The case for rehabilitation of terrorist detainees

Whitney Ellsworth has recently drawn our attention to an interesting article on “deprogramming� of terrorist detainees in Singapore: “The best guide for Gitmo? Look at Singapore,� published in Sunday Outlook of The Washington Post, May 17, 2009. The author, William Dobson, is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The question presented, of course, is whether the Obama administration, faced with the prospect of eventually releasing hundreds of detainees from Guantanamo and other prisons and “black sites� around the world, can learn something from the current experience in Singapore of the Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG), which is trying to “de-program� several dozen previously arrested members of an extremist militant group, Jemaah Islamiyah, by returning to basic religious principles of mainstream Islam. The RRG works not only with individual detainees, but also with their families, especially wives, to prevent “backsliding,� or wrong lessons being passed to future generations. Sidney Jones, a longtime advocate for human rights in Southeast Asia, now at the International Crisis Group, calls this aspect a “stroke of genius.�

The short answer to whether we can learn something from Singapore is “Yes, we can.� The longer, more complex answer, however, is how we go about it. Here’s an anecdotal story about the complexity of what we have to do, and why we have to do it.

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When in 1985 the World Health Organization assigned me to its Regional Office in Alexandria, Egypt, as “Director of Support Program� for the 23 mostly Islamic countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, I realized that as an American I knew and understood practically nothing about the culture and religion of those we were meant to serve. The same was true of many medical and other professionals drawn from outside the region. Therefore, after consultation with political, professional and religious leaders, WHO/EMRO helped sponsor an unheralded two-year study by religious scholars, drawn from around the world, to better understand and reach consensus on the health and moral principles taught by the Prophet Mohammed as recorded in the Holy Koran.

We innocents were in for a big and welcome surprise. As it turns out, the Koran contains many valuable prescriptions for hygienic behavior, from frequent washing to good nutrition and proper handling of babies. And much, much more. WHO’s Regional Office followed up by helping to ensure that these health messages were transmitted through the mosques, senior councils, men’s and women’s groups and associations, schools, clinics, community health workers, and all families in the community. WHO urged, sotto voce, that ordinary citizens be allowed and encouraged to dialogue with and “feed back� to political and religious leaders, in the framing of basic religious values in Islam. It worked. And we learned a lot.

A measurable example of this success was the extraordinary reduction throughout much of the Middle East in the practice of medically unsafe forms of female circumcision, that is, genital mutilation — a practice it turns out Mohammed opposed.

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The Koran, like the Bible, provides plenty of opportunity for fanatical fundamentalist misinterpretation. For example, in the oft-quoted situation in the Koran when the Prophet urges the faithful to “kill the infidels,� it is on the eve of battle with a particular foe. It’s a matter of context. Thus, when Shakespeare’s Henry V urges his English soldiers, on the eve of the battle of Agincourt, to “kill Frenchmen,� it is not an all-time prescription. (The would-be authors of “Freedom Fries� may think so, but they are mistaken.)

In fact, the Koran, far more than the Jewish and Christian holy texts, presents very specific guidance on what is morally permissible or forbidden, in both peace and war. It’s not just “Thou shalt not kill,� which we so honor in the breach. Thus, in the Koran killing by poison, poisoning of wells and water, killing by fire, indiscriminate killing in the marketplace, killing of innocent bystanders — all these are expressly forbidden. When you stop to think about it, virtually every action taken by the terrorists on 9/11 was an express violation of the Koran and the teaching of the Prophet Mohammed. So, too, were our unprovoked invasion of Iraq, “Shock and Awe� bombing of civilians and the “War between Good and Evil,� as well as our subsequent torture and abuse of prisoners — practices specifically mentioned and outlawed by the Koran, but only inferentially forbidden by the Bible. These are the deceptions and hypocrisies that any “de-programming� program must address.

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Yes, a refocus on true Islam is needed. And Christianity, too. But as the WHO and Singapore experiences suggest, only religious leaders can have a chance of “de-programming� would-be fundamentalist fanatics. As one senior official said, “Once you have taken an oath to God, it will take another man of God to undo it.� We have to encourage our leaders of faith and reason to take a lead in the undoing. How great is this challenge?

The number of detainees still held by or for the United States is trivial compared with the hundreds of thousands of militant extremists today ready to give their lives in battle against “the great Satan,� “the empire of evil,� the United States of America. After all, what fires militants’ imagination and their determination is a reaction to the actions of a neo-conservative administration and a neo-Christian U.S. president who claimed that God told him to invade Iraq, resulting in the needless deaths of nearly 5,000 Americans, the deaths of over 500,000 innocent Iraqi bystanders, the wounding and disabling of over 1,500,000 men, women and children, the displacement of over 3,000,000 refugees, and destruction of their homes, the de-stabilization of the entire region, and the false imprisonment, torture and abuse of hundreds of Muslims.

Therefore, it is not enough to “rehabilitate� a few released detainees, one-by-one. Even the limited Singapore experience still requires thousands of hours of one-on-one counseling to reap a few dozen successes. What do we do about the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, who are allied against us? Can we deal with them one-on-one?

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No, what is required is that all major religions, including Islam, and most especially Christianity, undergo an extensive internal reassessment, redefinition and self-imposed reform. As the WHO experience suggests, this is not about a few outsiders preaching their brand of morality to the rest. It is about every scholar, every believer, every thinker re-examining his or her own belief system and then coming together with all humanity to seek common moral ground. They must rediscover the true and relevant moral teachings of Jesus Christ, the Prophet Mohammed, the Buddha, and other moralists, thinkers and reformers, agnostics, atheists and reformers throughout human history, to redefine the central moral principles for all mankind. It is not about “belief� in particular institutions, procedures or chosen bloodlines. It’s about more fundamental value questions: What is morality, why and how can we achieve it?

Yes, Singapore tells us that something is locally possible. That’s the good news. But the challenge today is more than that. It is nothing less than to initiate a moral reawakening in each and every one of us. We have to reach a basic, universal moral consensus, a global reformation and affirmation of what it means to be moral. It’s not just about “them.� It’s about “us.� That’s the answer to global terrorism.

Sharon resident Anthony Piel is a former director and legal counsel of the World Health Organization.