13 September 2004
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From the Editor…
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Cover story
Can Islam change?
Beslan and 9/11 are leading millions of Muslims to search their souls. Even clerics now question the harshest traditional laws and look for a more humane interpretation of their faith
Features
Special report - A president craves understanding
"Would you like it if people who shoot children in the back come to power, anywhere on this planet?" Vladimir Putin gives our political editor a homily, over tea and fruit cake. By John Kampfner in Russia
Suppose a new 9/11 hit America . . .
By Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group and senior fellow at the World Policy Institute
More voices from the Muslim world
Interviews via phone and e-mail
For Allah and the caliphate
Hizb ut-Tahrir, with its millions of Muslim followers, is accused in the US of being a conveyor belt for terrorists. But how dangerous is it really? Shiv Malik reports
Where Brits are the new imperialists
It's not just US multinationals that trample on other people's cultures. In Dublin's fair city, Tesco, Boots, the Sun and Walkers crisps are taking over. What ever would Eamon de Valera make of it?
''In prison, I was lowest of the low''
Viv Groskop talks to Angela Cannings, one of three mothers last year cleared of multiple baby murders, and asks if she can ever repair her shattered life
How to tame capitalism
William Davies on Labour's plans for a new breed of company that can make profits to serve the community
If it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it
The UN is the only global forum for rich and poor nations alike. Yet shabby and undermined by the US, it has limped into the 21st century. Tom Freke asks if it has a future
Regulars
The Politics Column
Politics - John Kampfner drags politics further into the mire
The great and the good denounce journalists for dragging politics into the mire. If only they knew. The lobby works in perfect harmony with the various new Labour factions
Darcus Howe credits the women fighting gun crime
Another funeral, but mothers and sisters are fighting black-on-black gun crime
Mark Kermode - Visual feast
An educational documentary with a car-crash-style allure. By Mark Kermode Super Size Me (12A)
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
Spiralling into oblivion
Plans for a radical new extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum have been mothballed. It's a wasted opportunity on a grand scale and the V&A is to blame
Not so kind to Libeskind
Architecture - So the Spiral is dead. The reputation of its architect is also on the decline. Grant Gibson reports
The art of blaggin'
Private view - The contemporary artist Russell Thoburn regularly pretends to be someone else to gain entry to the rarefied British art world. Here he reveals the tricks of his trade
An eye for pictures
Visual arts - The Evening Standard's late film critic has left the nation a marvellous collection
Television
Andrew Billen - Sick joke
Television - A surreal hospital sitcom will not save Friday nights, writes Andrew Billen Green Wing (Channel 4)
The Fan
The fan - Hunter Davies is in with the quality at Carlisle United
I'm in with the quality at Carlisle United, the Man U of the Conference league
Books
Too clever by half. Even the left now despises intellectuals. We value knowledge only when it can be used to achieve something else, whether it is social cohesion or economic production. So the thinker has given way to the expert, and politics to technocracy
Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? Frank Furedi Continuum, 176pp, £12.99 ISBN 0826467695
One hundred years of Sodom
Lascivious Bodies:a sexual history of the 18th century Julie Peakman Atlantic Books, 348pp, £16.99 ISBN 1843541564
Eastern promise
Spice: the history of a temptation Jack Turner HarperCollins, 409pp, £25 ISBN 000257067X
Us and them
Do Animals Think? Clive D L Wynne Princeton University Press, 268pp, £17.95 ISBN 0691113114 The Pig Who Sang to the Moon Jeffrey Masson Jonathan Cape, 287pp, £17.99
The democrats of the high seas
Villains of All Nations: Atlantic pirates in the golden age Marcus Rediker Verso, 240pp, £18.99 ISBN 1844670082
Aids to recovery
The $800 Million Pill: the truth behind the cost of new drugs Merrill Goozner University of California Press, 297pp, £16.95 ISBN 0520239458
Fiction - Off the wagon
Paradise A L Kennedy Jonathan Cape, 344pp, £14.99 ISBN 0224062581
Class conscious - Andrew Martin advises care when on local radio
He devoted his youth to escaping from his home town. Now he must go back
