Further to my post on the mental contortions of middle-class Communist Seumas Milne and his disregard for facts, here’s another example of wilful delusion, suitably debunked. Over at Harry’s Place, David T (no relation) launches a fine broadside against Guardian regular Madeleine Bunting and her fanciful grasp of history and Islamist ambition. The piece is a little too long to summarise, but well worth reading in full:
“It is pernicious nonsense for Madeleine Bunting to seek to understand clerical fascists like Qutb and Mawdudi as ‘anti-colonialists’, whose rhetoric was sometimes a bit fruity. Mawdudi, as we’ve seen, was an advocate of murderous sectarianism within Pakistan, and whose philosophy had more to do with persecuting religious minorities and rival nationalists, than with ‘anti-colonialism’.”
More here. Laugh at other Bunting wisdom here and here.
It’s astonishing how eager demented loon Madeleine Bunting is to believe the best of such people.
It must be love.
But only certain people, of course. For some reason, the words “personal psychodrama” spring to mind.
Legacy of Ed Said.
Norm has a hilarious—in light of the rest of her oeuvre—quote from Bunting on his blog at http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/07/the-new-enlight.html. It reads: “Many Muslims are incensed by injustice and angry about British foreign policy, but they don’t plot to bomb innocent civilians – so what is it about these jihadis that draws them into such atrocities? And what do they use to license their outrage to commit such terrible crimes?”
Hmm. Thinking. What could it be? When you’ve completely ruled out any criticism of their religious ideology, the question does become difficult to answer, you must admit.
David your link doesn’t work. You need to avoid typing a full stop after an URL, because it is interpreted as part of the URL.
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/07/the-new-enlight.html
Incidentally, I’m not sure why this is so for you. Tim Worstall also uses Typepad and on his blog user type quotes in italics and URLs embedded within the text using “a href”. Perhaps you have switched it off?
TDK,
I think you’re referring to Julien’s post above. It’s his full stop, not mine. When I get a moment I’ll rummage through the settings and see what, if anything, can be done about the link embedding business.
Sorry about that. I tried creating a link in HTML, but that’s not allowed, so I just wrote it out. I didn’t realize the site would automatically hyperlink, or I would have left off the period. Thanks for reposting.
Yes, my apologies. I was confusing the general issue of David’s HTML settings and this particular URL.
To be honest it is more annoying that I can’t use HTML to create italics for quotes. You get used to quoting on most blogs and then forget that you can’t do it here, resulting in no distinguishing features to indicate a quote. Another blog “Pub Philosopher” has the same limitation.
Julien, you would have been alright if you had just left a space between the URL and the period.
I realize that now, but alas, it is too late.