« Bloomsday | Main | Texas Rolls Ever Backward » Through Al-Qaida's Media-Saturated EyeballsAccording to this description of Al-Qaida members' self-perception in Slate, members of this worldwide disorganization see themselves as action heroes. Although al-Qaida adherents are commonly described as having a medieval worldview, their rhetoric and self-image owe as much to blockbuster movies and Mortal Kombat as to epic tales of seventh-century Islam. Al-Nashmi's narrative reads like a straight-to-video shoot-'em-up script, with James Bond car chases and people's heads exploding. "I shot him in the head, and his head exploded," al-Nashmi writes in describing killing an American in an oil company office. Later, when they battle security forces, al-Nashmi says, "I saw the skull of the soldier behind the machine-gun explode before me." As they make their escape, the group runs six roadblocks with Nimr hanging out of the passenger-side car window to squeeze off round after round, eventually taking a bullet in the chest. Al-Nashmi sums up the cinematic mayhem with a quote from Abu Bakr, who led the early Muslim community after the prophet's death in 632: "Strive for death, and you will be granted life." jon posted this at 9:31 AM |
read weblogsky! latest posts: |
