A Gentle Man, a Humanitarian

The press fawns over this man, calling him gentle and pious.

He is apparently a true humanitarian.

Am I speaking of the Pope?

No, of course not! Since this article comes from Reuters , it emanates from a bizarro parallel universe, and its sympathy and admiration is heaped on arch-terrorist al-Zarqawi!

This enemy propaganda, transmitted over the wires to Western newspapers, is part of the public relations assault on our civilization, with seditious Reuters as its agent.

We won't really know we've turned the corner in this struggle until the crimes of sedition and treason start to be actually taken seriously and punished severely.

Suleiman al-Khalidi "reports" to us:

AMMAN, Jordan (Reuters) - During their years in a Jordanian prison, inmates remember Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in his Afghan dress weeping uncontrollably in the courtyard whenever he knelt to pray.

"Abu Musab cried constantly. He was very emotional, almost like a child," said 35-year-old Yousef Rababaa as he recalled the young militant.

How can we dare persecute this poor, childlike sympathetic character?

Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born one-time street thug who is now the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is remembered as a gentle man obsessed with Islam's past glory.

His intense loyalty, his former cellmates say, went hand in hand with a fanatical adherence to his religion.

He dreamed of an Islamic utopia where people would relive the puritanical lifestyle of the faith's early founders.

Ah, the sensitive, gentle dreamer, just trying to bring about a utopia!

The Arab Bedouin whose fanaticism condones the killing of fellow Muslims and is blamed by Washington for the beheading of foreign captives and suicide bombings that have maimed and killed hundreds, was a gentle almost stoic figure, his cellmates remember.

Note the "blamed by Washington", which puts the issue in doubt; never mind the pronouncements of Zarqawi himself!

They say his ability to mesmerize the closest people around him was another facet of a shadowy elusive character who has so far evaded capture.

And now the mystery, the romance, the intrigue! The wily admirable trickster!

Rababaa who left prison with Zarqawi after an amnesty in April 1999 recollects how Zarqawi stood out among his peers for his piety.

"Abu Musab would be as preoccupied with writing letter after letter to his old mother as spending long hours reciting the Koran," said Rababaa.

A model human being! A real humanitarian!

Another cellmate, Khaled Abu Doma, 36, recalled the young Zarqawi's long days spent kneeling with another inmate on a mat in the prison courtyard as he patiently helped him memorize verse after verse from the Koran.

Zarqawi would also wash other prisoners' clothes and scrub prison lavatories, chores which other prisoners usually shunned, Abu Doma said.

Why, the man's a veritable saint!

And now for the telling closing:

Shubailat, an advocate of non-violence and a parliamentary democracy to limit the Jordanian monarchy's extensive powers, recalled that the young militant's view of the world made him reject moderates like him.

"Zarqawi may be more faithful to the tenets of Islam, but he and his followers have gone astray in their search for the truth," Shubailat said as he recollected a morning when Zarqawi invited him for breakfast.

An admission, by a "moderate", that Zarqawi is indeed being a good Islamist -- he is indeed following its twisted "teachings" as mohammed intended them!