It has just been revealed that “Jihadi John” is a Kuwaiti-born man who lived in London named Mohammed Emwazi. The fact that he was the one seen many times as a masked man in the execution videos prompted many questions like, how can this happen? Why did he join ISIS? Is it really even him? London-based human rights and Muslim advocacy organizations have been saying that they cannot be 100% sure that it is actually him in the video. Why did he join? Some people think that his path is one that has led to extremism for many years. Closer friends relate it back to a time when he hit his head really hard on a post and after that major injury he was never the same. Some friends said that he took a trip to Tanzania and was supposed to go to the safari, but was detained upon arrival. They say he was also detained in Britain in 2010 by counterterrorism officials.
This news is frightening to a lot of people because they see that an ordinary citizen of London joined ISIS. People are seeing for the first time that ISIS is not just a group of barbaric terrorists who are primal and driven by violence. This man has a degree in computer programming from the University of Westminster. This is an educated, middle class, normal man that never seemed to have any frightening qualities that indicated he would want to be part of a group like ISIS. Now that he has been identified of course all of his friends say he had extremist qualities, but nobody would have seen it coming before he was identified. People are frightened by this and rightfully so, it goes to show that it doesn’t take a barbaric simpleton to join a group like ISIS.
Article: http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/middleeast/isis-jihadi-john-identity/index.html
Brad Munson
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