Courts, Extremist Organizations and Philosophy
Reader comment on item: [The Boim Trial:] Exploiting the Koran to Terrorize

Submitted by Ilona Melstrads (United States), Dec 14, 2004 at 19:32

Your outstandingly pithy and cogent article (as usual) was cheering about U.S. courts, although you noted that much investigative work must underlie the results. But are the judicial successes cited representative of all the relevant U.S. court cases?

On a somewhat related issue, I was intrigued by last Sunday's Washington Post article reporting on a failed Mideast economic conference. The article also noted that Prince Saud Faisal of Saudi Arabia had listed many "Western" (presumably ancient Greek) and "Arab " philosophers (probably Muslim, including the better Persians) as having created values that founded Western and Arab civilizations, and that he called for a return to their values. Ignoring the naivete here, does Faisal's statement signal a real wish of some in the Saudi government to abandon the narrow Wahabi approach to Islamic law and to actually try to revive some of the better aspects of Islamic philosophy?

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