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Jihad in the Age of YouTube - From Jamie Bartlett
The videos made by London 7/7 bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer were widely circulated and viewed. But while they took care to quote Koranic verses and authenticated hadiths to justify their acts, the "new wave" is emphatically less concerned with ideology. The copycat videos made by six of the eight young hopefuls currently on trial for planning to blow up passenger jets are inspired more by gangster movies than by religious fanaticism. Egged on by an impromptu cameraman urging him to "give it some!", Abdul Ahmed Ali, from Walthamstow, says he will "decorate" streets with body parts; Tanvir Hussain hopes his attack will "make people realise, you know, don't mess with the Muslims."

Across Europe, violent Islamic extremists are getting younger and showing less interest in theology. What motivates them is not injustice in Palestine or religious fervour-it's James Bond-style adventure and notoriety. The young men found guilty last year of plotting to blow up Bluewater went to an al Qaeda training camp, but were disappointed because it didn't have an assault course, "like I'd seen on TV," as one put it. (Things improved when they were given a rocket launcher. "It was wicked," one said.)

Al Qaeda is no longer a religious terrorist network, it's a brand-and the suicide bomber video, guaranteed a million hits on YouTube, provides a handy shortcut on the arduous path from anonymity to stardom. [More]

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On Islam - From Christopher Hitchens
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Man was matter
By Sean Maguire

In comparison to other passages from Joseph Heller's Catch-22 it isn't often quoted, but it should be.

The haunting and beautifully simple piece reads:

'Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all'.

The passage takes place after the protagonist Yossarian watches young Snowden die in the back of his plane. The event is repeatedly told throughout the novel always teasing at this great revelation that Yossarian had experienced- the revelation that 'man was matter'.

Not special, not a product of a breath of divinity but matter like everything else. 

After being in a potentially fatal car accident last week this line has been constantly coming back to me. I remember waking up just after the accident in a hospital with a doctor telling me I was having a cat-scan to check if I had brain damage.

Man was matter, and the centre of man (the mind) was also matter. We might generally conceive of the mind as somehow separate to the body- a floating you that is intangible and neverending, but in one fell swoop it can be brought back to what it really is: a fragile and spongy bit of tissue that can be destroyed in the stupidest and swiftest of seconds.