Bill Allison of Ideofact has moved to his own domain and switched to MT. I’ve plugged Ideofact before, and it’s time to do it again. Ideofact finished up his review of Syed Qutb on his old site, and it is as timely as ever, since it appears that the new wahhabi strategy to preserve their public image is to blame everything on Qutb. I’ll have more on that shortly inshallah.

Coincidentally, I originally found Ideofact over at the now-defunct weblog of Ismail Royer, where Royer was engaged in some of his peculiar brand of da’wah with Bill and others. Royer, of course, is now charged with, among other things, providing material aid to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, an extremist militia actively fighting against India in Jammu and Kashmir. The government’s case is weak like usual, but the revelations about the personal character of the muslims charged is damning as usual. Whatever the outcome, it certainly casts Royer’s last published essay in an entirely different light.

Those interested in more on Royer and the Paintball 11 can check out AltMuslim’s coverage and an interesting article at Reason.com.

Reason claims at the end of its article “There are few things in life less innocent than a religious conversion”. I’ve been mulling that over all week. I’d sure like to know what the author was driving at with that one, but to be honest, it resonates pretty deeply. The way the author phrases it is provocative, almost as if converts have a deviousness about them. But I don’t take it that way. I didn’t and still don’t see my own conversion as a political statement; I feel conversion can be politically neutral. But I think it often does imply a pretty serious dissatisfaction with the society around you and certainly a discordance in your own soul. Someone grappling with questions on that order is not an innocent. Any converts out there feel differently?