So what if someone who hated us passed through?
Reader comment on item: The California Suicide Bomber[: Ra'ed Mansour al-Banna]

Submitted by Peter J. Herz (Taiwan), Apr 4, 2005 at 21:59

The name al-Banna was shared with Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Also, Seiyyid Qutb, another Islamofascist ideologue, also studied in the USA for a while. As for enemies on another side, Lev Davidovich Bronstein, aka Leon Trotsky, lived in America for a while, too. So did Ho Chi Minh, where, according to the Communist hagiography, he was repelled by our race problem (and, I will all but bet the proverbial farm and last dollar that he saw the Cambodian comrades as "little brown brothers" and, when considering the repression of the highland peoples on Veit Nam's borders, would probably think of it as being done for the sake of progress and a higher civilization). The world is full of people who can be shocked at an open society that frankly discusses its problems, yet who are at the same time blind to the follies and failures of their own culture.

As for his girlfriend's parents, my hat's off to them. It probably saved their daughter from a very unhappy marriage and some sticky child custody battles later on. It exposed as well that at rock bottom, al-Banna was just a somewhat rebellious Muslim kid experimenting with carefree period in his life, not someone ready to make the compromises and committments required of a marriage.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened for relevance, substance, and tone, and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome, but comments are rejected if scurrilous, off-topic, vulgar, ad hominem, or otherwise viewed as inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the Guidelines for Comments. For informational purposes, we identify countries from which comments are sent.