The performance is obviously stage-managed for a visiting journalist, but it makes the point.Note to AP: see, real journalists know when they're being played. Secondly, thank God for the guilelessness of radical leaders. If they were a little cagier they could fool us and do more harm. Instead they tend to follow heated denials of their radicalism:
“Americans say all Muslims are al-Qaeda and terrorists,” he snapped,with:
a lengthy defence of attacks such as 9/11 on the grounds that they were the only way Muslims could hit back at a country that deprives them of freedom, sovereignty and weapons.
He also urged the West to accept Somalia’s right to pursue its faith, and argued that Bin Laden could, like Nelson Mandela, eventually come to be seen as a freedom fighter, not a terrorist.
Ah, the old, "How dare you say I'm like Osama, may 1000 camels enter his corral" defense. Then: what is it with the Islamic world and the cat comparisons?
“If Ethiopia is supported by the Americans, why should we not get support from the Muslim world?” asked Sheikh Inde’Adde, adding: “If you shut a cat in a room and beat it, it will jump at you.”Finally, I'm not sure all folk wisdom survives translation. Do I get this?
A mad woman runs through a village of straw huts with a burning torch. An alarmed villager warns her not to set the village alight. “You’ve just reminded me,” the mad woman said. And she starts burning down the homes.So is the sheikh saying Westerners who speak about peace are only reminding terrorists to blow them up?
