Another Muslim departs from the script
Jul 26, 2007 O Mores!
The re-humanization of public Islam:
The widow of the leader of the 2005 London subway bombings said she was ashamed of her husband, and could understand if some people never forgave him.Hasina Patel, the wife of Mohammed Sidique Khan, told Sky News television in an interview released Friday that she still did not know why her husband blew himself up aboard a London subway train, killing six people and himself.
“How you can be so calculated and cold and not have any emotions, how can people do that?” Patel said. “If somebody did that to me or my daughter, I would never forgive them.”
How, indeed? Yet this frank, human reaction is newsworthy. If this trend continues, hopefully it won’t be — and it won’t be necessary.
UPDATE: Did I say “trend“? I did say “trend.”
UPDATE: And more:
The last time Ahmed al-Shayea was in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, being treated for severe burns from the truck bomb he had driven into the Iraqi capital on Christmas Day, 2004.
Today, he says, he has changed his mind about waging jihad, or holy war, and wants other young Muslims to know it. He wants them to see his disfigured face and fingerless hands, to hear how he was tricked into driving the truck on a fatal mission, to believe his contrition over having put his family through the agony of believing he was dead.
And yes, the fact that this rash of stories is appearing in the mainstream media now is, itself, newsworthy.
