While driving home from the climbing gym last night, I listened to some of British Jihad, a public radio documentary about the rise of radical Islam in Britain.
While most of the show was unsurprising, it was utterly bizarre to hear one of Michael Goldfarb’s interviewees introduced as Khalid Kelly, a Dubliner who had converted to Wahabbist Islam while working in Saudi Arabia. Apparently, Kelly is something of a quotable media figure, having shown up in both the Independent and the San Francisco Chronicle a few months ago.
Kelly is a boringly typical religious convert, full of vigorous incoherence after getting into trouble and finding “the right path.” He’s busy stoking the ire of the British tabloid press against Islam, claiming among other things that Ken Bigley, the British engineer held in Iraq, deserves to be beheaded. Charming.
It’s quite confounding to see a fellow Irishman spout such idiocy. I’m well enough inured to Catholic nonsense from back home (the proto-fascist Opus Dei), but a creature like Kelly is simply odd.
I am a student studying religion philosophy and ethics for a ba hons, and i recently had to give a presentation on anything i wanted in the media on Islam. I choose a rather contraversal article from the daily mail (i think) in which, khalid kelly, featured.
khalid kelly is frightening. In my oppinion, he is also very very wrong. He not only wants to convert Britian to Wahabbist Islam, he claims that every muslims goal is to force islam accross the whole world. He claimed that he knew what was best.
I dont know if my oppinon has been of any help at all, but i just did not like this khalid kelly.