Accidental Blogger

Curious news about Naveed Haq, the suspect in the Seattle Jewish Center shootings- he was a convert to Christianity, by this account.  Just a couple of weeks ago, I finished reading the parable-like novel "God’s Little Soldier" by Kiran Nagarkar (in my opinion, one of the brightest stars in today’s Indian-English literary firmament) in which he describes an Indian protagonist named Zia of a very similar middle-class highly educated background, initiated to the strict Islamic tradition by his aunt. He becomes a Muslim terrorist, followed by a strange conversion to Christianity and eventually becomes a Christian terrorist as well. His final dabbling in Hinduism doesn’t quite reach a terroristic mode, but karma strikes and just desserts are served to him.  How odd it feels when life imitates art (or literature)!
( Nagarkar’s book which was available till about a month ago on amazon.com is nowhere to be found on it now, though it is still widely available in India)

Another must read: the transcript of Bill Moyers interviewing author Margaret Atwood on PBS, where she talks about extremist religious influences on contemporary society, viewed in the light of her eerily prescient classic "The Handmaid’s Tale.
The same link above lists the transcript of Martin Amis’ interview with Moyers, further down the page and discusses his post-9/11 attempt to delve into the mind of Atta published in the New Yorker magazine (for which I couldn’t locate a link). According to Bob Woodward, we do have these writings found by the FBI in Atta’s luggage to cast light on the Muslim terrorist mindset.