01. June 2006

By Khaled Abou El Fadl Not much time has passed between the first edition of Shattered Illusions and this substantially revised second edition, and yet in this relatively short time, so much that is de-stabilizing, deconstructive, demoralizing, and in fact down-right shattering, has taken place. At the most fundamental and basic level, so many lives have been destroyed and so many others have been denied liberty, physically assaulted and tortured that one struggles with the feeling that it is...

01. March 2002

BY KHALED ABOU EL FADL Several years ago, I remember seeing a picture of Osama bin Laden that ominously foretold the tragedy that would come on 11 September. The picture showed bin Laden, with his typical slothful and even indifferent look, sitting while gripping his Kalashnikov with neatly organised and impressive looking books filling the background. What caught my attention in this picture were the titles of these books. With the help of a magnifying glass, I was able to figure out the...