Monday, April 20, 2009
And here I thought jihadis were all about the virgins
It turns out that the prostitutes are the most helpful snitches in Baghdad.
“They’re the best sources we have,” said the detective. “They know everything about JAM and al-Qaida members,” he said, referring to Jaish al-Mahdi or Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia.
Richard Fernandez:
Although there are doubtless men who are motivated primarily by religious texts, I think they are outnumbered by those who have found religion to be the perfect cover under which to advance simpler ambitions for power and worldly desire.
This rarely comes as a surprise to the police. But it often comes as a complete shock to academics who believe what they read. Having found a reference to a Quranic text in a terrorist screed, they find it impossible, on aesthetic grounds, to imagine that the line might have been inserted into the communique in a dimly lit nightclub, mostly as a joke on academics and media anchormen, rather than on a windswept, desert mountain top.
Of course, there are bound to be pious and devoted jihadis not given to whoring and drinking and such. In general, though, history teaches that professional soldiers who take pride in their craft are far more decently behaved than zealous amateurs, whether on duty or off.
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