A Canadian family that has long denied ties to Al Qaeda now admits that they are not only terrorists but believe it’s noble for them to die for the cause. Abdurahman Khadr admitted to CBC-TV’s The National Wednesday that some of his brothers and father fought as Al Qaeda terrorists and that they even stayed with Osama bin Laden. And his mother and sister, interviewed in Pakistan, said they were proud of their family’s connection to the terrorists behind the September 2001 attacks. "Until now everybody says we are an Al Qaeda connected family but when I say this, just by me saying it, I just admitted we are an Al Qaeda family. We had connections to Al Qaeda," Abdurahman Khadr said in Toronto. "My family in Pakistan will never admit this. They will deny it." But his mother and sister proudly admit to being adherents of the group, while admitting they were never really accepted by either the terrorists or western society.
Abdurahman Khadr, who was released from the U.S. jail and eventually returned to Toronto last year, says he wants to be a peaceful Muslim. He said he was "raised to become an Al Qaeda, was raised to become a suicide bomber, was raised to become a bad person. I decided on my own that I do not want to be that. I want to be a good, strong, civilized, peaceful Muslim."
Ahmed Said Khadr’s wife, Maha, and 23-year-old daughter, Zaynab, say that he was proud to die as a martyr, a soldier of Islam. "We believe that death comes when God had planned it, before He created the humanity, it’s planned, so I just accept, — but it hurt," Maha said.
Not as much as it hurt him, I hope... Gut shot... Holed up in a rathole... The sun beating down... No water...
"We can't get close to the rathole, captain-sahib!"
"Then burn 'im out!"
"Mahmoud! Light the torches! We're gonna do roasty-toasty!" |
"We believe dying by the hand of your enemy," Zaynab told CBC. "My father had always wished that he would be killed... he would be killed for the sake of Allah. I remember when we were very young he would say, if you guys love me, pray for me that I get jihaded, which is killed."
| And make it slow and painful, wouldja? |
Maha said she would be happy if her children died the same way. "You know we are promised that we go to heaven," she says.
| You can leave any time... |
Zaynab says: "I’d love to die like that. I’d love my daughter to die, even if (it is) simple, very simple, naive."
| Look on the bright side: in Pakland, you stand a good chance of that. |
Abdullah, 22, escaped the fighting that killed his father and paralysed his brother because he was away from the house. He says his father talked about becoming a martyr. "Dying for Islam is hopeful for every Muslim," Abdullah said in Pakistan. "Everybody loves to die for his religion. Every Muslim dreams of being a shaheed for Islam, like you die for your religion. Everybody dreams of this, even a Christian would like to die for their religion."
| I've never felt the urge to die for agnosticism... |
Abdurahman Khadr said his family knew bin Laden and lived at the terrorist leader’s compound in Pakistan in the 1990s. The Al Qaeda leader later attended the wedding of the daughter in September 1999, said the family. "He never jokes, very quiet person, very polite," Abdullah Khadr said of bin Laden.
| "... no senzayuma at all. None." |
"He can be a saint, something like a saint. I see him as a very peaceful man."
| Laid out with a lily is the kind of "peaceful" I'm interested in for him... |
Abdurahman Khadr’s reluctance to follow the stern Muslim strictures imposed in the bin Laden compound caused increasing tension with his father. He said his father tried three times to persuade him to become a suicide bomber, sitting him down with a radical cleric in the bin Laden camp and telling him the sacrifice would make him the pride of the family. "I was totally against it. I don’t believe in blowing myself up and killing innocent people," Abdurahman said.
| "Killing innocent people's okay, but blowing myself up — do I look like I'm nuts?" |
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