I didn't call him racist. I have my own theories about what's going on, whatever, but I don't want to personalize this any further. And they're not brass, they're just perky.
Uh, just so this is not a total waste of bandwidth: I went to a talk at Columbia about how other Muslim fundamentalist groups (partic. Jordan and Yemen) viewed the Taliban. The speaker said that even as far back as 94, transnational groups felt they had to take a stand on the issue but they were remarkably ambivalent. More recently, they have even described the Taliban as repressive, using language they usually use to describe how the secular state treats *them*. She said it seemed like the issue of the Taliban has served to polarize groups around the question of whether fundamentalism (sharia as law) is compatible with democracy. The fact Mullah Omar is of no scholarly standing, and made himself emir to boot, has meant that there was greater latitude to criticize the Taliban.
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