Simply Evil

A decade after 9/11, it remains the best description and most essential fact about al-Qaida.
By Christopher Hitchens


The proper task of the "public intellectual" might be conceived as the responsibility to introduce complexity into the argument: the reminder that things are very infrequently as simple as they can be made to seem. But what I learned in a highly indelible manner from the events and arguments of September 2001 was this: Never, ever ignore the obvious either.

http://www.slate.com/id/2303013/

Egypt: Islamism Meets Realism

By Christopher Hitchens
FREE INQUIRY April/May 2011

 "I don’t think that a single newspaper or magazine article on Egypt has ever failed to mention the presence, in the wings of Egyptian politics, of the Muslim Brother hood. It’s one of those learned references that is de rigueur for every commentator and analyst. Yet it was notable, as both the Egyptian and the Tunisian regimes began to crumble in January, that the local branches and equivalents of the Brother hood seemed to be as thunderstruck as everyone else."

Read more (secularhumanism.org)

From Berlin to bin Laden

A history of the Baghdad Express illuminates the resilience of politicized Islam.
By Christopher Hitchens

"FEW MOMENTS IN the annals of derring-do will surpass the one at the opening of John Buchan’s Greenmantle (1916) when Sir Walter Bullivant explains the Ottoman side of the Great War to Richard Hannay.."

Read More (The Atlantic)

Christopher Hitchens vs Tariq Ramadan - Is Islam a Religion of Peace? 1/10

UPDATE: Watch/Download the debate on Internet Archive. Notice the play order of the videos
http://www.archive.org/details/11PartsChristopherHitchensVsTariqRamadan-IsIslamAReligionOfPeace

October 5, 2010. 92nd Street Y, New York.

Part 1



via AlbertDarwin007

Is Islam a Religion of Peace?

9 min. clip from the Hitchens - Ramadan debate: Is Islam a Religion of Peace? Moderated by Laurie Goodstein. October 5, 2010 at the 92nd Street Y