This exploration of the form of colonial power includes critical discussions of various cultural and institutional aspects, looking into such issues as education, language use, political ideologies and other cultural and political concerns. Drawing on both English and Chinese sources, he argues that, from the early colonial era, colonial power has been extensively shared between colonizers and the Chinese who chose to work with them. Law Wing Sang provides an alternative lens for looking into Hong Kong's history by breaking away for the usual colonial and nationalist interpretations. It is through these events, and through the people he encounters, that Padnos shows us how a terrifying gulf has opened between Islam and the West.Ĭollaborative Colonial Power Book Description : Padnos's journey takes him from the newsroom of a Yemeni newspaper to the prayer rows and lecture rooms of Yemen's madrassas, from covert Jeep rides into the sacred mountains to a stint in an overcrowded prison. He investigates the radicalisation of these disaffected young men as they move, almost unnoticed, from London, Berlin or Paris to their new spiritual home in Yemen.
In Undercover Muslim, Theo Padnos brilliantly evokes a landscape and journey that few Westerners have experienced. Some, like Abdulmutallab, find something much more dangerous: the conviction to carry out Jihad. There, in the country's anarchic wilderness, they find what they could not at home: a pure way of life, submissive wives and like-minded brethren. His is not a unique story: at a time when true pluralism remains an aspiration rather than a reality in the West, young men, disillusioned and angry with the spiritually barren, consumerist societies in which they live, travel to Yemen in search of fulfilment. These two strikes were intended to set back al-Qaeda's operations in Yemen but, within 24 hours, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - a 23-year-old Nigerian man and one of Awlaki's followers - boarded a plane to Detroit with explosives hidden in his clothing.
He escaped unharmed but many villagers were killed. A second attack a week later targeted the prominent religious leader Anwar Awlaki. In December 2009 the US government launched an air strike against the tiny Yemeni village of al-Majalah where al-Qaeda militants were believed to be in hiding.