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"Zarqawi Driven by Emotion," from Reuters, with thanks to Romy:
AMMAN, Jordan - During their years in a Jordanian prison, inmates remember Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in his Afghan dress weeping uncontrollably in the courtyard whenever he knelt to pray."Abu Musab cried constantly. He was very emotional, almost like a child," said 35-year-old Yousef Rababaa as he recalled the young militant.
Zarqawi, you big lug. All you need is a few hugs and you'll be ready to drop that AK-47.
Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born one-time street thug who is now the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is remembered as a gentle man obsessed with Islam's past glory.His intense loyalty, his former cellmates say, went hand in hand with a fanatical adherence to his religion.
He dreamed of an Islamic utopia where people would relive the puritanical lifestyle of the faith's early founders.
The Arab Bedouin whose fanaticism condones the killing of fellow Muslims and is blamed by Washington for the beheading of foreign captives and suicide bombings that have maimed and killed hundreds, was a gentle almost stoic figure, his cellmates remember.
Why do they describe this city kid as an "Arab Bedouin?" A gentle, stoic, weepy Arab Bedouin street thug, eh? Ah, the glorious complexity of Zarqawi!
But note his obsession with "Islam's past glory," and determination to restore it.
They say his ability to mesmerize the closest people around him was another facet of a shadowy elusive character who has so far evaded capture.Rababaa who left prison with Zarqawi after an amnesty in April 1999 recollects how Zarqawi stood out among his peers for his piety.
"Abu Musab would be as preoccupied with writing letter after letter to his old mother as spending long hours reciting the Koran," said Rababaa.
It was piety of an extreme nature that molded Zarqawi's militancy, according to Islamists and experts who follow many of the young adherents of the Salafi brand of Islamist jihadis....
Another cellmate, Khaled Abu Doma, 36, recalled the young Zarqawi's long days spent kneeling with another inmate on a mat in the prison courtyard as he patiently helped him memorize verse after verse from the Koran....
Funny how this gentle, tear-streaked stoic missed all the gentle verses about peace and harmony while he was memorizing the Qur'an. Funny how so many millions of Muslims seem to miss them.
Posted by Robert at April 7, 2005 8:35 AM
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If Zarqawi is gentle, apparently "gentle" has a different meaning in Islam that it does for us in the West.
Posted by: epg![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 7, 2005 9:48 AM
I'm not a psychiatrist, but his conduct reeks of various psych disorders, just like his dear Prophet.
Strange how some people can be mezmerized by obvious lunatics. I was married to a manic depressive and found his behaviour and utterances anything but magnetic.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at April 7, 2005 10:17 AM
waterdragon, you're dead on. This is classic pathological behavior, and it's a dead giveaway that Zarqawi is no terrorist mastermind, no evil genius, but a psychopathic street thug who found his niche.
Posted by: longtime lurker at April 7, 2005 10:35 AM
Zarqawi is a great reminder that Allah is indeed all merciful, most compassionate and oft forgiving. Unfortunatly, one of the worse things that can happen to a person is for Zarqawi to award him/her Allahs mercy. " To be under the permanent protection", of Zarqawi, is about the same as mid ages people being under the "permanent protection" of the Church. It meant that you got to live in a dungeon and be tortured daily before they killed you in some grotesque manner. This just proves that religious fervour without a lid on it, is dangerous no matter what name it goes by.
If a fanatic like Zarqawi or Mohammad combine their personal psychosis with religious ideaology, you got trouble. There is nothing quite like a psychopathic paranoid, who talks to God and God talks back to him. No doubt about it, when God says, "strike that man down", it's time to strike that man down. Fortunatly, most of these people are locked up, but some are clever, able to plot and plan, and are loose in the public. Zarqawi/Mohammad/psychotic/dangerous...a lot in common, but nothing edifying,or enobeling...rolling around in Islamodirt and lusting after your victims is not nobel, nor virtuous. Thats not a good path, but it is the one they are on....
at April 7, 2005 12:22 PM
waterdragon, you hit the nail on the head. He does sound a lot like old muhamMAD.
Posted by: Carolyn2 at April 7, 2005 12:52 PM
only in islam can you be a homicidal maniac and still be gentle.
Another sept 11 and the middle east will become the worlds largest glass factory.
Posted by: Pegcity at April 7, 2005 3:19 PM
Just printing such a pile of crap shows what a bunch of wankers the people at Reuters are. Maybe this piece was secretly written by someone at Al Jazeera... or maybe not.
Posted by: disillusionised_german at April 7, 2005 6:03 PM
If Zarqawi's many victims could speak, how would they describe their Killer !! Gentle...HA Ha. It is well known Psychopaths cry easily to delude intended victims also themselves as NOTHING IS EVER THEIR FAULT. A Psychopath on his own is bad enough but mixed with Islam is a lethal combination. Something which Zarqawi frequently demonstrates sawing off Infidel heads with blunt knives. Having watched two videos of man himself doing this only hope they catch him soon. He is a disgusting example of Islamic Head Hacker!!
Posted by: Morgane at April 7, 2005 6:51 PM
There's another class of people who cry easily, have low emotional thresholds, and experience emotional lability; these are patients who have had certain kinds of encephalitis. The infection, depending on what kind and how severe it was, and just which part of the brain was affected, leaves the patient with a decreased ability to modulate his emotions. If the patient was religious prior to the infection, then the intensity of his emotions vis a vis religion is often profoundly increased.
If these descriptions are accurate, this man's behavior is consistent with someone who is post-encephalitic.
Does anyone have his medical history? If any of his behavior is actually related to a bout of encephalitis, then it could be useful in creating a darned interesting sting operation. He may be smart, but this kind of impulsivity, poorly controlled emotionality, and intense religiosity could definitely be useful in manipulating his behavior.
Posted by: cubed at April 7, 2005 8:04 PM
waterdragon 52 & cubed-
Two DSM bullseyes!
I hope this psychological line on Zarqawi is being studied by MI.6 and the CIA, etc., since, as these posters have recognized, Zarq exhibits traits similar to many older-styled maniacs, especially the obsessiveness with his mother.
This may be a key to finding and getting rid of him.
Play up the Oedipal angle.
He sounds like a 'momma's boy' gone rotten.
And he mesmerizes himself (to submerge his inferiority complex and reinforce his delusions of grandeur) to explosive madness through compulsive memorization -known in the field as "self-stimming" (stimulation).
The climactic scene in the classic James Cagney film "White Heat" may be instructive... as the malignant mamma's boy goes out in a blaze of fire, screaming:
"Top of the world, ma! Top of the world!"
Zarqawi is a boil in need of lancing. An Oedipus blinding others because he is too cowardly to tear out his own eyes. (What DID he do to his mother?)
I would guess him to be a sadistic catamite-in-denial or a religiously self-made eunuch.
Let the Serial Killer Profilers take note.
And catch this scum before his compulsion forces him to find (denied) erotic release in another 'beheading'.
(HOW Freudian.)
Posted by: BigSleep at April 7, 2005 10:30 PM
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