Or is he just trying to get out of Guantanamo? “Hicks sheds his Islamic beliefs,” from Reuters, with thanks to all who sent this in:
AUSTRALIA’S Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks is no longer a Muslim.
Hick was also publicly denounced by an al-Qaeda member at Guantanamo Bay for his lack of religious observance, a former British detainee has said.
Rumours that Hicks had abandoned his Islamic beliefs were confirmed by British Muslim Moazzam Begg.
Mr Begg shared a cell block with Hicks at the US military base in Cuba in 2004.
Mr Begg, who was released in January last year after the British government intervened, wrote about his experiences in a new book, Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim’s Journey to Guantanamo and Back.
Mr Begg wrote that Uthman al-Harbi complained that Dawood, the name is Arabic for David, which Hicks adopted after converting to Islam in 1999, had not fasted during Ramadan.
He also wrote that Hicks had not prayed with others or undertaken his “duties”.
“I wouldn’t describe him as a dedicated Muslim,” Mr Begg said to The Age.
“I don’t think he was before and he certainly isn’t now.”