statistics issue yesterday for about an hour but couldn't find any statistics at all. I'll try again when I have time' (Jeffery), on the other, you are arguing with me against, as i clearly put it earlier, that there are no shortage of 'Morons on both sides'. You also, trying very hard to belittle and marginalize the incident of the 5 'Jewish' Israeli soldiers, or the 60 Mosad agents who are under FBI custody since 911 (according to the same sources). As i have clearly stated that i am a Muslim, my question to you, from which we can get some insights into this exchange: Are you Jewish?, and if so are you a Zionist? and if neither, how do you feel about Zionism?"

I was surprised by the bold assumptions, the harsh accusations, and the tendentious questions -- and wondered if Ahmed had posted the anonymous comment on "Jews against Obama" -- but I decided to dial the emotions down a bit:

"Ahmed, let me remind you that you are a guest here on my blog, and the implicit rules of hospitality require that both host and guest maintain courtesy.

If you want to get better acquainted with me, then I suggest that you look around on my blog. You'll probably learn enough that way to answer your questions.

In this forum, however, I prefer to stay on topic. I therefore pose no personal questions -- and also have no desire to answer any."

Ahmed replied to this:

"I talked about your 'loosely' generated figures that you throw out there and now struggling to find one reference to justify it. I have just reminded you, and since your an academic, that you need to have your 'creditable and clear refereces' on hand before you start using percentages and figures -- common sense, nothing more. On the contrary to your accusation, i have showed despite all this, patience and understanding and mentioned earlier that i don't think that you are doing this out of malice, and offered that you withdrew it. Clearly you do not wish to.

Finally, I have always tried to stay on topic despite your attempt to turn it to 'Jews cannot do no wrong', and despite your own admittance that you have not read the speech 'At any rate, I also am interested in Obama's speech, which I've not had time to analyze.' (Jeffery) Which means that you blogging about something you have not even read.

Now! and since my presence here is not welcomed i will take my leave"

Since Ahmed preferred things this way, I acceded:

"Ahmed, I believe that you are overreacting to what I have written, but since we seem to have difficulty communicating, then perhaps your choice is for the best."

I don't know why Ahmed grew so upset at my remarks, why he queried me about my possibly being Jewish or a Zionist, why he imagines that I think that Jews can do no wrong, why he forbids me from commenting briefly on a short passage in Obama's Cairo speech, nor why he failed to respond to the statistics that I did provide showing enormous support for Bin Ladin even after 9/11, which surely correlates strongly with approval of the 9/11 attacks -- though these stats weren't precisely what I was looking for.

Aside from the unnecessary concern that I might be Jewish, which the occasional reader seems to worry about, the oddest part of all this for me is that Ahmed wanted me to retract my statement that "I've seen statistics as high as 20 to 30 percent." I can only imagine that he wanted me to say that I had never seen such statistics, but that wouldn't be true. I have seen such statistics. Whether I can locate those precise numbers now, eight years after 9/11, I won't hazard to say, but I've already supplied figures on support for Bin Ladin, and I can now offer statistics on Muslim support for 9/11 that amount to more than the 20 to 30 percent that I'd mentioned. In the The Age of Sacred Terror (New York: Random House, 2002), Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon report on a survey conducted by the Sunday Times in the UK soon after the 9/11 attacks:

"40% of British Muslims believe Osama bin Laden was right to attack the United States. About the same proportion think that British Muslims have a right to fight alongside the Taliban. A radio station serving London's Pakistani community conducted a poll which 98% of London Muslims under 45 said they would not fight for Britain, while 48% said they would fight for bin Laden." (page 213)

Now, this was a poll taken solely in the United Kingdom, but it's 10 percentage points higher than the upper figure that I mentioned to Ahmed, so I believe that I've provided sufficient warrant for the trustworthiness of my words, namely, that "on Muslim support for Al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks, . . . I've seen statistics as high as 20 to 30 percent." I wonder that Ahmed never offered any statistical support for his claim that Muslim support for the 9/11 attacks was 1% or less, an estimate that is absurdly low.

Of course, statistics on this and related issues are in flux (e.g., Al Qaeda and the Taliban being less popular these days among Pakistanis), and if readers know of other polls showing similar or different statistics, feel free to provide them -- along with links to the websites (if possible).