Stockholm Syndrome.... With Al Qaeda Impossible.

"Inevitably, and always surprisingly, I am asked whether I came to “like” any of our captors. Usually this is at least in part a query about whether we were to any extent afflicted with the much-documented Stockholm syndrome, whereby captives come to empathize with their captors. I’m afraid, though, that the answer is neither nuanced nor complicated. The gulf between who and what they are—between their beliefs, methods, and purposes and mine—was simply too wide to allow for any possibility of friendship or empathy. After seven years as a hostage of Islamic jihad in Lebanon, Terry Anderson nailed it just right when he replied to the same line of questioning by saying that the minds of his captors were alien to him. We spent the lion’s share of our time in captivity with Omar One. He had an intriguing background and was an entertaining storyteller, but how could that trump the fact that he had constantly threatened our lives and caused us and our families to suffer such extreme anxiety? How could we be friendly with a rabid zealot who almost frothed at the mouth in one discussion about the United Nations, as he spoke longingly of donning the “martyr’s vest” and joining a meeting of international delegates discussing woman’s rights and equality between the sexes? One who was sufficiently unhinged to espouse a version of the infamous “blood libel,” an anti-Semitic calumny that dates back to the first century? Omar’s version launched from the unfortunate contemporary fiasco that resulted in the government of Chad taking legal proceedings against six members of the French NGO L’Arche de Zoé in 2007 for abducting over a hundred children. With flagrant disregard for just about everything, the NGO had taken children from the war-torn areas of eastern Chad and Darfur, supposedly but not necessarily orphans, and sought to dispatch them to “good homes” in France. This, sadly, is more or less fact. According to Omar, however, their real purpose was to import young Muslim children from Darfur and Chad to be sacrificed in secret Jewish blood ceremonies. He told us—and there is no question in my mind but that this lycée-educated, well-travelled, multilingual individual believed every word—that these children were placed in transparent drums on a stage before rapt audiences of Jews across Europe. Spikes would then be introduced into the barrels until they reached the children, and as the poor wretches writhed in an effort to escape, more spikes would be added. As the barrels slowly filled with blood it would be siphoned off by ingenious plumbing to a bakery below the stage, where it would be added to matzo cakes to be consumed by the audience during dark religious rites. How could there be any kind of bond with people who thought like that?"
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)