The big news in Western media out of Al Qaeda country lately is that Al Qaeda is in trouble. That the spearhead of global terrorism is being rejected by mainstream Muslims sick of death and destruction, even rejected by onetime theorists of jihad.
New Yorker magazine reporter Lawrence Wright has gone deep on what he calls “the rebellion within,” and he joins me today. Also with us, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, who voices skepticism on Al Qaeda’s reported setbacks from the frontlines in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This hour, On Point: Testing Al Qaeda’s “rebellion within.”
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:
Lawrence Wright, staff writer for The New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11″ (2006). His latest article for The New Yorker, “The Rebellion Within,” appears in the June 2 issue.
Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist and bestselling author, he writes for London’s Daily Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. His new book is “Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.”
Tags: Al Qaeda, Islam, terrorism
