Crossbones

he Muslim world, from what he can tell, is at a crossroads, where several competing tendencies meet. One path is a burgeoning ‘umma’, a community of the faithful as conceived in the mind of Islamists who see themselves in deadly rivalry with both moderate or secularist Muslims and people of other faiths. The way Malik sees it, Somali religionists of radical persuasion are provoking a confrontation with the Ethiopian empire in hopes of pitting the Muslim world against Christian-led Ethiopia, even though Ethiopia, being military stronger and an ally of the United States, is very likely to gain the upper hand in the face-off. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Indian and Pakistan, two nations with nuclear potential, are locking horns. With Afghanistan turned into a theater and Chechnya haplessly caught in the fray, several countries’ political and territorial concerns converge at oblique angles. And of course there is the never-ending conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis, which puts a large segment of the Muslim world in opposition to the Jewish state and the United States. Empires are no longer won by the musket, as that old imperialist Kipling argued Britain had done. An empire is won by those with the wherewithal to hold it, to subjugate it. Malik doubt very much that Shabaab can win a war, let alone, having won it, hold on to the conquered territories.

Jeebleh inquires whether BigBeard or one of his minions has bothered to explain what they have done to the computer, and if by any chance they deleted files or found material of a pornographic nature and removed it. Dajaal says, ‘He has deleted several files that were not complimentary about the Courts and the photo of a nude girl serving as a screen saver,’

It rankles Jeebleh that BigBeard has deemed the photograph of his one-year old granddaughter, soaped and naked as she stands in a bathtub, ‘pornographic’. It goes to show how much energy religionists of the parochial variety squander on matters of little or no significance.

It feels bizarre that I am back in a place to which I have never been before.'