I’ve been watching with some fascination as my friend Leah Farrall takes on the blogosphere (not to mention the terrorism studies status quo) with her All Things CT blog on WordPress.
Her current one-on-one dialogue with Abu Walid al Masri, a senior figure in militant circles, is groundbreaking stuff. The dialogue has come about because of Farrall’s unrivalled understanding of her research area, and the ethical way in which she undertakes that research. She is a woman of formidable intellect and personal courage, with a cultural sensitivity that has seen her make huge inroads in her field. So, responses like this one by New Yorker WOTpundit Steve Coll have me grabbing for the antacid.
Coll opens by acknowledging the ‘amazing exchange of letters between an Australian academic and Abu Walid al Masri’, though it’s quickly clear Coll has no idea who either of them are. There’s no crime in that – even if one is a Pullitzer Prize-winning author and respected authority on the Taliban, as well as President and CEO of the New America Foundation. What has my oesophagus burning is the fact that Coll manages to trivialise both correspondents by focussing on the fact that Farrall is “a blonde” who “seems to have attracted alMasri’s attention”. Oh please.
Of everything Coll could have read on AllThingsCT; of all the points he could have drawn from the first letter alMasri writes; Coll decides to take the TMZ approach and look for the salacious where it doesn’t exist. To add insult to injury, Coll sums up by encouraging his readers to “make a head start” and translate the correspondence between Farrall and alMasri, without any regard for professional courtesy whatsoever.
As a former diplomat who has lived and worked in many of the countries under discussion, it infuriates me that hard-won, infinitely delicate inter-cultural communications like the one between Farrall and alMasri are all too often derailed through the ignorance, chauvinism and impatience of those who should know better.
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I cannot believe he would stoop so low as to trivialize her exchange on the basis that he’s only interested because she is a blond woman. A person who’s won the Pulitzer should know better and should be able to come up with more compelling criticism than “he digs blond white women…so take all of this with a grain of salt.” As someone who’s actually served in Afghanistan I find Ms. Farrall scholarship first rate. Other readers, her insights are profound and invaluable. She may literally be the only English-speaking academic doing work of this quality.
the internet had great promise at first, kind of like t.v.. instead it has spawned a vision of life known as blogging where every kind of simpering, whining puss can say what they want and other people actually take it seriously. the jihadists have taken a religion and mutated it so they can enact their own sick fantasies. we have the bomb. why not use it. it’s what allah wants.
charming. Thanks for your thoughts.