A Moslem Voice Speaks Truth

The PBS website has an interview with one Mamoun Abdelali who speaks of what it is like to grow up Moslem in France, poor, disenfranchised, with no real hope for a bright future. He tells of countless young people abandoned by their own local Moslem clerics who are then left to form a quasi-counterculture of their own without any real moral or true Islamic compass to guide them. So how DO they find direction? Al Qaeda seeks them out at mosques and markets and schools and private living rooms and anywhere else they can be tracked down. Young people are selected and then profiled for their "terrorist potential" before being approached. Then they are seduced by favors and money. Mr. Abdelali says the lure is understandable. One day, you are a juvenile delinquent detached from the society where you live but you still know it is wrong to steal cars (even if you do it, anyway) and the next day you have powerful friends with a twisted version of a religion you don't even know that well and those "friends" are now telling you that all criminal behavior, car stealing, arson, even murder are now to be considered acts of worship to Allah. How very empowering and validating that must feel to that young person. Mr. Abdelali seems to think that this force may now be unstoppable. He fears for the future of Europe. READ HIS INTERVIEW HERE.