Of History and Horror

Spent about three hours in world last Tuesday night. Again went to the dance club in the Netherlands (well, the DJs are from the Netherlands in RL). Again they were very welcoming and chatted with me. I wandered around a bit this time and watched from the balcony.

My friend from Qatar signed on & I invited him to join me. I'm not sure how he feels about being identified, so I'm going to give him the pseudonym Sanad since he is Bahraini. Sanad joined me for a few minutes and then we retreated to the deck on the treehouse on EdTech island where it was quieter and easier to talk.

Sanad indicated to me that it is not permissable for Muslims to dance (or at least it would not be appropriate for me to dance wearing an abaya & hajib). I had guessed as much, which is why I watched from the balcony.

I mentioned that I was finally able to enter the MuslimBrotherhood site in SL. Each time I had attempted before, SL crashed. I was beginning to get suspicious, but Sanad thought this was just a coincidence. He had not been there, so we went back.

The Muslim Brotherhood site has a bunch informational posters calling for the release of several political prisoners. Many of them are in Arabic, but there is a fair amount of English, too. Sanad and I began to discuss the history of the Muslim Brotherhood. I was curious about them because I'm reading The Looming Tower : Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright. In the book, Wright talks about how some of the early radicals split from the Brotherhood to form various groups of their own. Sanad described the present-day group as being very different from al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Again, it was getting late for me and REALLY late for him, so we didn't get too far, but Sanad definitely knows his history.