Good for the Iraqis. Newsday.com is reporting that an estimated 1000 people have marched through the streets of Najaf urging Sadr and his army to leave town. A story on King Abdullah of Jordan on Slate reports other good news. “…On April 29 in Amman, Jordan’s capital, Abdullah’s wife Queen Rania led a march against terrorism. The Pan-Arab daily Al Hayat reported that close to 150,000 people turned out, some of them burning photographs of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida associate Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian national who had allegedly plotted a chemical attack against several targets in Amman.
Jordanians were certainly shocked to hear that had Zarqawi’s operation succeeded, an estimated 80,000 people would have died. Later, in a recorded message believed to have come from Zarqawi himself, the one-time “Afghan Arab” said that Jordanian officials had misrepresented the nature and extent of the attack. Sure, he’d meant to kill a lot of people, but not 80,000.”
Why is Bernard Lewis considered important? He is pretty much a hack scholar and a bad writer. For further proof of this, read his interview in the May issue of The Atlantic Online entitled “Islam’s Interpreter”. Again, the question arises: Why is this guy Islam’s interpreter?