Thomas Friedman, Discovery Channel, Wednesday night

For you Friedman readers and admirers, this sounds like a fascinating program. Friedman discussed it on Charlie Rose earlier tonight.

Searching for the Roots of 9/11
Discovery, Wednesday night at 10:00pm EST and 1:00am EST

NY Times review

How a Nightmare Began and Might Continue
By NANCY RAMSEY

"Their tones may differ, but in each of three documentaries about the roots of 9/11 and its aftermath in the Muslim world there is one truly terrifying moment.

In "Al Qaeda 2.0," which will be shown tonight with "Terror's Children" on the new Discovery Times Channel and includes dramatic scenes of suspected Al Qaeda terrorists being hunted down in the caves of Afghanistan and the slums of Karachi, Pakistan, Dr. Saad al-Fagih, a leading Saudi dissident, says, "There is an impending attack coming, and this attack is immense, huge and either as big or even bigger than Sept. 11, and this attack is full of surprise."

In "Terror's Children" a boy of 10 who has bright eyes and a curiosity that is being stifled in a religious school in Pakistan visits a swimming pool where men and women frolic together. He surveys the scene, turns to an interviewer and says, "Everyone here is going to hell."

In "Searching for the Roots of 9/11," which will be shown tomorrow night on the Discovery Channel and on April 1 on Discovery Times, Thomas L. Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, visits Al Azhar mosque in Cairo. Once the sermon ends, young men take over the mosque and "in an instant we went from prayer to politics," Mr. Friedman says. While most of the worshipers had left the mosque, he adds, "it struck me that in some sense they were letting Islam and its spiritual message of a God of mercy and compassion be hijacked."

Each program is straightforward, an individual search by a journalist trying to understand some aspect of 9/11. Mr. Friedman's quest is twofold: "First, what motivated those 19 young men, those hijackers, to board those planes and kill 3,000 of my brothers and sisters? And second, why did so many of their fellow Arabs and Muslims applaud what they did?" His approach is measured and thoughtful as he travels to Belgium, Egypt, Bahrain, Indonesia, even to the studio of Al Jazeera television in Qatar. ("I, little Tommy Friedman, Jewish boy from Minneapolis, have been interviewed" on Al Jazeera, he says. "They get in my face, and I get back in theirs.")

Dyab Abou Jahjah, a young Muslim leader in Belgium, offers one root of 9/11: he says the United States has been supporting bullies in the Middle East for 50 years. Mr. Friedman's friend Rami Khouri, a Jordanian writer, tells him he thinks the United States has a "hypocritical policy and applies one standard here," another there. In Cairo, walking in the old neighborhood of Mohamed Atta, a leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Friedman and Ali Salem, a playwright, talk about Mr. Salem's idea that in Egypt art, education and the economy had been leveled, making the hijackers feel like dwarfs. Consequently, they searched for tall buildings to bring down.

Throughout the program, produced by New York Times Television, Mr. Friedman returns to a softly lighted room and a comfortable chair, which paces the hour effectively, making it easy to absorb the ideas and information being presented. . ."