Al-Qa`idah and Andalusia. There was a discussion of David Levering Lewis's new book, God's Crucible (I have not read it although I have concerns because the authors is not a specialist of Islam or Middle East, and does not have the necessary language skills), on XM Public Radio. They invited Newsweek's, Christopher Dicky to offer comments. He said, among other things, that Al-Qa`idah's leaders in their speeches and literature are nostalgic to Islamic Spain. How wrong. That is quite untrue. Al-Qa`idah and other fanatical Muslims don't favor Islamic Spain for many reasons: it is not strict enough for their standards. Their only nostalgia is for the era of Muhammad followed by the era of the rightly-guided caliphs.