Taliban Eli

Yale, the school that produced every US president since 1989 as well as candidates Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and Howard Dean, just enrolled a new student: former Taliban spokesman Rahmatullah Hashemi, as the New York Times Sunday Magazine reveals in a fascinating story today.

You might recognize Hashemi, like I did, as the handsome Talibani with green eyes and a black turban who in February/March, 2001, was explaining on CNN and every major media outlet why the Taliban were destroying ancient Buddhist statues that held enormous historical and archeolgical significance. Salon reported at the time:

As Hashemi launched a serious charm offensive at the University of Southern California, UCLA and UC-Berkeley, his leaders launched antiaircraft missiles at two of the world's wonders. A lesser publicist might have melted down. But the cool, unruffled and media-smart Hashemi instead spun his story into a contemporary parable of ironic iconoclasm. That the high-tech idol smashing -- which has religious connotations for Christians, Jews and Muslims alike -- should also function as a cautionary tale about modern-day secular idol worship seems fitting for a fundamentalist movement with a 24-year-old ambassador who peppers his lectures with statue jokes.

After 9/11, my memory kept wandering back to the Taliban's handsome young emissary and thought two things: 1) We should have known this was a very scary regime; and, 2) What ever happened to that guy? I knew we hadn't caught him. To the latter question, it turns out he ended up matriculating at a school to which 99.99% of us, including me, could never hope to be admitted. I don't know if this is a bad thing (i.e. academe is beyond all hope) or a great thing (i.e. academe as a model for building bridges of thought and experience, such as him now dining at Yale's Jewish dining hall to avoid haram food). I am curious what you TtP'ers out there think.