Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Old Habits Die Hard (and so do Infidels)

The Saudis claim their fingerpainting/Guitar Hero/chocolate pudding "rehab" program for hardened jihadis has an "80 per cent" success rate. One of the 20 percenters who went right back to his old habits: former Gitmo inmate Mohamed al-Awfi. From Foreign Policy:

...Back in late 2007, Awfi and his fellow Guantánamo detainees spent several months in the Care Center, taking courses in Islamic law, history, anger management, and art therapy. No longer detainees, they were renamed, in the official parlance of the program, "beneficiaries." They played ping-pong, ate lavish meals of lamb and rice, shared a locker room, and prayed together five times a day. Psychologist Otayan helped Awfi reintegrate with his family.

"He would come to me and say, 'My son, Sami, doesn't like me when I come to visit. What can I do?,'" Otayan says. "On another occasion, he told me one of his brothers had been killed in Afghanistan. He said he wanted to marry his brother's wife, to protect his brother's children. I told him it would hurt his own wife's feelings if he took a second wife. I told him to relax and be calm. He followed my advice."

By early 2008, Awfi had done his time at the center and was released. Then, during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, he had a revelation of sorts, according to a jihadi publication and his own subsequent confession: He decided he wanted to "glorify Islam" with violence and "join" his brother, whom he said was martyred in Afghanistan.
 Let's crunch the pluses and minuses of waging jihad, shall we? On the plus side, you get to "glorify Islam" and spend eternity doing all things you weren't allowed to do when you were alive--drinking, carousing and shtupping your brains out. Also--no more annoying fingerpainting and anger management classes. On the minus side...Off the top of my head I can't think of anything just now--nothing that comes close to the boozing, carousing and shtupping, I mean.

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