Acute Library, continued

Thanks to Jules Crittenden for the link last week. Jules has a great site, and he's a lover of books as well- Crittenden's Botique: Right-Wing Bookshop and General Store

I got two books in the mail on Tuesday- The Islamist and Horse Soldiers. Both look to be excellent- Horse Soldiers in the sense of the most timeless military history (by the way- check out In Harm's Way by the same author for the story of one of the most fascinating tragedies of WWII, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis). The Islamist reads worryingly. I'm only 70-odd pages in, but Ed Husain is already painting a picture of his path from bored western Muslim to extremist.

I had Army drill this weekend, and inbetween qualifying on my rifle and teaching new kids how to clean an M-16 (seriously... what do they learn in basic training now?), I read most of Militant Islam in Southeast Asia: Crucible of Terror by Zachary Abuza. Most of the book was good. I learned quite a bit about the religious and political history of Malaysia and Indonesia, and there is a wealth of extensively footnoted information detailing the spread of al-Qaeda in SEA and how AQ was able to co-opt local muslim extremists into part of the larger organization. That said, there are a lot of typos in the book- one (which is mentioned in an amazon review) made me laugh out loud when I read it out at the rifle range. The author claims that "15% of Cham Buddhists are Wahhabi", which makes about as much sense as saying that 15% of all trucks are bicycles. Overall, though... it was a good intro to the topic.


Speaking of Jules Crittenden and militant Muslims, here's Jules on Josh Marshall on homegrown terror:

It appears that this is one of those cases where the group was under surveillance for a very long time and helped along in what turned out to be a bogus plot orchestrated by federal authorities.

O, when will the feds stop persecuting Muslims and forcing them into man-caused-disasterism!

I'll tell you what... seeing "jailhouse converts" to Islam getting arrested while placing C4 bundles around a synogogue makes me real comfortable with the idea of moving Guantanamo detainees into American mainland prisons!