I bring you my boo-freakin’-hoo moment of the day, courtesy of Esquire writer Tom Junod’s nauseating profile of John Walker Lindh a/k/a “Suleyman al-Faris” a/k/a “Abdul Hamid a/k/a “Hamza.” Junod laments an order forbidding Lindh/al-Faris/Hamid/Hamza from speaking Arabic and describes his typical day in prison:

At seven o’clock in the morning he goes to work in the library. It is not a job that most other inmates want, but it suits Hamza, because all Hamza does is read and study. He reads and studies so much that people have to stop him from reading and studying, and sometimes his only respite comes when the brother who makes the prayer call comes for him and brings him to the chap- el. He cannot speak Arabic, he cannot pray in Arabic, but he can read Arabic. He can read the Koran and he can read, in his father’s words, “five-hundred-year-old Arabic texts,” and they are his sustenance, although according to Shakeel Syed, “he has lost some of his spoken fluency.” Still: Arabia, pronounced Ar-a-bee-uh. That’s what the brothers call Arabic, their slang for the divine language. As in: “Hamza? No, you can’t do nothing to Hamza. Nothing fazes him. He just sits there reading that Arabia….”

His diet is what’s called common fare, which is the institutional attempt to accommodate all prisoners with dietary restrictions. Hamza is a good cook, though, and often he and some of the brothers skip the meat and make their own meals with the common-fare vegetables and sardines they buy at the commissary. After dinner, there is time to relax, although for Hamza relaxation often means listening to Islamic audiotapes and watching Islamic videos. Ten o’clock is the count, when every prisoner must be in his cell before the doors close. And then, slowly, there is the sound of surrender, the sound of men drop- ping off to sleep, even Hamza, until midnight. That’s when he wakes up for his last prayer, an optional prayer, a prayer that God does not require but is delighted to receive. The prayer is called the tahajjud. It is a prayer through which the Muslim speaks to God most intimately. A sleeping man must wake himself up, and Hamza wakes himself up. And now, when he is obliged to show his deepest heart to God, the one thing his Muslim brothers can’t imagine him doing is asking God how he might have lived his life differently.

Whatever sympathy there was for Lindh was based on the idea that he was an idealist, and therefore a fool. That he took a wrong turn. That he was a starry-eyed kid, in over his head. That he was looking for his Muslim merit badge. That he stumbled and bumbled his way into Afghanistan. The problem with this idea is that it sells John Walker Lindh short. It doesn’t give him credit for his sense of purpose or his vast reserves of will. It doesn’t give him credit for what it took to get to Afghanistan, much less what it took for him to get back to America.

Th title of Junod’s piece? “Innocent.”

Never mind that Lindh/al-Faris/Hamid/Hamza pleaded guilty to taking up arms and serving in the Taliban.

Hey. Here’s an idea. How about Esquire profile true American innocents caught in the conflict between Islam and the West? Let’s see. Maybe Tom Junod can chronicle a day in the life of Johnny Micheal Spann’s widow and children.

Spann is the slain CIA officer and former Marine Corps artillery specialist who interrogated Lindh in Afghanistan before being killed in a Taliban prison revolt where Lindh was captured.

Spare your tears for Americans who deserve it.

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Flashback:

12/20/05 The whine of an American jihadist

Honor Mike Spann

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