It has come out that five Americans from Northern Virginia were arrested in Pakistan under suspicion of journeying there to join with Al-Qaeda and become jihadists.
Police in Pakistan Link 5 US Nationals to al-Qaida
Police in Pakistan say five American nationals they arrested this week in an eastern town have told interrogators they arrived in the country to join "jihad" or a holy war.
U.S and Pakistani officials are interrogating the detainees who are said to be in their 20s and come from northern Virginia. Local police say they the men were arrested at a house in the city of Sargodah and that all of them have admitted they had come to Pakistan for "jihad" or holy war.
The Washington Post has a bit more wrt to the timeline:
The arrested men, who range in age from 19 to 25, went overseas without telling their families in the Washington area, who grew concerned after a family member called one of them on his cellphone and "the conversation ended abruptly," said Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The council got the family members in touch with the FBI last week, and the families played the 11-minute English video for agents and Muslim leaders at a lawyer's office.
"I was very disturbed by the contents. . . . It made references to the ongoing conflicts in the world and that a Muslim has to do something about them," said Awad, who described the video as a "farewell" and said it showed "a profound misunderstanding and potential misuse of Koranic verses."
That isn't the whole story, though. It is possible this is just a big misunderstanding, fueled by the traditional media's feverish anti-Islamic bias:
The mother of one of the five young men arrested in Pakistan told CNN Thursday that her son was in that country to get married, not to plot terror attacks as Pakistani police have alleged.
Farouk said her son would never plot a terror attack. She described him as a business student at George Mason University in suburban Washington.
We all hope that this is the case, just a simple mix-up by an overzealous police.
But if it's not, it really does bring this question to a head: Why would a college student, an American citizen, want to throw away the American dream to become a terrorist? A business student, too. While I don't have anything against people who pursue business degrees, it's hardly a radical field of study.
Is this a case of the lack of solid health insurance not allowing people to get the psychological care they need? Talking your problems out with a trained (and right now too often prohibitively expensive) therapist instead of the sad alternative of letting the problems fester and grow until you turn violent.
I guess I'm just disappointed that anyone would turn to violence against innocent people. I'm disappointed in the United States not taking itself to task for its wanton violence against innocents, but also disappointed that terrorists, homegrown or not, believe that similar violence against innocents will solve anything.