Given Away By A Pot Belly!

Ah, how Maulana Abdul Aziz must rue all those parathays he's had through the years. He was captured while trying to escape from the government siege of the lal masjid complex by slipping out with a group of young girls in burqas. Alas, some sharp-eyed officers spotted something suspicious:

Another security official told AFP that the cleric had been picked out because of his "unusual" demeanour."The rest of the girls looked like girls, but he was taller and had a pot belly," the official said.

I wish one of the news channels had caught this on tape.

Edit: Meanwhile, one Lahori wit has asked, 'Which Auntie Do You Condemn The Most? Auntie Shamim or Auntie Maulana?'

When the policewoman who first spotted the suspicious bulge of the Maulana's midsection moved to question her, (sorry, I mean him), the burqa-clad students with him protested that "Our Auntie is very ill!" This has led to the Pakistani blogosphere dubbing him 'Auntie Maulana'. The term is all the more amusing because 'Auntie Shamim' was what the lal masjid burqa-clad vice squad had dubbed the woman they had abducted and accused of running a prostitution service.

The consensus seems to be that Auntie Maulana is the more contemptible of the two.

IZ

The AEI and the Neo-cons!

There's an interesting and insightful piece on Slate about the AEI's latest celebration of neo-conservatism. Its truly perplexing that on the one hand the neo-cons are happy to celebrate the crusades and on the other, attack those who criticise neo-con policies as anti-semitic. The AEI, by the way, stands for the American Enterprise Institute and for more information about it, I suggest you read the article.

The absurdity of it is simply bizarre.

IZ

P.S. Oh and Bernard Lewis was in London recently. My brother was trying to talk me into attending one of his speeches because it was a 'once in a life-time' opportunity! I don't know. I didn't want to throw up in front of all those people...

Why We Couldn't Put Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again

Sometimes I hate being right.

Back, way back in 2003 when the U.S. war machine was bearing down on the tottering Saddam regime, I had a conversation with R., a good friend, and fellow worrier about global politics.

The gist of my part of the conversation was that while the Americans would occupy Iraq easily enough, they wouldn’t be able to put humpty-dumpty back together again. There would be serious resentment amongst the population and anger at the American forces (yes, even I failed to see the size and bloodiness of the “insurgency” that would unfold over the next 4 years) and the Americans would find that instead of creating their imagined haven of peace and democracy in the Middle East, there would be bloodshed, attacks on the Americans and bombings aimed at fracturing the tottering state. The American public would lose interest in Bush’s mission, the anti-war protestors would gather, and the money for reconstruction would grind to a halt. The Grand Enterprise would be abandoned and there would be two major effects that would reverberate throughout global politics:

The first would be the descent of Iraq into anarchy, with all the consequent hatred, violence, anti-Americanism and resentment that would bleed into the rest of the world.

Second, American justifications would only confirm their own myths. Instead of critically looking at American power and how it is being used globally, the blame would fall on the ‘nature’ of Islam and the Arabs. Inevitably those same self-fulfilling prophecies of difference based on ‘Ideology’ would come to the fore. It will be said that it was because Islam is anti-democratic, or irrational, or barbaric, that Iraq could not become a democratic nation as America decreed it should be….

Sometimes I hate being right.

IZ