This is a cross-post from Harry’s Place by Igor
An article on Comment Is Free lauding the recently deceased Lebanese Grand Ayatollah, Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah, provides a vignette of how leftists tend to interpret the statements and actions of Islamists according to their own frame of reference, and more often than not get it hopelessly wrong.
Ian Williams writes:
In fact, the Ayatollah, who had his own website (http://english.bayynat.org.lb/) epitomised what Western critics, with varying degrees of sincerity have been suggesting Islam should be. He took the West at its face value, decried the idea of theocratic rule in affairs of state and indirectly paved the way for Hezbollah, formerly the party of economically, socially and politically excluded Lebanese Shi’a to become part of a, relatively, democratic polity.