Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Aafia Siddiqui. Victim or Terrorist--or both? Discuss.

Been thinking about what to say about the whole "Qaum ki beti" (Daughter of the Nation, never mind that she's a US Citizen) Dr. Aafia (Siddiqui) issue. Then, partly as a way to check out if the new Google Buzz is any good for public discourse, I posted the following on it:

My take is that the way she's been railroaded through the justice system and "convicted" on what is oh, so apparently a trumped-up charge is definitely very, very scary. But is she the "cooked up" "imaginary enemy" that Mike Ghouse of the World Muslim Congress would have us think? And if she's not, where does that leave those of us who do think that railroading her is actually playing into the hands of neo-purists in this here "transcendent struggle" against fanaticism/fundamentalism to use John McCain's words, or the existential fight of the common Muslim against the twin evils of neo-imperialism and takfiri fanaticism, to paraphrase Zaid Hamid?