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Terror Networks
Holy War 101
2003-11-24
EFL. Hat tip LGF
Dec. 1 issue — Abdul Bari’s school day begins at 4 a.m. The freckle-faced, outgoing 9-year-old, an Afghan poppy farmer’s son, wakes up on the tile floor he shares with four dozen other students at the Jamia Uloom Islamia religious academy, in the untamed mountains of Pakistan’s tribal areas. After morning prayer services, he fixes tea for the older boys and himself, eating a bit of bread before classes start at daybreak. Students spend most of the day reciting the Qur’an; memorizing every one of its 6,666 verses is the main requirement for graduation. Still, this madrassa is the only formal schooling most of these boys will ever have. So they learn civics from a white-bearded scholar named Amanullah, 65, who teaches them about the Taliban. “There was a real Islamic regime,” the old man says. “They fixed 25 years of problems in no time, using Islamic laws.”
6666 verses, eh? They’re one on Nicolae Carpathia.
ANOTHER FACULTY member, Mullah Taj Mohammad, 40, gives a current-events lesson, warning of the evils that lurk in non-Islamic lands: “I’ve heard that many Muslim girls have infidel boyfriends—and clink glasses of alcohol with Jews.” That’s not the worst of it, he says: “Americans are killing Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they are busy trying to poison Muslim minds everywhere with films, music and television.” Abdul is an eager learner. He dreams of enlisting in the jihad against Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed president, Hamid Karzai. “Karzai is a killer of Muslims,” the boy says. “When I grow up I’ll fight him, and then we’ll see who’s a man and who’s a woman.”
Ummm... Yeah. Have you filled out your organ donor card? And your advance directives?
The Afghan war, code-named Operation Enduring Freedom, is getting nastier. In the last six months—the bloodiest period since the Taliban’s fall in late 2001—hundreds of people have been killed, many of them civilians, including two foreign relief officials and nearly a dozen Afghans working for international agencies. Last week the United Nations announced that it was suspending its refugee-repatriation pro—gram and pulling all foreign workers out of southeastern Afghanistan. “We’re going to have to refight Enduring Freedom because we didn’t finish the job,” predicts retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of U.S. Central Command.
Posted by:Atrus

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