The Islamist ideology, which has spawned terrorist movements that increasingly threaten political liberty and and religious freedom across the globe, is seldom confronted directly in the current media, for reasons I won’t go into here.
But inevitably the Islamist extremists themselves, by means of the essentially fraudulent nature of their belief system, produce a counternarrative to their own rhetoric about purity, mercy, and love.
As a recent example, see the photo above, which shows British suicide bomber Abdul Waheed Majeed, posing with Syrian children at a refugee camp. Majeed, married and a father himself, reportedly sent this photo to his family of three children in England from Syria, according to the London Evening Standard. After leaving his home in Sussex for Syria about six months ago, the Guardian reported, Majeed detonated in an Al Nusrah Front suicide assault in Aleppo on Feb. 6.
Majeed was no disadvantaged cave-dweller or brainwashed teen, but rather, a 41-year-old British-born UK resident and an accomplished, literate student of radical Islam. English was his native language and he did not speak Arabic comfortably. Growing up in the UK, he must have been taught about Western values, including human rights and the rule of law — but just as clearly rejected them.
The Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, has established outreach programs and schools for children, as it tries to groom another generation for the jihadist ranks. The students will undoubtedly not be instructed in the fatal contradictions between the extremists’ rhetoric and their conduct.
