School days with a qaeda suspect

摘要

Long ago, newsweek correspondent Richard Wolfe went to school with Moazzam Begg. Now he's gone back to find out where Begg went bad. He stood out from the rest of our class for being so small and frail. Sure, he could run like the wind, which kept him out of trouble. And he won friends with his bright, wade smile. Yet he was also awkward, easily teased and slightly old-fashioned. Perhaps it was his pinstriped trousers and his platform shoes. Or his dark talk about his mother's grave. But while mostof us obsessed about "Starsky and Hutch" or "Star Wars," he could be deadly serious. One close friend recalls his staging an intense debate about religion. Islam, he said, was superior to all other faiths because it valued charity so highly. It was a remarkable comment for any 10-year-old schoolboy. But Moazzam Begg stood out for another reason. lie was a Muslim boy in a Jewish school.