https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... eturn-home
Quote:
Once one of Isis’s most prominent online agitators who took to social media to call for the blood of Americans to be spilled, Hoda Muthana, 24, claims to have made a “big mistake” when she left the US four years ago and says she was brainwashed into doing so online.
Speaking from al-Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria, while her 18-month-old son played at her feet, Muthana said she misunderstood her faith, and that friends she had at the time believed they were following Islamic tenets when they aligned themselves to Isis.
“We were basically in the time of ignorance […] and then became jihadi, if you like to describe it that way,” she said. “I thought I was doing things correctly for the sake of God.”
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Muthana fled her home and took a flight to Turkey in November 2014 after several months of planning, which she kept secret from her family.
She settled into the Syrian city of Raqqa, then one of Isis’s two main hubs – the other being Mosul in Iraq – where she married an Australian jihadist, Suhan Rahman, the first of her three husbands.
Rahman was killed in the town of Kobanî, and soon afterwards Muthana angrily tweeted: “Americans wake up! Men and women altogether. You have much to do while you live under our greatest enemy, enough of your sleeping! Go on drivebys, and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them. Veterans, Patriots, Memorial, etc day … Kill them.”
For many months in 2015, her Twitter feed was full of bloodcurdling incitement, and she says she remained a zealot until the following year. She now says her account was taken over by others.
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I turned to my religion and went in too hard. I was self-taught and thought whatever I read, it was right.
“I look back now and I think I was very arrogant. Now I’m worried about my son’s future. In the end I didn’t have many friends left, because the more I talked about the oppression of Isis the more I lost friends. I was brainwashed once and my friends are still brainwashed.”
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Muthana describes her experience with Isis as “very mind-blowing”. “It was like a movie. You read one book and think you know everything. I’m really traumatised by my experience. We starved and we literally ate grass.”
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Muthana said she had not been in contact with US officials since her capture. “I would tell them please forgive me for being so ignorant, and I was really young and ignorant and I was 19 when I decided to leave. I believe that America gives second chances. I want to return and I’ll never come back to the Middle East. America can take my passport and I wouldn’t mind.”
So, should she be allowed to return, here?
Should she be tried for treason, or get a free pass cuz she was a "kid" and didn't know any better?
What if it is her TRUE plan to return, here, recruit others, and return THERE?
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White female; age 59; diagnosed Aspie.
I use caps for emphasis----I'm NOT angry or shouting. I use caps like others use italics, underline, or bold.
"What we know is a drop; what we don't know, is an ocean." (Sir Isaac Newton)
20 Feb 2019, 1:11 pm
