Hasta la Pasta!

And if you don't know what I'm talking about with the triconsonantal roots, I'm going to track down your old Hebrew teacher and smack him.

That said the Islamic extremism we're dealing with now is a complete offshoot of the Cold War as was said above. It was the meddling of the Soviet Union and the United States in the affairs of the Arab world and Israel, along with the failure of secular Arab nationalism, that ushered in the current era.

Turkey's secular transformation isn't nearly as important as Pan-Arabism and Nasserism- Nasser had a much greater impact as a secular figure on the post WWII Arab/Muslim world than Atatuk. If you're talking about the interwar period, then Ataturk's secularism might be called a root cause, but Turkey's impact on the Muslim world, especially the Arabs, is not particularly great after World War I. It's really the failure of Nasserism and the 6 day war (not to mention a series of revolutions/coups orchestrated by the British and the United States) that opened up a leadership vacuum, and paved the way for radicalized Muslims. The Muslim regimes also gain much of their power through charged rhetoric, which further inflamed street level radicals who in earlier times might have have been Arab socialists. We need not to mention the arming of militant Muslims as a proxy force against the Soviet Union.

other than the doner - which for some god forsaken reason you can't seem to find in this coutnry for $2.00 like you can in most of europe, what have you done for me lately?

So much exciting new stuff to learn every day!!! Whoopee!!!

Josh, you'll appreciate this: they hung out at the Howard Theater (DC's equivalent of the Apollo in NYC) and the R&B and Jazz clubs around 14th & U, which after years of decline is again a thriving, vibrant neighborhood. I think Ahmet either managed some acts or worked for another label in DC before he headed to NYC to start Atlantic.

:)

Yes, Ahmet was involved in the music biz in DC, both booking acts and with a small label. He financed the start of Atlantic by selling off his record collection (which numbered something over 11,000 if memory holds).

There's a man who had some self-control.

Your mini-history also exemplifies the Stranger's bad habit of providing short, often inaccurate, summaries of complex events. There was scarcely any real backlash to Kemal Atatürk within Turkey, and even less abroad. The grievances of the Qutb contingency have more to do with the perpetual problems specific to the Muslim Arab Middle East, not whether or not their former despised Ottoman rulers traded an Islamic dictatorship for a secular one.