You asked for it, Abdul. Neil MacFarquhar appears to think that the Saudis who died in Wednesday's suicide bombing in Riyadh were probably all just TerraSymps anyway, and had it coming:

On Wednesday morning, just hours before a suicide bomber demolished a Saudi police building in downtown Riyadh, the family of a young man was accepting congratulations for his death in the jihad over the border in Iraq, the one that enjoys no small support here. ...

In Saudi Arabia, a strategic ally of the United States, violence against the occupation in Iraq is seen by many as jihad, or a holy struggle, but virtually no one accepts violence as jihad when it unrolls here at home, in the heart of what is supposed to be the most Muslim of countries.

"Saudis Support a Jihad in Iraq, Not Back Home"

This is pretty much the entire burden of MacFarquhar's newsless above-the-fold screed (not labelled as analysis), which has to represent some kind of low point for A1 in reporting on Islamic concerns: The Saudi people are moral midgets who want all the fun of supporting jihad with none of the blowback.

In Iraq, attacks by American troops serve as evidence to some that the United States occupation of a Muslim land must be reversed. Requests for God to avenge American actions pour down from mosque minarets, and some women university students sport Osama bin Laden T-shirts under their enveloping abayas to show their approval for his calls to resist the United States.

But many Saudis consider the attack here on Wednesday a shocking and unsettling crime, especially since the attackers chose for their first major government target an office building that virtually every adult male must visit to collect a license or car plates. ...

"May God curse you, you vermin, you people of filth and not jihad," said a posting on one of the same Web sites where [a claim of responsiblity for the bombing] was posted, adding, in case anyone missed the point, a picture of coffins draped in American flags over the caption, "This is jihad."

Experts on the topic believe that most Saudis do not view the two battles as even remotely related.

Gee, Neil—is it possible they don't see the relation between the two "battles" because they aren't, in fact, remotely related, except maybe in the wet dreams of our own neocon jihadists? Because on the one hand we're talking about violent struggle in a neighboring Muslim country against a foreign, non-Muslim occupying power, and on the other about violence perpetrated by Muslim extremists on innocent Muslim victims?

MacFarquhar can only write as he does to the extent that, for him, jihad means terrorism pure and simple—and all terrorism is only a single, global phenomenon. Is this the best understanding of the question you've been able to manage in your career living and writing in the Arab world, Neil? Beyond that, the article's tone is motivated by a really unpleasant Western self-righteousness: you supported violence against us, well now you've got what you deserved. At the very least, I'd have expected more sensitivity in the wake of an awful terrorist atrocity on the part of the Times.

posted by michael  5:57:14 PM  
tell me about it []