Andre Aciman
Mr Aciman is an Egyptian Jew and novelist who lives in Cambridge, Mass. USA, whose recent novel concerns an angry and disenfranchised Muslim in America. In a recent review-cum-interview published in The Daily Telegraph on 27/04 (not sure if it's available online) Aciman is quoted as saying:
What I believe no one in the West has understood yet or has come out and spoken about with total candour is how a placid and serene person can, within no time at all, become totally radicalised.This is one of the film's, and novel's, intentions. (I might add that it is dealt with as a political issue in the film Bamako.)
It's a great pity that fanaticism and those who strive to inculcate it in others for their own political ends is dealt with at a societal and political level as though it were a discrete symptom of an ideology or religion. Rather it deserves study and understanding at both the individual and group level because it poses such a danger to people and is destructive.
Never test the depth of the water with both feetshare