Ex-jihadis

[mindstalk]

jsnead summarizes an article about various British ex-Jihadis and how they got that way. Good stuff. A few quotes:

{But there was an inhibiting sympathy for the victims of 9/11 -- until
the Bush administration began to respond with Guantanamo Bay and bombs.
"That made it much easier. After that, I could persuade people a lot
faster." }
{"Nobody ever said " you're equal to us, you're one of us, and we'll
hold you to the same standards," says Husain. "Nobody had the courage to
stand up for liberal democracy without qualms. When people like us at
[Newham] College were holding events against women and against gay
people, where were our college principals and teachers, challenging us?"
}
{Every one of them said the Bush administration's response to 9/11
-- from Guantanamo to Iraq -- made jihadism seem more like an accurate
description of the world.}
{But the converse was -- they stressed -- also true. When they saw
ordinary Westerners trying to uphold human rights, their jihadism began
to stutter. Almost all of them said that they doubted their Islamism
when they saw a million non-Muslims march in London to oppose the Iraq
War}