The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 53 ｜ The Truth About Jihad – From A Woman Who Escaped It ｜ Tania Joya

00:00:00.000 Today's guest promises to be one of the most riveting guests we have had.

00:00:05.760 It was six years ago.

00:00:07.660 The woman you're about to hear from dodged machine gun fire as she carried her three children while pregnant with a fourth across the Syrian border into Turkey.

00:00:18.160 Her husband, now the top ranking American commander in ISIS, paid a human trafficker to take his family to a bus stop.

00:00:27.520 From there, they were on their own.

00:00:30.000 This story is very complicated.

00:00:32.180 This mother of four small children was radicalized at a very young age.

00:00:37.620 She believed in jihad in the name of Allah, and it was her mission.

00:00:42.220 Her husband was an American from Texas.

00:00:45.220 He was her partner in terror, and they traveled the world hoping to recruit radicals while they raised their sons, same time to be holy warriors.

00:00:54.580 But something changed because while living here in America, he went to prison and a window opened.

00:01:02.360 Today's podcast asks several questions and attempts to have them answered.

00:01:07.140 What drives a young, intelligent, beautiful person to become radicalized?

00:01:12.080 And if it does happen, is it possible for that person to de-radicalize themselves and seek redemption?

00:01:18.900 This story is going to attempt to answer these questions.

00:01:22.000 It's not only a literal journey spanning multiple countries, multiple war zones, time zones, but it is also an internal journey of the mind and the heart as she grapples with breaking free of her radical ideology and extremist husband.

00:01:38.040 Today, she works with organizations to help counter violent extremists.

00:01:44.040 She uses her past experience to try to de-radicalize those that have become radicals.

00:01:50.100 She works in prisons.

00:01:51.660 She works with U.S. law enforcement.

00:01:54.360 Today's episode, The Islamic Terrorist's Wife.

00:02:08.040 So I want to get into your story from really the beginning.

00:02:17.000 But I have to address the elephant in the room first.

00:02:21.280 There are these ISIS wives, if you will, that we have seen that are trying to get back into their own country and be normalized.

00:02:29.560 And I haven't believed any of them.

00:02:31.880 I believe you, but I haven't believed any of them.

00:02:38.040 Why should anyone believe you?

00:02:42.720 I mean, your journey is night and day.

00:02:48.580 Why should they believe me?

00:02:50.520 Yeah.

00:02:52.920 I think I'm an open book.

00:02:58.880 I definitely am.

00:03:00.080 And the fact that I do criticize.

00:03:04.120 Now, see, it's a long story.

00:03:06.800 But originally, like, I started off being a teenager at 16 who was bullied at high school.

00:03:16.860 And I went through a mental breakdown with no therapy or counseling available to me.

00:03:24.220 And then I turned to religion.

00:03:27.860 So let's, so then, so, because if, I want to go through your story and maybe the way to believe you is just hear your whole story.

00:03:36.640 So, so let's, let's, instead of giving a real quick recap, let's start at the beginning.

00:03:44.560 Tanya, you were born in Great Britain.

00:03:47.180 Yes.

00:03:47.440 You were born and lived in a family.

00:03:51.720 Tell me about your family, mom and dad.

00:03:53.920 Yeah.

00:03:54.660 So I come from a Bangladeshi British family.

00:03:58.820 My grandfather moved to the UK in 1945.

00:04:03.160 Then he bought his, my mother over 10 years later.

00:04:07.140 They weren't, my parents, and then my, my dad came in the 70s, married my mom for a passport.

00:04:15.880 That's, that's pretty normal.

00:04:17.720 Yeah.

00:04:17.960 It's pretty acceptable in a Muslim culture.

00:04:22.180 And, and they, they weren't religious.

00:04:24.920 But what happened to me as a teenager was I had, from the results of being bullied at high school, I ended up turning to religion to cope.

00:04:36.800 And the only religion accessible to me at the time was Islam.

00:04:42.300 Okay.

00:04:42.560 So wait, mom and dad, not religion.

00:04:45.620 Kind of, culturally religious.

00:04:47.660 What does that mean, culturally religious?

00:04:49.080 Like, they would force us to read the Quran two hours every day in a language we don't understand.

00:04:55.380 It's like Catholics reading Latin and not knowing a word that they're saying.

00:04:59.680 Okay.

00:05:00.500 And the way they could control us was teaching us, they, they didn't want us to be too westernized because that was forbidden in Islam.

00:05:09.080 It was, it would insult their culture.

00:05:12.020 It would be like things like wearing makeup, wearing heels, wearing jeans.

00:05:16.360 We would be slut shamed.

00:05:17.900 But naturally we wanted to be integrated, but our parents were the obstacle.

00:05:24.160 Was your mom, was your mom, did she buy into that?

00:05:32.440 Was she more of a, of a mom or a wife of somebody that was kind of keeping her under the thumb?

00:05:40.460 Or what was?

00:05:41.600 The problem was, I think, I'm going to be really candid here, but my mom always wanted a husband who would be a patriarch and a provider, the breadwinner.

00:05:58.260 But she had to take on that role because my dad was a bit of a troublemaker and got himself in a lot of trouble.

00:06:08.680 I didn't grow up having a lot of respect for him.

00:06:11.240 And I always had my mom complaining that he's not a good father, like he's not a good provider.

00:06:16.460 And so I, I longed for patriarchy.

00:06:21.080 I longed to have that male role model who would, you know, protect the family, take care of the family.

00:06:28.940 Um, and I didn't have that and I was missing in my life.

00:06:33.680 I also had a lot of issues with my dad because he, he wasn't the most law abiding human being and got himself in trouble, my mom.

00:06:43.960 So there was a lot of problems at home and it always stems from the home at the beginning, especially with values.

00:06:49.440 I wasn't taught values like human rights, um, the law of the land, respect the law of the land.

00:06:55.940 It was like haram, halal.

00:06:58.100 You are controlled.

00:06:59.380 You can't integrate.

00:07:00.320 You can't be Western.

00:07:01.300 That's satanic.

00:07:02.740 Um, you've got to be, you know, you've got to worry about shame.

00:07:07.420 You can't date boys.

00:07:08.600 You can't be like a normal Western girl growing up and learn how to have healthy relationships.

00:07:14.240 You've got to have arranged marriages and things like that.

00:07:16.860 So, you know, I had this conflict and then after having a, uh, and it's really embarrassing

00:07:23.740 for me to say, but I, I was practically schizophrenic at the age of 16 because I was so lonely and

00:07:30.760 I'd been chased out one town, um, Harrow, which is Northwest of London.

00:07:36.840 And then I had, I moved to East London.

00:07:39.540 What do you mean you were chased out of?

00:07:41.140 Uh, well, they were like attacking me if I came outside my house.

00:07:44.740 And when I had a job, I was working in a closed door and they would come harass me.

00:07:49.300 It was girls from my high school and it became too much that I was unsafe.

00:07:56.880 Wait, was it a, was it a color thing?

00:07:59.380 A religion thing?

00:08:01.100 It was, they just didn't like you?

00:08:03.060 Bullies?

00:08:03.680 What?

00:08:03.800 Yeah, um, they were the cool girls that I felt, the cool girls at school who were popular

00:08:10.660 and I fell out with them because, and it was over silly things.

00:08:15.160 I was dating a boy that they didn't like me dating.

00:08:17.540 And it just so happened that the boy I was dating, he was a Sikh nationalist.

00:08:22.560 And I know that's not too commonly known in America, but, um, they hate Muslims and they

00:08:29.620 say that they, they grow their hair and they grow turbans and they say they're only going

00:08:33.180 to cut their hair once they've killed off every Muslim, which is impossible.

00:08:36.060 So what happens is that these boys, Sikh boys will intentionally date Muslim girls to abuse

00:08:43.020 them.

00:08:43.300 And so I was in an abusive relationship from a very young age, from, from 15 to 18.

00:08:50.720 And my dad wasn't present because my dad was actually running away from the law because

00:08:55.260 he had been molesting a 12 year old.

00:08:58.180 Oh my gosh.

00:08:59.320 It's so bad.

00:09:00.560 It just like, it's really hard.

00:09:02.780 I think for any girl to grow up, we long to have a close relationship with our father.

00:09:09.840 There was nothing I could respect about him.

00:09:13.300 And so also to, to move on further, I wasn't allowed to leave home unless I was married.

00:09:20.620 So it wasn't like go to college, do well, and then you can get married and live freely.

00:09:26.300 It was like, well, once you get married to a guy, you're not our problem anymore.

00:09:31.460 So I understood that was the dynamics and I really needed to leave that toxic environment

00:09:37.340 of my family.

00:09:38.360 Um, I was also, so once I left Harrow, which is Northwest of London, I moved to Essex, East

00:09:46.160 London, Barking and Barking was a breeding ground ground for terrorism.

00:09:51.360 If, um, like a lot of the terrorists who went driving their vans into people on the London

00:09:57.340 bridge and stabbings, they came from Barking.

00:09:59.920 So once I was in Barking, you know, I, I was searching for an identity and I didn't know

00:10:08.520 what to do.

00:10:09.160 And, um, and these conservative Muslim girls that I was around now in this working class

00:10:14.200 area.

00:10:14.620 So there were two groups.

00:10:15.740 There were the Muslims who were very conservative Muslims, traditionalists.

00:10:19.620 And then the, uh, the English people were more on the BNP side and the British national party.

00:10:26.260 And then they evolved into the EDL, which is, um, something, uh, English defense league.

00:10:33.500 So they were white nationalists.

00:10:35.840 Perfect.

00:10:36.180 It's a working class neighborhood.

00:10:37.600 So everybody was like moving away from the center and becoming very tribal.

00:10:41.440 And so I had, I, I, you know, I wasn't the brightest girl.

00:10:47.100 I was a bit of a follower.

00:10:48.540 I, I wanted to follow.

00:10:50.080 I wanted religion.

00:10:51.060 I wanted God to love me.

00:10:52.800 So, you know, there was no movement where nuns were revolting and like bombing, uh, post

00:10:59.260 post boxes and things like that.

00:11:00.820 I would have loved to have joined that, but instead it was them.

00:11:03.880 There was the Muslim, the Muslims were like aggravated.

00:11:07.020 They had all these grievances.

00:11:08.040 And my cousin, Nabila Chowdhury, I, I idolized her.

00:11:13.620 And she was the first person in my family to go to Oxford university.

00:11:17.640 She was a normal, beautiful girl.

00:11:21.460 I just adored her.

00:11:22.760 She went to Oxford and she became radicalized and she came out even worse.

00:11:28.820 It's unbelievable.

00:11:30.140 You're like, just like how the universities in England were infiltrated by Islamic movements.

00:11:37.100 It's the, the political Islam.

00:11:40.160 And I was a few years younger than her.

00:11:42.000 And I was like, I knew my family adored her and I wanted to be like her.

00:11:45.360 So she, at the age of 17, she taught me about the caliphate.

00:11:50.200 So this is the first time I heard about a caliphate.

00:11:52.440 Never even knew about political Islam.

00:11:56.260 Um, September 11th happened.

00:11:58.280 And that was a huge turning point in my life.

00:12:02.980 I was just sure.

00:12:04.500 I didn't want to believe that Muslims did it.

00:12:06.800 I also didn't believe Muslims were intelligent enough to, to do something like that.

00:12:12.040 Wow.

00:12:12.740 You know, cause like you can just think of Muslims as like light years behind Judeo Christian communities.

00:12:18.760 They really are.

00:12:19.720 But, you know, like we can go into that further about how they kill apostates and things.

00:12:25.960 It's like, those were rulings that were outdated 2000 years ago by Judaism and still go continue today.

00:12:35.000 Right.

00:12:35.100 But I didn't know any better.

00:12:37.780 And I really was desperate to feel a belonging because I felt rejected by my family.

00:12:43.840 I felt rejected by society.

00:12:46.700 And I was a pretty girl, but I didn't know how to handle the catcalling that I got when I was a teenager.

00:12:55.540 And most of the time I was blamed for it.

00:12:58.060 I was blamed for the way I look.

00:13:01.160 Right.

00:13:01.360 And you're, so you're, uh, and you're living in a society that slut shames.

00:13:05.640 Exactly.

00:13:06.320 So the solution was you cover up because it's your fault.

00:13:11.180 You shouldn't be tempting men.

00:13:12.740 Oh my God.

00:13:13.540 It wasn't men should just control themselves.

00:13:16.160 Right.

00:13:17.280 Um, and so I, and I, I felt like God didn't like me, uh, childish and I was like, and I was desperate for God to be protected by God.

00:13:30.240 Because you had no one else in your life.

00:13:31.840 No one else.

00:13:32.580 No father figure to protect me.

00:13:34.360 I had an abusive boyfriend and only Islam actually made me separate from him.

00:13:39.600 Um, and.

00:13:41.800 Because of the abuse or because he was a Sikh?

00:13:45.020 Uh, both.

00:13:46.760 And he wasn't healthy.

00:13:48.220 He, he, he abused me only because I was a Muslim.

00:13:51.500 So there's all this, like within the Indian subcontinent communities, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Muslims, none of them get along.

00:14:00.080 There's no like shared values.

00:14:01.860 Um, and, um, and plus they're so traumatized from the separation of India and Pakistan during, you know, after the British left and there was a lot of trauma and our parents, you know, they didn't get therapy and they weren't pacifists.

00:14:19.060 They didn't understand children have human rights.

00:14:21.640 They were abusive.

00:14:23.040 They were all these problems.

00:14:25.220 Plus they got, um, a lot of the like rulings from Islam, which says things like, if your child doesn't pray at seven, beat them.

00:14:34.200 Um, and it was very draconian, like very violent.

00:14:38.060 So, you know, this was the environment that I grew up in.

00:14:42.600 And it wasn't until later that I realized that if you keep this cycle of violence and hate, it's just continue.

00:14:49.100 I didn't want to do that.

00:14:51.680 Um.

00:14:52.560 So you're in your, your cousin is in Oxford.

00:14:58.780 She's been radicalized and September 11th happens.

00:15:02.860 Yes.

00:15:03.220 And you see Osama bin Laden.

00:15:07.480 Well, I was, I came home from school.

00:15:10.000 I was studying politics, government politics, law, sociology, psychology at my A-levels.

00:15:16.960 And so I was already very politically driven and I came home, switched on from school and I switched on the news and I saw what happened.

00:15:24.640 And I was like, I was devastated.

00:15:26.760 I was like, this is horrible.

00:15:27.860 This is inhumane.

00:15:28.700 I went to school the next day and I was in my government and politics class and I sat next to my best friend who was a Pakistani girl.

00:15:36.020 Um, and I asked, I said, wasn't it terrible what happened?

00:15:41.860 And they're saying Muslims, why do they always blame the Muslims?

00:15:45.140 And she said to me, well, was it so terrible?

00:15:48.920 Was it so bad?

00:15:49.840 And I was like, oh, maybe she didn't understand what I just said.

00:15:54.900 And I was in shock by her response.

00:15:57.380 So I, I tried to reword it and she said, okay, come home after school and my parents will tell you all about it.

00:16:05.320 So that's how it began, the radicalization, not only from my cousin, but from my school friends.

00:16:12.040 And it's a new area and Barking, Essex, where I come from, is renowned for breeding terrorists.

00:16:18.940 What did the parents say to you?

00:16:21.120 My parents didn't.

00:16:22.040 No, no, no.

00:16:22.780 Her parents.

00:16:23.380 Her parents.

00:16:23.760 Oh, her parents told me it's an eye for an eye, a life for a life.

00:16:28.140 America has been intervening in the, in Muslim countries for far too long.

00:16:33.860 They attacked, they, they used like a propaganda from Osama bin Laden that I didn't, wasn't familiar with, but they said something like America intervened with the war in Lebanon and they killed thousands of people.

00:16:46.560 So, you know, a life for a life.

00:16:49.260 We, they kill us, we kill them.

00:16:52.540 And I can't say that I was, I wasn't a healthy minded person.

00:16:58.080 I was a follower.

00:16:59.200 I was, I was looking for leadership.

00:17:02.040 Um, and so I was like, oh, I get that.

00:17:06.360 Yeah.

00:17:06.600 I, I understand because my ex-boyfriend used to beat me up for being a Muslim.

00:17:11.580 And I, even though I told him I'm, I'm not really a Muslim, I don't care about the religion, but.

00:17:17.640 It's like, it ended up where I just ended when, when people are like confronted about their identity and they don't know what their identity is.

00:17:26.660 They end up just like going backwards.

00:17:28.600 And I, so I was, I was like, okay, no one accepts me as an, I'm not English, I'm British, but I'm not English.

00:17:37.060 So, and my roots are not deep enough.

00:17:40.420 What does that mean?

00:17:41.980 In America, you're an American.

00:17:44.220 Yes.

00:17:44.460 Especially, you're born here.

00:17:45.760 But even if you come here and you take the citizenship test, you're an American, not in England.

00:17:51.660 And in America, everybody has ancestors that were immigrants.

00:17:55.460 Even the natives were immigrants.

00:17:56.960 They came from Asia, but it's not quite like that in England.

00:18:00.960 There's a lot of xenophobia and the Muslim community wasn't helping because they weren't integrating.

00:18:07.520 So I see it from both perspectives.

00:18:09.840 Right, right, right.

00:18:12.300 So I ended up just like, I really just like, I had this reputation where I had a boyfriend and my family were not happy with it.

00:18:23.200 And I was like, okay, I've got to turn my life around.

00:18:25.860 I've got to be a good person.

00:18:27.220 I like, I have to be the equivalent of a nun, but the Muslim version.

00:18:32.120 So I was like, I'm going to be a good Muslim girl.

00:18:34.620 I'm going to be obedient.

00:18:35.880 I'm going to hear and obey.

00:18:37.560 I'm going to find a Muslim husband and get away from this country that doesn't accept me.

00:18:42.360 Okay, so it's not at this point that you are, this is a big turning point in your life, right?

00:18:48.940 This is the first real turning point to where you're seeing, okay, I can build a better life.

00:18:55.300 And it's not about killing people or anything else.

00:18:57.440 It's just about listening and obeying and putting these principles into play in your life for a better life.

00:19:05.880 Yeah.

00:19:06.900 And because I thought God would protect me from being unlucky.

00:19:14.040 I learned that I, I define my future.

00:19:18.480 I, I, I determine my fate, not God.

00:19:21.340 But I didn't know that at the time.

00:19:24.640 Uh, I met, uh, so my friends were getting married very young and I was kind of just following their footsteps.

00:19:30.680 And, um, so going back to my high school, I, I came from West London and I moved to East London and it was a big culture shock.

00:19:41.400 I spoke differently.

00:19:42.640 I walked differently.

00:19:43.880 I talked differently from them.

00:19:45.760 They had a very strong Essex accent.

00:19:47.840 I had a Northern accent.

00:19:50.500 Um, I had boyfriends.

00:19:52.480 I was like, and then I, I had peer pressure.

00:19:55.440 Like you can't be this.

00:19:57.280 It's not Islamic.

00:19:58.620 Are you ashamed of your roots?

00:20:00.060 So I felt the pressure and being the weak minded ahead that I was, I'm very ashamed.

00:20:07.700 I really was.

00:20:08.980 I, I was all made mistakes and we were all stupid when we were young.

00:20:12.760 Also, I was the fourth daughter, so I had three older sisters and I was used to just following their, following, being a follower.

00:20:21.860 Cause my parents weren't, they were busy working.

00:20:24.460 My sisters practically look after me and, and as girls, we weren't wanted.

00:20:32.720 So as the fourth unwanted daughter and my parents made it very clear to me that they didn't want me.

00:20:38.840 So my education was not a priority.

00:20:41.400 I could, they didn't care if I went to school as long as the house was clean.

00:20:46.260 So I became the cleaner and the servant.

00:20:49.280 We had to clip my dad's toenails, take his socks off after work.

00:20:55.120 I can't even believe that I had to do that back then.

00:21:00.640 But so, and then also knowing things like a girl is worth half of a boy.

00:21:07.700 When we're born, we have this sacrificial ceremony where we kill goats.

00:21:13.580 It's so sad, but you know, goats or lambs or whatever.

00:21:16.920 And a girl gets one animal, one animal sacrificed, but a boy gets two.

00:21:23.400 So a girl's worth half of a boy.

00:21:25.060 And our testimony is worth half of a man.

00:21:28.700 So if we're in court, you need two women witnesses is equivalent to one man because our deficiency in our mind.

00:21:38.160 How did you not, how did you, how are you raised in England, which doesn't have that system and not understand, not see the two and go,

00:21:49.460 Oh, this one's better than that one.

00:21:52.660 How did you not see that?

00:21:54.240 See, at the time I, because of my Muslim uprising, I wasn't allowed to drink.

00:22:01.120 I wasn't allowed to party.

00:22:02.460 I wasn't allowed to have relationships with boys.

00:22:06.000 And, um,

00:22:07.840 So you're just isolated.

00:22:09.100 We were just told, yeah, isolated and told that that's all evil and you're evil if you do it.

00:22:15.260 And then, and this suspicion that Satan is around completely possessing us.

00:22:20.720 Also, after the bullying, I turned to my religion because I felt so unsafe that I felt like only God can protect me.

00:22:29.480 So I, I went into, I delved into Islamic research, not with a healthy mind, uh, feeling like I brought it on myself because I hadn't been a good Muslim before, before the bullying, I couldn't care less about my religion.

00:22:44.860 I didn't even want to be a Muslim.

00:22:46.380 I was so embarrassed of being a Muslim.

00:22:48.360 I wouldn't even tell people, but like the backlash between like the BNP and the EDL and then against the Muslim community.

00:22:57.720 I saw this with my family, even they became more and more religious after September 11th.

00:23:04.980 That's when I, it's like everyone became very tribal.

00:23:09.640 Um, and so that's where it stemmed.

00:23:13.820 I, and I wasn't allowed to leave home.

00:23:16.180 My, my family dynamics were toxic.

00:23:18.840 Like I said, my dad was a huge problem.

00:23:22.020 Um, and my mom was a problem.

00:23:24.000 She was very abusive.

00:23:25.580 And I need to get away from her cause she was a bully.

00:23:29.640 Um, and so I knew the only way I could get out was to get married.

00:23:34.340 So while I was at a march, uh, for stop the war in Iraq, march in London, it was like a million man march.

00:23:41.380 It was very historical.

00:23:43.620 Um, some Muslim guys came up to me with a piece of paper saying www.muslimmatrimony.com.

00:23:52.400 Um, and I just looked at it and I was like, they saw me with a hijab and I was like, okay, fine.

00:23:57.960 I, I realized that the only way I can get away from my family is if I get married.

00:24:01.600 Um, kind of like a mail order bride, um, I'm not proud of, but that pretty much was how I became.

00:24:12.480 I met John Georgilis online.

00:24:15.800 And John, an American who came from a military family.

00:24:19.460 His dad was a general in the air force, a doctor.

00:24:22.840 So he, he, he, he lived the life that I wish I had been born into.

00:24:29.760 Um, you know, who doesn't want to be a white American upper middle class family with a great legacy.

00:24:39.060 But I met him and we had a lot in common that we had problems with our, in our homes,

00:24:48.380 with our fathers and felt rejected by society, but we were most welcomed by the Muslim community.

00:24:56.400 Cause the Muslim community will embrace everyone, anyone.

00:24:59.920 You can be the most retarded, uh, anyone like psychopath, murderous person.

00:25:06.760 You're welcome.

00:25:07.660 As long as you come in and join the group, cause they need everybody.

00:25:12.080 And so it, it's almost like a gang culture, but it gave me some belonging, which I didn't have anywhere else.

00:25:21.460 Um, and so it, that was my initial stage with, in England.

00:25:29.660 Yeah.

00:25:29.680 And so when you met him online, how did that transpire?

00:25:33.960 What attracted you to him?

00:25:35.520 What did he promise?

00:25:37.180 Very superficial.

00:25:39.040 And again, in Islam, you can marry people for four reasons.

00:25:43.460 You can marry a man for his wealth, for his status, for his piety or his looks.

00:25:50.520 I went for status and I went because his parents came from a good family.

00:25:57.420 And I, like I said, I wished I had come from that kind of background.

00:26:03.380 Like when I was a child, I used to wish, like, I wish I could be adopted by a white family in middle class and get away from my parents.

00:26:10.200 But it's sad to think like that, you know, cause I felt so rejected from the age of five.

00:26:15.140 I was running away from home.

00:26:17.420 Um, and John, I don't know exactly why John's dad was absent in his life.

00:26:24.220 His dad worked really hard as a doctor and in the military.

00:26:28.800 So he didn't spend much time with his son.

00:26:31.820 But when John's dad did spend time with John, my ex-husband, there wasn't a good relationship.

00:26:40.040 John didn't meet up to Tim's expectations.

00:26:44.160 Tim is tall.

00:26:45.800 He was athletic.

00:26:47.160 He played, um, he played football at West Point.

00:26:50.740 You know, he, he had achieved so much, but John, on the other hand, had a drug addiction at the age of 11.

00:26:59.840 Oh my.

00:27:00.900 Yeah.

00:27:01.600 And, um, and it never really got dealt with.

00:27:05.520 He, he didn't go to therapy.

00:27:06.980 He didn't get counseling.

00:27:08.140 He should have probably gone to a military camp or some boot camp or something.

00:27:12.000 Um, but none of that happened and it, his rebellion against his parents just, it got out of hand.

00:27:20.600 And, um, so with John, I'm, I'm going off.

00:27:25.320 No, no, no, that's fine.

00:27:26.260 So like after September 11th, um, you know, so I'll go back to my story and then I'll explain what happened to John.

00:27:33.380 Um, um, after September 11th, I went to school, I was in my politics class and I said to my friend who was a Pakistani girl, she's now graduated from Queen Mary's University and is a lawyer.

00:27:45.700 But I spoke to her and I said, wasn't it terrible what happened?

00:27:49.520 And I think it's, they think it's Muslims.

00:27:51.320 And, and she was like, well, was it so bad?

00:27:54.620 You don't think they deserved it?

00:27:56.240 And I was like, and I was like, hang on, let me ask you that again.

00:27:59.980 Cause I didn't think she understood my, what I was, she said, come home after school and talk to my parents.

00:28:06.380 And they'll, they'll explain to you the history of the Soviet Union and how these Mujahideen, these glorious Mujahideen had defeated communism.

00:28:14.840 And they are our heroes.

00:28:16.940 Problem is those so-called warrior heroes saw asylum in England and they got asylum and they influenced us.

00:28:25.300 And they influenced like a lot of groups, the Hizb al-Tahrir, which is a band group in England.

00:28:32.340 They were calling for a caliphate, which my cousin had learned from in Oxford and she taught me about.

00:28:38.360 And then there was another group called Al-Mahajroon by Omar Bakri.

00:28:42.100 They, um, they're banned now and they wanted to make England a Islamic state, which was a complete joke.

00:28:49.700 But, so I wasn't really with any of them, but I had lots of friends and they were all from different groups who all supported jihad in different ways.

00:28:59.140 Hizb al-Tahrir, HT, they were said, they said they were non-violent, but only up until a certain time.

00:29:06.100 They were like, we don't do jihad now, we'll do it later.

00:29:09.660 And it's just the same with the Sufis.

00:29:11.620 They were like, now is not the time to fight.

00:29:15.080 We'll fight at the end of days when Christ returns to Damascus and we'll kill off all the Jews.

00:29:21.460 And I was like, whoa, okay.

00:29:23.900 And I'd never met a Jewish person.

00:29:25.960 So I was like, okay, the only, the only references I have to Jewish people are from the Quran.

00:29:30.920 And as far as I know, God curses them, God hates them, all this, all this stuff is the most anti-Semitic book.

00:29:40.740 I mean, if there's any book full of hate, hate speech, it's the Quran.

00:29:44.840 And that's where I learned it from.

00:29:46.780 I didn't have to learn it from any group.

00:29:48.840 You just have to read any translation and it's there.

00:29:52.520 The misogyny, the, the barbarity, the war booty, all this stuff.

00:29:57.880 And, and I, I was like, okay, these are my values.

00:30:01.140 Cause I was like, I was so willing to be led.

00:30:05.640 Um, and.

00:30:09.100 And how did John get there?

00:30:11.300 John got there.

00:30:13.180 Um, so he was first a, I would describe a Christian fundamentalist.

00:30:18.660 He was part of the Orthodox Greek church who he had been raised to actually hate Muslims because of the Ottoman empire.

00:30:26.300 And what they had done, they had enslaved the Turks, the Greeks, and they, they didn't do much good.

00:30:32.640 Anyway, they were really into pedophilia and all those things and making it legal.

00:30:37.320 And, um, so I could understand why he didn't, why Greeks don't like the Turks, but then they generalize and make all Muslims as if they're all Turks.

00:30:47.960 And that's how he was, he was raised.

00:30:50.020 But then something about his, him feeling rejected by his father made him more inclined to research this monotheist religion.

00:31:02.440 He also had a, he had trouble understanding the Trinity because he was like, it's not monotheist.

00:31:09.100 It's illogical.

00:31:10.300 It doesn't make sense that, you know, the God impregnated Mary and then was born by born.

00:31:18.140 And then when he's dying, he's praying to God saying, God, why have you like forsaken me?

00:31:24.740 And you know, it didn't, and then when he went to his priest, cause he was a devout Christian and he wanted to be a priest.

00:31:30.920 His parents weren't happy about that.

00:31:32.640 They wanted him to be a lawyer or something.

00:31:34.960 But, um, so when he spoke to his priests about it, they were like, oh, no one really believes in the Trinity.

00:31:41.040 We just go along with it.

00:31:42.660 It doesn't make sense.

00:31:43.680 You don't have to have, you don't have, it doesn't make rational sense.

00:31:47.700 You just have to have that leap of faith.

00:31:50.440 That wasn't good enough for John.

00:31:52.420 He was also experimenting with terrible amounts, high amounts of LSD.

00:31:58.000 Um, and I don't, I've never taken it, but he was like, he said that he would see things like light spirits in the case.

00:32:10.460 He was in Colorado Springs and he was with his friends and they could all see these spirits, these, these, these beings of light.

00:32:17.700 And they, and then later on, he thought, oh, they must've been jinns after reading the Quran.

00:32:24.540 It was just a chemical reaction in his brain, but he didn't know because he was a young boy.

00:32:30.640 So he becomes Muslim.

00:32:33.900 You go online, you start talking about.

00:32:39.440 Hijra and jihad.

00:32:40.780 Two concepts that I want to eradicate.

00:32:45.020 And what are they?

00:32:47.020 The first one is.

00:32:48.260 Jihad is.

00:32:49.580 Jihad.

00:32:49.780 Yeah.

00:32:50.180 And there's different levels.

00:32:51.620 There's jihad of yourself where you just like deprive of yourself from being a human being and having human desires.

00:32:58.200 And then the jihad, like, um, defensive or offensive.

00:33:03.080 It's the physical jihad.

00:33:04.340 And these are things that we couldn't deny because they were actions of the prophet Muhammad.

00:33:11.220 And in the Quran, we're told, imitate him.

00:33:15.240 We have to imitate Muhammad because he's perfect.

00:33:18.400 And we're told we're not allowed to question because only we're told you, there's a verse in the Quran.

00:33:23.920 I haven't read the Quran since 2009, so it's too traumatic for me, but it was like, you do not question God, God questions you.

00:33:33.360 And then other things like imitate Muhammad and imitate Abraham.

00:33:37.380 Well, these two guys, okay, Muhammad was a pedophile.

00:33:41.540 Muhammad was, uh, you know, like from my understanding of my readings after I read, um, Hugh Kennedy's, uh, book called The Caliphate.

00:33:53.060 And I could clearly see Muhammad had an inferiority complex to Jews and Christians because they had moved on from polytheism to monotheism.

00:34:03.000 They were moving ahead.

00:34:04.760 And so he wanted to catch on.

00:34:06.860 I guess he felt some sort of shame about the polytheist ways of Arabia.

00:34:12.620 Um, so, you know, this, these connections didn't come until later.

00:34:20.680 Um, I'm jumping from, yeah.

00:34:23.060 That's all right.

00:34:24.080 Um, but John never saw it.

00:34:26.280 And then, um, but like imitating Abraham in, in Islam, the scriptures are, they've been changed from the old Testament and things like, uh, you know, you've got to imitate Abraham.

00:34:40.180 He's the father.

00:34:41.660 Abraham wanted to sacrifice his son.

00:34:44.960 Um, and he was willing to do it until God stopped him.

00:34:48.080 Um, that meant we Muslims will take that as meaning is that we have to sacrifice our children for God to prove ourselves.

00:34:56.740 But then there's like no human rights and children don't have human rights, but they don't believe in human rights because it's not from God.

00:35:05.140 So you guys hit it off.

00:35:18.400 We hit it off at the beginning.

00:35:20.880 I didn't really like him.

00:35:22.420 I think it was a little bit autistic.

00:35:24.560 I didn't realize that I married him.

00:35:26.760 It was a stranger.

00:35:27.380 I married him three days after meeting him.

00:35:29.080 Um, I know it sounds crazy.

00:35:31.360 We, we wrote to each other.

00:35:32.900 We emailed each other for two months.

00:35:34.700 We were only 19 when we got married and we, I understood that I never felt at home in England, not the way I do in America.

00:35:43.900 And I never picked up on English values, probably because it's too tolerant to bad ideas and cultural abuse, but also just feeling like I'm not allowed because it's against my religion and I'll go to hell if I act like them.

00:36:01.760 Um, and so, uh, I met John and we got on great and we were like, oh, we're dreaming about a caliphate.

00:36:09.320 We're dreaming about jihad.

00:36:11.140 We were, you know, this is all in our imagination.

00:36:13.660 And, um, then I had children and it was slightly different.

00:36:19.000 And then it wasn't until I had my second child that I, so John went to prison for three years.

00:36:25.580 He had been, he had, um, was charged for hacking into APAC's website because he worked for a company called Rackspace, which web hosts, uh, a lot of pornography and APAC.

00:36:41.140 Their website.

00:36:41.740 So it made him really angry because Islamism makes you angry about everything, right?

00:36:47.760 Uh, you know what I mean?

00:36:50.100 And then, um, so he was, he was actually talking to an undercover CIA agent from Canada and he didn't realize it.

00:37:00.560 His friends warned him it's a trap, but he didn't listen to me.

00:37:03.420 He didn't listen to his friends.

00:37:04.400 So he ended up selling for this website, jihad unspun.

00:37:08.520 He started doing IT work, programming for them and selling Osama bin Laden propaganda, which was the stupidest thing.

00:37:17.880 I didn't really know about it.

00:37:19.640 Um, and another thing in Islam is that there's two times you can lie.

00:37:23.420 You can lie.

00:37:24.920 You can, there's, um, Takiyah, I think it's called.

00:37:28.020 So when you lie, when you, you don't want to say you're a Muslim to save your life and you can lie to your wife.

00:37:33.540 So my husband took advantage of that and he lied to me a lot because he didn't want me nagging him.

00:37:39.720 Um, and so he didn't tell me everything, but he went to prison for almost three years at Seagullville in Texas.

00:37:50.040 It was a, um, it was a detention center.

00:37:53.760 It was low security.

00:37:55.960 During that time, I was able to breathe a little bit.

00:37:59.940 I was allowed.

00:38:00.540 First time alone.

00:38:02.200 First time alone.

00:38:03.300 So I, he wasn't in charge.

00:38:04.780 I didn't have a, um.

00:38:06.600 Family or brothers or mom or dad.

00:38:10.560 It's me and my child, my first son.

00:38:12.900 And I started unveiling slowly.

00:38:15.660 Like I would wear the headscarf, but I put on a colorful one.

00:38:18.740 I took off my veil because he made me wear it, hated wearing the veil.

00:38:22.760 You cannot breathe under the veil.

00:38:24.860 It's like wearing a sack over your head.

00:38:26.620 And I tell every man who, who says that it's, it's righteous and everything.

00:38:31.600 I'm like, put a bag over your head, you know, and you'll know what it feels like.

00:38:36.600 Um, but then they say, oh, our mothers don't say it feels like that.

00:38:40.520 Their mothers are lying.

00:38:42.420 Um, cause it does feel like, especially when you're pregnant and it's hard to breathe.

00:38:46.780 And, and they're always making us pregnant.

00:38:48.500 And they, they treat us like baby making machines just so that they can subdue us.

00:38:53.580 Because I had this problem that I always wanted to accept my independence and say, like, I want a job and I don't want to just be at home.

00:39:02.960 And, you know, I want to do what other 20 year olds do because I was in my 20s at the time.

00:39:08.400 But he thought that was, um, too feminist and too American.

00:39:16.040 So while he was in prison, I got to have some freedom and he came back and the night is crazy.

00:39:22.260 Cause I always say I was married to John for 10 years.

00:39:25.220 The best time, the best years of my marriage was while he was in prison and while he was on probation for three years.

00:39:32.580 Because I had a foot over him on his neck for the first time.

00:39:37.520 It was before it was the other way around.

00:39:40.360 And so if he stepped out online, he knew I would report him to the, his probation officer who I got along with really well.

00:39:48.140 It really helped having a relationship with the FBI, um, for that duration.

00:39:54.820 Because they could also see the control John had over me and they could see me trying to fight it.

00:40:01.480 So like they were concerned, they understood there was some manipulation, there's manipulation going involved and, you know, they, they were caring.

00:40:13.120 I don't care what anyone says about the FBI, but they saved my life.

00:40:17.820 This government saved my life and I owe them my loyalty and my love and my life.

00:40:24.520 And so do my children.

00:40:25.540 And I remind them of that every day because we would be in those camps in Syria right now, or we would be dead if it wasn't for the U.S.

00:40:36.200 Having a heart, you know, like having sympathy on us.

00:40:42.360 And, you know, of course the FBI agents saw it and they were concerned for me, but there was only so much they could do.

00:40:48.100 Um, and so, um, so it started, so they arrested him in 2006 and then he was off probation 2011.

00:41:00.300 And the plan was, so in 2011, October, 2011, he said, we have to leave.

00:41:09.420 We're going, we're leaving.

00:41:11.180 We plan to go to Libya first because I actually liked Gaddafi.

00:41:16.140 He was good for his people, even though he was a socialist, but you know, like he was better than all the other dictators of the region.

00:41:22.380 There's a difference.

00:41:23.240 Americans have a hard time hearing things like that, but we don't live in the Middle East.

00:41:27.860 And, uh, the Middle East is, um, is a warrior kind of area.

00:41:34.780 They need the, they look for the strong, yeah, they look for the strong men.

00:41:39.020 They need autocracy because I don't think like a four year, like in America, they look every four years in their terms.

00:41:48.720 It's very hard to look in the future forehead, like let's say China, where they look, you know, like how is everything going to,

00:41:57.540 still function in 40 years.

00:42:00.980 And that's how the dictators in the Middle East think very much.

00:42:05.020 So, so yeah, they're not, they're not used to democracy and they're not ready for democracy.

00:42:09.820 And they, like, I lived in Egypt when, um, I, I moved to Egypt in 2011.

00:42:16.960 John wanted us to move there.

00:42:18.220 I didn't want to move.

00:42:19.580 He said in 2008, there was a recession.

00:42:22.480 He scared the living lives out of me.

00:42:24.540 He said, the country's going to have a civil war.

00:42:28.060 We're going to be attacked.

00:42:29.360 We're going to be the scapegoats because we're the Muslims.

00:42:31.500 And being a stay-at-home mom, I wasn't allowed to leave the house without his permission.

00:42:37.260 I didn't want to leave the house even because I hated wearing the hijab.

00:42:41.160 It's hot.

00:42:42.180 It's Texas for crying out loud.

00:42:43.540 Who wants to wear it?

00:42:44.560 And also I knew that no one was going to harass me.

00:42:47.980 Like it's not in, like in England, when I was growing up in England, you know, there's all this catcalling,

00:42:53.800 all these drunk people, there's pubs everywhere that you get harassed constantly.

00:42:57.360 So, and I used to see women in America jogging and freely and no one's harassing them.

00:43:02.840 I was like, I don't have to be afraid of men here.

00:43:06.280 They're going to respect me.

00:43:07.880 They're not going to care.

00:43:09.520 And so that was an issue.

00:43:11.880 I was like, John, I don't have to do this.

00:43:14.860 You know, I don't have to be so uncomfortable and feel stigmatized and polarized when I go outside

00:43:19.020 because no one, more people look at me when I'm covered than if I was uncovered.

00:43:24.860 Then he didn't care.

00:43:25.700 He thought I was becoming too Americanized.

00:43:28.040 He didn't like it.

00:43:29.820 He didn't like me questioning him.

00:43:32.240 He wanted me to be more submissive.

00:43:35.760 And it was hard for me when I had children to be that submissive because I knew I was paying my children a risk.

00:43:42.300 So by the end of the day, I was financially dependent on him and I had no family.

00:43:48.120 I didn't want to go back to my parents.

00:43:49.980 My parents didn't want me.

00:43:51.160 They never wanted me to begin with.

00:43:53.020 And I always argue with my mom, like, why didn't you use contraception properly?

00:43:58.240 You know, like that's how bad our relationship is.

00:44:01.000 Like, you didn't want me.

00:44:02.920 Why didn't you take the right precautions?

00:44:05.240 Instead, I was raised like a servant.

00:44:07.040 They didn't care if I went to school.

00:44:09.940 I just had to make sure the house was clean, you know, and take care of my brother because my mom had to work and my brother was too young to go to school.

00:44:18.240 So I'd skip days of school to look after my brother.

00:44:20.900 All my sisters had to.

00:44:21.880 Even when my sisters went to university, they were working jobs to provide for my parents because that's the only reason why these, that community from that very third world mentality region thinks of children.

00:44:39.720 Like, as if, like, okay, so I can explain, like, if people work on a farm, they have children so that their children can work on the farm to help them.

00:44:51.260 So it was very much the mentality of we have children so that they can look after us and provide for us.

00:44:57.100 So that's what I saw my sisters go through and I saw how depressed they were and basically I wanted out and I thought, and my parents weren't too religious then.

00:45:09.600 They were just, like, culturally Muslim, didn't really care.

00:45:15.480 And so I got married to John.

00:45:17.840 They were happy with me marrying John because, sadly, because he's white, a white convert, American passport, and from a military-educated family.

00:45:30.340 So they were like, oh, if they have any problems, they'll take care of her because they didn't want me.

00:45:37.060 So you take off the hijab and?

00:45:42.700 I take off the hijab 10 years later after I divorced John, or after I leave John.

00:45:47.520 No, but when he is in prison, you start unveiling.

00:45:52.100 Yeah, the robes and the face veil.

00:45:54.360 I kept the colorful hijab that he didn't like.

00:45:59.900 And, but when he gets out, you still want to raise your kids as warriors.

00:46:05.880 Yeah.

00:46:06.300 You still.

00:46:07.740 I was still indoctrinated because at that time I was still.

00:46:14.080 So in Islam, I don't know how it is with Christianity, but your thoughts.

00:46:19.080 If you have a thought that contradicts the Quran or Muhammad, it's a sin.

00:46:24.940 So it's really hard to.

00:46:26.700 So do you know what the word Israel actually means?

00:46:30.460 Yeah.

00:46:30.760 To wrestle.

00:46:32.240 To wrestle.

00:46:32.800 To wrestle with God.

00:46:33.660 I want to be Jewish.

00:46:34.620 Yeah.

00:46:35.280 I'm trying.

00:46:35.800 It's a long process.

00:46:38.420 I'm going to study it this year.

00:46:40.220 I love Judaism very much.

00:46:44.440 So.

00:46:45.660 So you, you, you actually go to recruit people.

00:46:52.400 I didn't recruit anybody.

00:46:53.440 I was a stay at home mom looking, homeschooling my kids.

00:46:56.940 And that was hard for me.

00:46:59.060 Like I was homeschooling my kids, but so I, I started doing this when I, when John came

00:47:04.800 out of prison, he wanted a child.

00:47:07.080 I wasn't ready.

00:47:08.620 And this is my second child.

00:47:10.380 I got pregnant straight away, had a baby, but then I came across this program called your

00:47:15.660 baby can read and your child can read.

00:47:17.720 And it's a great program.

00:47:19.040 So I taught my, my, my second son, his name's Leif.

00:47:23.620 I taught him how to read at nine months old and by the age of two and a half, he could

00:47:29.480 read English, French, Italian, Greek, and Arabic.

00:47:33.640 Holy cow.

00:47:34.600 And I was, that was like the most I had achieved in my life.

00:47:40.200 Like I was so proud of him and he made me like the proudest mother in history.

00:47:45.340 And I just said to John, he is not going on the front lines.

00:47:49.780 Like I would like get sleepless nights and nightmares about losing this precious child.

00:47:55.140 And I was like, I want so much more for him.

00:47:57.680 I want him to give to the world.

00:47:59.280 I don't want him to destroy the world.

00:48:01.680 And so my mentality completely changed.

00:48:04.080 Also, he took me to Egypt thinking that if, if Tani goes to Egypt, she won't care about

00:48:11.280 wearing the hijab because everyone wears the hijab.

00:48:14.300 But in Cairo, it's only half, half, half the women do and half the women don't.

00:48:18.180 And when I went to Egypt and I saw what a broken country it was, where like no, the government

00:48:25.860 does not function whatsoever.

00:48:28.040 And I was like, I do not want to be part of this.

00:48:30.880 I would rather live in the enemy's land of America, you know, the satanic America, because

00:48:35.560 life functions there.

00:48:37.540 If there is corruption, it's not so blatantly in your face.

00:48:41.140 And I couldn't stand all the bribery and all the, it's a disgusting country.

00:48:47.560 Egypt is disgusting.

00:48:48.900 You know, I'm very candid, but, you know, I thought, oh my God, it's almost as bad as

00:48:53.820 Bangladesh where I came from.

00:48:55.500 Um, and so he thought being in Egypt would change me, but it made me resent Arabs and

00:49:06.480 Islam so much more.

00:49:08.780 And I just, he, I wanted to get away and I wanted, and so I would have John write to Homeland

00:49:15.780 Security asking them, please let my, please let my wife and her children back because she

00:49:23.700 can't handle being here, but they would reply, no, because of your reputation, we, we won't.

00:49:29.960 Right.

00:49:30.920 So that was really hard for me.

00:49:32.300 I couldn't go back to England.

00:49:33.560 My family would have just told me to go to a homeless shelter.

00:49:36.420 And, um, so they were, I was stuck with him.

00:49:41.020 And at this point I was very suicidal.

00:49:44.080 Um, I was trying to suffocate him and it's like, I, I, I used to tell him with the abuse

00:49:51.080 and just feeling so trapped and not having like any choices of my life.

00:49:58.620 No, it was like, it was suffocating me and stuff.

00:50:01.920 Like if anything, my consciousness was suffocating because like things that I just hated things

00:50:10.000 like child marriages and, um, and like the treatment of, of the Demi class, the, the Christians

00:50:19.620 and Jews and how they would be demonized.

00:50:23.460 And, and like, I just, I just, I guess my Western upbringing in England made me feel like, well,

00:50:29.380 there's still humans and they shouldn't be treated like that.

00:50:31.700 And they wouldn't treat us like that.

00:50:34.560 It was, it was, we were, my husband and I were always bumping, you know, hitting heads

00:50:39.560 and then I'm like, and I always like felt like all these Muslim scholars in history, they're

00:50:47.120 all men because they're the ones who have access to education.

00:50:50.820 And they're talking about women's issues, which they have no understanding of.

00:50:55.140 They don't know what it's like to have a child.

00:50:56.900 They don't know what it's like to be a daughter-in-law or anything like that.

00:51:01.700 And, uh, and that used to frustrate me.

00:51:04.080 So I would encourage John to talk about women's rights online.

00:51:09.360 When he was in his speaking forums, he had a following online.

00:51:13.240 It was called, we hear and we obey.

00:51:16.140 And, and even that title comes from the Quran because there's a very antisemitic passage that

00:51:23.580 says that the believers say we hear and we obey, but the Jews say we hear and we disobey.

00:51:29.440 So, and you know, even in the first, the very first verse of the Quran, Al-Fatiha, we, it

00:51:38.940 says, you know, something on the lines of God do not curse us like the Jews and do not

00:51:45.300 be angry at us with the Christians.

00:51:48.320 And you have to use the explanation of the Quran to understand the passages.

00:51:53.220 And you're saying that five times a day.

00:51:56.040 So it makes you, it's just like this religion of fear.

00:51:58.780 You're just like scared all the time.

00:52:00.880 I'm paranoid that there are jinns, these genies whispering in your ears.

00:52:06.440 But really that's your, your consciousness warning you.

00:52:10.500 It's a siren.

00:52:11.700 You have to suppress that.

00:52:13.300 And it's really hard.

00:52:15.100 And so I would, um, my point was, um, you know, so we're always bickering and he found

00:52:24.340 me very difficult.

00:52:25.440 He wanted a different wife.

00:52:26.900 He wanted more wives.

00:52:28.000 He wanted.

00:52:29.200 So when, at what point, um, did he say, I want to go to Syria?

00:52:37.220 Okay.

00:52:37.700 So that was, that was, so he wanted to go to Syria during 2011 and I wasn't ready.

00:52:45.460 I was like, there's no way I'm going to go with my kids.

00:52:47.660 I have all these health issues.

00:52:49.480 How am I going to have access to an electric toothbrush or, you know, like all my toiletries

00:52:55.880 and all these things, like my lifestyle.

00:52:57.920 I was selfish, but I was like, you know, I love Syria.

00:53:02.420 It's holy land, the Levant in the, in the, uh, Islamic scripture.

00:53:07.260 It's where the Messiah returns to kill the Jews, which just sounds horrible, but that's

00:53:12.800 what it says.

00:53:13.620 And then I was like, I just don't want to be part of it.

00:53:16.680 I just want to be like, I want to be a grandmother one day.

00:53:19.860 I want to see my children do well.

00:53:21.440 I want to, you know, just live life, you know.

00:53:25.980 Was Egypt a middle step for him hoping to get you to Syria?

00:53:30.260 Well, well, Egypt was a place, since there was no government for one year, so that, so

00:53:36.600 2011 happened, there was no government, there was anarchy in Egypt.

00:53:41.060 No one obeyed any single law.

00:53:43.040 There was like no traffic laws, nothing.

00:53:46.200 It was completely broken.

00:53:47.760 He loved it.

00:53:48.680 He thrived in it.

00:53:50.040 No one was watching him as far as he was concerned.

00:53:53.020 He was free.

00:53:53.760 So that's where he could ramp up his, his rhetoric of jihad and also mistreat me and know that

00:54:01.400 I have no probation officer or anyone to turn to.

00:54:04.640 I did ask his parents for help and I used to complain.

00:54:08.600 They never believed me.

00:54:09.880 They didn't want to believe that their son was a monster because honestly, they didn't

00:54:14.780 raise him to be that way.

00:54:16.020 There was a little bit of misogyny, you know, like it's like old school relationship, traditional

00:54:21.900 between the father and the mother, but it wasn't, they just didn't want to believe me.

00:54:27.560 I was the outsider at the end of the day.

00:54:30.660 So I was alone and I was dependent on him.

00:54:33.540 Um, and then, so Syria came along where, when the coup happened, the military coup happened

00:54:42.260 and Morsi went and there's even stories about Morsi where they were like people from Europe

00:54:46.820 coming over to us.

00:54:48.980 They, they revered John because he had this website, uh, called, uh, the strangers, gurubah.info.

00:54:55.980 And it was, it had laid out all the criteria for who should be a caliph because John was the

00:55:03.220 one of the very few people that had studied this, the caliphate and, um, wanted to implement

00:55:09.940 the caliphate.

00:55:10.720 And he knew that it was, it was necessary.

00:55:12.700 And under Islamic scripture, it is necessary.

00:55:15.760 You can't have a body, like you have a community of Muslims, we're a body, but you can't have

00:55:22.000 a body that's decapitated.

00:55:23.660 So you have to have a head.

00:55:25.980 It's interesting because I know all of this.

00:55:27.880 And, uh, while you were probably here and then on the way to Egypt, that's what I was

00:55:37.020 being mocked.

00:55:37.660 Everyone said there was no caliphate and you were talking to your sister about one, 10

00:55:42.340 years before, 11 years before.

00:55:44.820 It's always been a plan.

00:55:47.100 It's always the agenda and the agenda is world domination.

00:55:50.900 And it's, uh, you know, it is, you know, right now I always have this problem with some Muslims

00:55:58.080 and I'm not anti-Muslim.

00:56:00.920 I feel like Muslims have all been manipulated equally as much as I have by this doctrine.

00:56:06.060 We've been duped by this, this ideology of hate.

00:56:11.140 Um, and it's from Muhammad, a man who like suffered some sort of illness.

00:56:17.480 I was on the, um, Pierce Morgan interview once and I, I suggested that maybe he had epilepsy.

00:56:24.860 Maybe that's what made him see these visions.

00:56:27.500 You know, we don't know because back then they didn't even have science, you know, they

00:56:31.620 were still into medieval beliefs, you know, so what, what can we really trust?

00:56:37.240 If a man is walking on a street and collapses and has a dream and says he sees God and gives

00:56:42.940 him a message, I'm not going to believe him.

00:56:44.900 I don't know him.

00:56:45.640 He could be a criminal, but back then they did, you know, um, so it was tough.

00:56:54.860 Um, so you go to Syria.

00:56:57.860 Yeah.

00:56:59.200 Unintentionally.

00:56:59.740 He took me there.

00:57:00.820 We weren't supposed to go to Syria.

00:57:02.740 He wanted to go to Sudan to, uh, study, to, to teach English and Arabic because he was

00:57:09.320 fluent in Arabic, fluent in, um, a lot of the ancient scriptures.

00:57:13.360 He had memorized the first Arabic dictionary, the very first grammar dictionary.

00:57:18.320 Yeah.

00:57:18.780 And I didn't realize he was autistic at the time.

00:57:21.280 So, cause he didn't look at, so he like, he, he made me feel inferior.

00:57:25.280 Cause I just thought, Oh God, I must be like a complete bimbo because he memorizes books and

00:57:31.800 I don't mainly because I don't have the time.

00:57:35.460 I've got to focus on my kids education, but, um, so we wanted to go Sudan, but we needed

00:57:43.300 money to escape because at the time in Egypt during the coup, more, um, CC was arresting

00:57:49.260 anyone, all the foreigners.

00:57:51.260 And if you were non-Islamic, he was, he was saying, charging people for being, uh, spies

00:57:59.060 from America or whatever.

00:58:00.480 And then if you're Islamic, he was saying, Oh, you must be Muslim brotherhood, Al Qaeda,

00:58:05.080 even if you're neither.

00:58:06.780 And I was living in Nasser city right there when the helicopters came and were shooting

00:58:13.460 at the, the protesters, I was lived like around the corner was the mosque.

00:58:20.280 Um, I forgot the name of something like Rabia and it was burnt down with people in the protesters

00:58:27.700 were in there seeking sanctuary and the CC government burnt the place down and it was horrifying, you

00:58:35.400 know, like, but other things disturbed me in Egypt while I was there.

00:58:40.460 I used to see children going through garbage cans, trying to pick things out.

00:58:47.120 And I would just like burst out crying.

00:58:51.880 I couldn't handle it.

00:58:52.760 And John thought it was embarrassing, but I was like, these children should be in school.

00:58:57.640 Why are they picking up trash for their parents?

00:59:00.760 I couldn't handle the whole, it was a complete culture shock for me.

00:59:04.080 It was unbearable.

00:59:05.060 And, and, and, you know, at the time, John was like, Oh, I'm going to get another wife.

00:59:10.540 I've had enough of you.

00:59:11.820 Just like go back to your parents.

00:59:13.840 I was like, yeah, like that's easy.

00:59:16.660 You know, three kids.

00:59:18.540 Yeah.

00:59:18.840 And then, and three kids with no reproductive rights.

00:59:24.300 There's no, um, in Muslim scholars reject the idea of marital rape, even though it's very

00:59:32.900 real, I, John knew very well, I didn't want any more children with him and still he impregnated

00:59:41.120 me and I didn't want it.

00:59:43.420 Um, with my fourth child.

00:59:44.780 And then he went and left me with, you know, in Syria while five months pregnant, just make

00:59:52.800 it on my own, you know, because there's a verse in the crime that says that your wives

00:59:58.400 and your children are the biggest fitna, which fitna means like temptation, problem.

01:00:05.580 Like, so he, he didn't want the responsibility of us.

01:00:10.900 He won.

01:00:12.220 Okay.

01:00:12.760 So he becomes a commander in ISIS.

01:00:17.940 He kind of follows in his father and his grandfather's footsteps, except with the enemy

01:00:22.220 of the United States.

01:00:23.120 And that's what he wanted to do.

01:00:24.320 He wanted to follow, he was like, he had some sort of pride.

01:00:28.920 He was like, my grandfather was fought in World War II.

01:00:31.700 My, my dad was in the air force.

01:00:34.100 I'm going to be in ISIS.

01:00:35.720 Well, I used to say to him, and guess what's going to happen to your kids?

01:00:39.720 Like, cause I, I'd learned the history of the Russians and the Chechnians.

01:00:43.360 Um, Chechnian fathers would abandon their fathers and the children would join the Russian army.

01:00:48.360 Now my kids want to go to West Point and join the military, which I pray to God that they

01:00:54.160 will, you know, cause they really want to make their grandfather proud and they want to

01:00:58.080 prove to America that, you know, that their loyalty is for here.

01:01:04.080 And I've.

01:01:05.180 So tell me about your time in, as an ISIS bride.

01:01:11.500 I mean, you were there, he was a commander.

01:01:13.920 Okay.

01:01:14.880 So to make it clear, I left ISIS, I, I, I, so I left Syria six months before ISIS declared

01:01:21.920 a caliphate.

01:01:22.820 Okay.

01:01:23.400 James, I am the luckiest mother and wife who got out in time because I could have been one

01:01:33.540 of those women trapped in those prison camps in the Kurds, with the Kurds.

01:01:37.700 Because I'm the only one who has made it back to America, de-radicalized and not had to

01:01:46.860 face prison or be in those camps or be dead.

01:01:51.980 But you, there was a chance you were going to be dead trying to get out.

01:01:56.180 Yeah.

01:01:56.800 Tell me how you got out.

01:01:57.980 I wasn't expecting that.

01:02:00.260 Like I wasn't prepared.

01:02:01.460 It was entering Syria.

01:02:03.420 So like, first, it's a long story how we got there.

01:02:06.760 We were never planning to go to Turkey, but we needed finances to leave Egypt.

01:02:12.940 But the only people, the only person we could get money from was his dad.

01:02:17.820 And his dad was like, no way, I'm not sending you to Sudan.

01:02:21.140 That's a crazy idea.

01:02:22.660 I didn't want to go to Sudan.

01:02:23.720 It's too hot.

01:02:24.760 And the people are lazy because it's hot.

01:02:26.900 And then, and then John was like, Philippines.

01:02:29.920 And I was like, the Philippines is fine.

01:02:32.360 But I looked at pictures and I was like, I don't want to live on stilts with like snakes

01:02:37.320 underneath.

01:02:37.900 And I was like, I want a real home.

01:02:40.020 And so I want, I wanted to go to Greece.

01:02:43.460 But then John's parents were like, no, you can't go to Greece with a hijab.

01:02:46.820 They're going to think you're a refugee or a gypsy and they're not going to treat you

01:02:50.180 right.

01:02:50.360 I was like, well, I'm happy to take my hijab off, but John wouldn't allow it.

01:02:56.120 Seriously, I did not want to wear the hijab for so many years.

01:02:59.300 And I was locked in my house because of that.

01:03:04.280 And so, so Turkey was the compromise.

01:03:09.420 So we were in Turkey, Istanbul.

01:03:12.400 I was so happy.

01:03:13.660 I was like, oh, it's clean.

01:03:15.420 It's not filthy like Egypt.

01:03:17.280 And it's like more like Europe.

01:03:19.900 And I was so happy.

01:03:21.680 But he was like, it's too expensive.

01:03:23.140 And I'm not going to learn Turkish.

01:03:24.940 We've got to go to the eastern side where they speak Arabic.

01:03:28.020 And I was like, okay, fair enough.

01:03:30.960 How bad can it be?

01:03:32.240 I've never been there.

01:03:33.400 I went there.

01:03:34.080 I was horrified.

01:03:34.840 It was full of Syrian refugees.

01:03:36.900 And I was really panicking and hormonal from being pregnant.

01:03:40.920 And I was freaking out every moment.

01:03:42.860 And he was like, we were waiting for money to be transferred and the money didn't come.

01:03:54.100 And then we ended up getting on a bus because we were sleeping on the streets because we couldn't

01:03:59.080 get a hotel room.

01:04:00.560 All the hotels, the Syrians were given priority over hotel rooms.

01:04:05.180 So the only place we could stay that night in Gaziantep was a Syrian hostel.

01:04:09.760 And I refused to stay there because I was like, oh, my kids and I are allergic to bedbugs

01:04:16.800 like really badly.

01:04:18.760 And it was filthy.

01:04:20.160 And I said, I'd rather sleep on the streets with my kids, pregnant.

01:04:25.220 And we were there at two o'clock in the morning on the streets.

01:04:29.160 And a bus came to the Syrian hostel for the refugees and let them off to go stay there.

01:04:35.840 John went and spoke to them.

01:04:37.600 I didn't speak because I wasn't allowed to have interaction with men.

01:04:40.760 And so, yeah, so like 10 years of having no interaction with the opposite sex, which is

01:04:49.160 difficult, right?

01:04:51.440 And so he went to talk to them.

01:04:53.120 He said, get on the bus because he knew we were exhausted.

01:04:56.100 And I was like, oh, I can sit down and sleep.

01:04:58.920 I didn't know where the bus was going.

01:05:01.060 And it ended up driving to the checkpoint of the Turkish-Syrian border.

01:05:05.940 And there we got out and I was like having a meltdown.

01:05:12.700 And John was like, don't make, you know, women aren't allowed to, we're not even allowed

01:05:17.340 to speak loudly in public.

01:05:19.220 We have to keep quiet.

01:05:21.380 It's like, it's only two weeks.

01:05:22.480 It's only two weeks.

01:05:23.160 I reassure you.

01:05:23.820 It's only because we don't have the money.

01:05:26.780 And then he said, as soon as we get the money, we'll go back to Turkey because that

01:05:29.700 was the plan to stay in Turkey and help the rebels from Turkey.

01:05:34.840 Because there's a lot of that happening.

01:05:37.020 There was no mention of the caliphate at the time because at the time I didn't really even

01:05:41.220 thought, I didn't think I'd see a caliphate in my lifetime, but I thought maybe my children

01:05:45.160 would.

01:05:47.180 And then, so we ended up going into Syria.

01:05:50.900 The Turkish border guards didn't care.

01:05:53.680 They didn't question me.

01:05:55.120 They didn't question my friend who's an Irish citizen.

01:05:59.120 Because, well, women, they didn't want to talk to us.

01:06:01.560 It's John Lai.

01:06:03.260 So at this checkpoint, there are Tunisian foreign fighters.

01:06:07.780 And, you know, you can see them.

01:06:09.420 They've got the big beards.

01:06:10.500 They've got the calational cloths.

01:06:12.000 They've got it.

01:06:12.680 And they just said to John, just say your passport's on the other side.

01:06:17.760 And he did.

01:06:18.620 And he passed.

01:06:19.360 They didn't care.

01:06:20.680 They let us through.

01:06:21.340 As soon as we got there, then the militia, the Islamic militia, questioned John.

01:06:28.160 They said, who do you know?

01:06:29.660 He gave them some references.

01:06:31.460 They called up the references.

01:06:32.900 The people said, take care of this guy.

01:06:34.720 Take care of his family.

01:06:35.640 So they put us into an abandoned general's home.

01:06:41.240 It was like a mansion.

01:06:43.820 But the windows had been shattered.

01:06:46.220 There were gun bullets.

01:06:48.060 There was holes.

01:06:48.940 The water tank at the top had been broken.

01:06:52.500 We had no electricity.

01:06:53.840 It was really hard.

01:06:58.220 So I was there for, like, they kept moving us.

01:07:00.860 But it was a military base.

01:07:02.060 So it's where the militia would come and have meetings.

01:07:04.940 So we could only stay there for a week.

01:07:07.480 And then so I was only in Syria for three weeks.

01:07:10.340 And John didn't have a cell phone at this time that worked in the Syrian location.

01:07:15.220 He had a cell phone that worked in Turkey, but it didn't work in Syria.

01:07:19.580 So we kept moving.

01:07:21.900 And then as soon as John got a cell phone, I called his mother.

01:07:27.380 And I said, John did exactly what he said he wouldn't do.

01:07:30.240 Because he promised me and he promised his mother he would not take us to Syria.

01:07:34.160 He said we were going to stay in Antioch, in Turkey.

01:07:37.400 But he ended up taking us to Gaza and Turban from there to Syria.

01:07:41.660 And I called her up and I said, please call the FBI.

01:07:46.280 Tell them that I'm so desperate to get out of here.

01:07:48.980 Because if we don't, we're not going to just have one terrorist, American terrorist,

01:07:53.060 but he's going to make my children into terrorists.

01:07:55.800 And I didn't want to see that.

01:07:57.120 That was the biggest problem to me and John is that I really wanted my children to have a fulfilling life.

01:08:04.220 I wanted them to live and be educated.

01:08:06.920 And all he cared about was an Islamic primitive medieval education.

01:08:12.400 And it was a huge problem.

01:08:14.440 And the differences arose strangely from the internet.

01:08:19.580 So like using Facebook, I was, so prior to Syria, we were in Egypt and we would speak in political forums with Jews, Christians, atheists.

01:08:31.580 And John was a Muslim and we would debate.

01:08:33.780 And I loved these debates.

01:08:36.420 And it made me realize how much I love Americans too.

01:08:40.040 Because they're a prince of all.

01:08:41.340 I fell in love with Americans.

01:08:42.220 I fell in love with John, even his American side, but I loved American people.

01:08:47.500 And so he, you know, this opened my mind a lot, like just hearing their arguments and their debates and not, and feeling more of an affiliation to them than I did with the Muslims.

01:09:00.440 You know, Muslims were so nihilistic and the Muslims didn't care about things.

01:09:04.180 I was like, I cared about saving the bees.

01:09:07.760 I cared about like, you know, pollution and things.

01:09:11.600 And for them, they were like, it's the end of the world.

01:09:14.820 Jesus will take care of it.

01:09:16.440 God will take care of it, whatever.

01:09:18.120 And I was like, well, you know, we can help, you know, with these problems.

01:09:23.080 But we just had different priorities altogether.

01:09:25.740 Because at the end of the day, their goal was to die, to live an eternal life in paradise.

01:09:31.640 Because to them, and my husband, my ex-husband, this life is a dream.

01:09:37.060 It's not real.

01:09:39.060 And then, so the Hadiths say, when you go to paradise, you look back at this world and it's just like a dream.

01:09:45.300 Dreams are insignificant.

01:09:48.140 And so that's how lightly they take this world.

01:09:52.640 And that's how much they depreciate life.

01:09:55.740 They don't value human life.

01:09:58.240 Not for their families, not for their children.

01:10:00.760 And that's why it's so poisonous.

01:10:02.460 When you came across the border to leave Syria, how did you get back across?

01:10:29.720 So that was really rough.

01:10:34.900 I was five and a half months pregnant.

01:10:36.980 So I'd waited three weeks until the fighting had stopped so that the borders would be open for me to cross.

01:10:46.280 And the Syrians were like, malish, malish.

01:10:49.880 Or the Egyptians were like, this is no problem.

01:10:52.320 It's easy.

01:10:52.700 I thought, I was under the impression it would be as easy to leave as it was to get in because the Turkish border guards didn't care.

01:11:01.100 But it wasn't.

01:11:02.780 The Syrian guards were on these posts shooting at us.

01:11:09.240 We were running.

01:11:10.600 I was so scared.

01:11:12.060 My kids were frightened.

01:11:13.260 We had to run through barbed wire.

01:11:15.140 We had to get into a human trafficking truck.

01:11:17.560 John paid the human trafficker.

01:11:19.300 He crossed the border with us to Turkey.

01:11:21.760 He could have come with us, but he wouldn't.

01:11:23.840 He said, I'm not going to.

01:11:25.120 I begged him on my hands and knees while pregnant, cry.

01:11:28.860 Please take me to the airport because I'd never been alone in my life.

01:11:33.000 I said, please take me to the airport.

01:11:34.980 And he said, no, because you've reported me to the FBI and they're going to arrest me.

01:11:39.920 So it's your fault.

01:11:40.920 So he wouldn't take me.

01:11:44.220 So he left me with this human trafficker that left me.

01:11:47.320 He drove up, you know, took John's money, drove up, left me in the middle of nowhere in Turkey.

01:11:52.960 I didn't know.

01:11:53.980 I didn't speak Turkish.

01:11:55.360 It was a dirt road with just grass and fields and heels.

01:12:00.840 And I was sobbing.

01:12:01.560 And you had no idea which way to go.

01:12:03.380 I didn't know which way, left, right, anywhere.

01:12:05.000 Everybody else in the truck just, they scattered like cockroaches in their own way.

01:12:11.900 And I was just there alone, crying and sobbing.

01:12:15.140 My poor kids had to see me.

01:12:16.880 My kids were just carrying the luggage and I was pushing a stroller.

01:12:21.020 And then a guy came on a motorcycle and saw us, how distressed we were.

01:12:25.120 And he said, he can speak Arabic.

01:12:27.060 He can speak English.

01:12:27.920 He spoke Turkish.

01:12:28.660 And the only word that we could get across was mehtab or like station.

01:12:33.780 I need to get to the bus station.

01:12:36.220 So he said, I will take one child at a time, the luggage, and take them to the station.

01:12:44.640 And I was so afraid.

01:12:47.760 Yeah, I bet.

01:12:48.460 Because they have organ trafficking, drug trafficking, sex trafficking in that region.

01:12:55.140 It's so dominant.

01:12:56.400 Even in Egypt, it's so prevalent.

01:12:58.560 Kids go missing all the time.

01:13:02.080 So what made you decide to take him up on the offer?

01:13:05.600 I put my trust in God.

01:13:07.480 I didn't have any other option.

01:13:10.540 So I didn't know what else to do.

01:13:12.200 So he went, he took my eight-year-old and a luggage bag, and then he came back.

01:13:18.140 Then he took my four-year-old and a luggage bag and went back.

01:13:22.020 And as a Muslim woman, I wouldn't have sat near him on a bicycle motorbike.

01:13:27.140 Because it's like too close proximity.

01:13:30.420 So I walked with a stroller and I had two rucksacks, pregnant, six months pregnant, dehydrated.

01:13:37.020 I forgot to bring water with me.

01:13:39.240 And I get criticized for that, not bringing drinking water.

01:13:42.460 But I was like, my hands were full.

01:13:45.140 I thought John had water.

01:13:47.040 He thought I had water.

01:13:48.640 We didn't have water.

01:13:49.920 My kids had infections.

01:13:51.300 I had an infection.

01:13:52.760 We were sick.

01:13:54.800 But this man was very good.

01:13:57.940 And he took my kids to the bus station.

01:14:00.120 He came and he drove slowly while I pushed up the hill.

01:14:03.920 It was like a two-mile walk.

01:14:05.360 And I got to the bus station.

01:14:07.500 I saw my kids were safe.

01:14:09.740 And then John had arranged another trafficker, Syrian trafficker, who I could tell was a real radical.

01:14:16.000 He had shaven his beard and everything.

01:14:17.860 But he wouldn't look at me.

01:14:18.860 He looked at me with disgust because I wasn't covered up.

01:14:23.280 My face wasn't covered.

01:14:24.260 My body, you know, I didn't wear the robes like his family does.

01:14:27.180 So he wouldn't even talk to me.

01:14:28.760 Like I was not even human, like something disgusting.

01:14:34.080 I was like, okay, I've got to work with him regardless.

01:14:36.620 And then him and his family, I gave them 60 euros.

01:14:40.080 They drove me to Gaziantep Airport.

01:14:42.940 And from Gaziantep Airport, John's father had booked tickets for us to go to Istanbul.

01:14:51.860 And then by the time I got to Istanbul, I had to go to the emergency room because I nearly had a miscarriage.

01:14:58.640 Jeez.

01:14:59.380 And I had to leave my kids in a hotel room alone, which really frightened me because that's like three kids.

01:15:05.680 I got an eight-year-old, a four-year-old, and a one-and-a-half-year-old staying in a hotel room by themselves.

01:15:11.720 While you're having a baby.

01:15:12.860 While I'm getting like fluids put into me because I was so dehydrated and scared.

01:15:19.540 And the Turkish, the ER people were horrible.

01:15:23.220 They just didn't show an ounce of kindness to me.

01:15:26.820 And I was, and they were wondering why I was mad at them.

01:15:31.480 So I like at one point I was just so mad.

01:15:34.380 I was like, I was tearing out the IV.

01:15:36.580 And I said, just go back home.

01:15:38.460 I need to go to my kids.

01:15:40.160 And I went back to the hotel, found my kids asleep, sound asleep.

01:15:45.520 This was like six hours I was in the hospital.

01:15:48.100 And then they were sleeping.

01:15:49.480 And there was like this, a male hotel guy sitting there.

01:15:54.200 But I kind of freaked out because I would have preferred a woman to be watching my kids.

01:15:57.940 I got paranoia.

01:15:59.160 But I was like, I know what happens in hotels.

01:16:01.680 I know what kind of business they run.

01:16:03.360 It's not just shady sometimes.

01:16:05.340 But, you know, he didn't harm my kids, but I was a very overprotective mother.

01:16:10.980 And so he left.

01:16:12.500 Then my mother, my former mother-in-law, John's mother, caught my family in England and said,

01:16:19.640 please help Tanya.

01:16:21.400 She's in hospital.

01:16:22.480 She's in the hotel.

01:16:23.680 She had to leave.

01:16:24.400 John abandoned them.

01:16:26.700 And my family said, no.

01:16:29.040 So I was like, no, we're not going to help her.

01:16:31.600 And then she basically had to beg.

01:16:34.340 And so one of my sisters, my parents told one of my sisters, please go help.

01:16:39.600 So she came, picked us up from Turkey.

01:16:44.480 Because they're all familiar with Turkey.

01:16:45.780 They're Muslims.

01:16:46.500 They go all over the Muslim world.

01:16:48.040 They're fine with it.

01:16:48.900 They won't come to America, though, because they're anti-American.

01:16:51.580 But they picked us up from Turkey.

01:16:54.640 I was in a wheelchair.

01:16:56.320 And the American government said, we can't save you from Syria.

01:16:59.620 But if you cross the border and come to the UK, you have to come back to the US within two weeks.

01:17:06.480 Because we have to record everything you saw in those two weeks.

01:17:12.620 And I was like, I'm more than happy to help you.

01:17:17.040 America saved me.

01:17:18.260 It goes back to before I went to Syria, where I was a stay-at-home mom.

01:17:24.240 I was homeschooling my kids, which is really tough work.

01:17:29.060 And I would watch things like Fox News Business.

01:17:31.920 I would listen to Judge Andrew Napolitano.

01:17:36.240 I would listen to Ron Paul.

01:17:37.660 They taught me about the US Constitution.

01:17:40.080 This was enlightenment for me.

01:17:41.680 You said that when you read the Declaration of Independence, you had never read anything like that before.

01:17:52.480 Freedom of thought, freedom of thinking, rights for humans.

01:17:56.420 It's incredible.

01:17:57.760 Like, as Muslims, we have to think the word of God is perfect.

01:18:02.460 We're not allowed to disagree.

01:18:04.140 But I was like, hang on, this is a value system that is so much more humane, so much more merciful to human nature than a 14th century angry Arab god.

01:18:18.560 And who's also misogynist and homophobic and hates everyone who's not a Muslim.

01:18:23.080 And I was like, you know, I was like, I found something more beautiful.

01:18:31.420 And, you know, of course, John didn't appreciate that.

01:18:35.580 But I fell for it.

01:18:37.420 I fell in love.

01:18:38.020 I was like, this is what I need.

01:18:39.220 This is what my children need.

01:18:40.440 This is what the world needs.

01:18:41.860 You've read Thomas Paine.

01:18:43.760 I love Thomas Paine.

01:18:44.940 Yeah, I read The Age of Reason.

01:18:46.080 The Age of Reason, Rights of Man.

01:18:52.880 I got some notes.

01:18:54.440 What did you think of that?

01:18:56.900 Okay, so I went to Facebook headquarters once, and I had to go discuss with them their responsibility for spreading terrorism with the groups, the foreign groups.

01:19:10.160 But that was why I went there with a group, Parents for Peace.

01:19:13.360 But I had to thank them, because I was like, I read a meme, and the meme said, a cruel God, I don't have my bag here, but I had the notes, but it was something like, the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.

01:19:29.000 And when I read that meme, it's so powerful, a small meme, it struck me so hard.

01:19:36.100 And I was like, no one has expressed what I've been feeling so clearly, because I knew it, and I felt it every single day.

01:19:46.700 And he had the freedom, as a non-Muslim, to put it into words, because it's blasphemy to say such a thing in Islam.

01:19:54.540 But it was true.

01:19:55.700 And I remember saying to John, John, Thomas Paine says all these amazing quotes, and I wasn't raised with American founding fathers or anything, so I was like, this is so incredible.

01:20:09.100 He said, yeah, I read Thomas Paine while I was in prison.

01:20:12.360 He's good, but you stay away from him.

01:20:15.160 And I was like, oh, I'm fine.

01:20:17.280 But once John was out of the picture, I could read every material I wanted.

01:20:23.040 You know, I started studying humanism.

01:20:25.360 I started just reading everything I could, like philosophy, psychology.

01:20:31.900 I wanted to make sense of why my life was the way it was.

01:20:36.620 Like, because even I was like, this is too crazy.

01:20:40.540 I need to make sense of it.

01:20:42.520 So, are you, you're not Muslim.

01:20:47.480 No way.

01:20:48.160 Yeah.

01:20:50.320 And.

01:20:51.220 I don't want to be a slave.

01:20:52.700 And that's what I got to say.

01:20:54.280 Islam is enslavement.

01:20:56.000 It's enslavement for men, women, children, minorities.

01:21:00.340 And if you're not a slave, you're going to be killed.

01:21:02.900 I know it sounds Islamophobic, but it's legitimate.

01:21:07.400 It's a legitimate reason.

01:21:08.600 Even the Crusades, like the Muslims and everybody wants to criticize the Crusades or how they

01:21:14.620 attacked the Middle East and everything.

01:21:17.000 But if you look at the secular history of it, the Muslims were invading Europe and killing

01:21:22.500 far more Europeans than, than in comparison to what happened to the Crusades.

01:21:29.080 Because the Crusades was like a very minor, you know, battle compared to the invasion of

01:21:35.240 the Ottomans and the Arabs of Europe that had been going on for so long.

01:21:42.320 So like I was without John, without my husband being my God telling me what I can and can't

01:21:49.020 think, I could see the picture clearly.

01:21:52.300 And it was enlightening.

01:21:56.620 And so you probably think that Thomas Paine, atheist?

01:22:02.960 No, he's a deist.

01:22:06.460 Isn't he?

01:22:07.200 He believes in God.

01:22:08.740 Yeah.

01:22:09.500 Yeah.

01:22:10.120 I just want to show you something.

01:22:11.400 Okay.

01:22:12.520 Thomas Paine was known as, he went over to help free the people of France.

01:22:21.560 And he got into a real bad argument with George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, who was like

01:22:28.620 his father.

01:22:29.780 And, um, he said, you don't, you see it.

01:22:33.540 That's it's Liberty.

01:22:35.900 Um, but when he got over there, they started beheading everybody and it turned into just a

01:22:42.020 bloodbath.

01:22:43.340 And the reason why he said this, he started to get into trouble with them because he said,

01:22:49.080 wait, this didn't happen in America.

01:22:51.300 But what he noticed was they were rejecting God.

01:22:56.400 And that's when he wrote, um, his books that you have read.

01:23:01.740 Uh, and he was trying to explain to the French, but the Americans read that and said, you're

01:23:07.860 rejecting God.

01:23:10.200 Most people leave the story at that.

01:23:12.960 And most scholars leave it at that.

01:23:15.600 This is Thomas Paine's letter to Benjamin Franklin.

01:23:20.600 Um, that's his, I love Benjamin Franklin.

01:23:25.580 This is, that's his letter.

01:23:29.120 And in it, he talks about how I'm trying to, I was trying to express to the French who have

01:23:38.340 lived through horrible, horrible religious persecution.

01:23:44.000 Um, where the churches were just organs of the state and it wasn't about God.

01:23:51.920 And I was trying to tell them that they need God, but I understand how they feel about the

01:23:58.180 church.

01:24:00.240 This is beautiful.

01:24:02.460 This is amazing.

01:24:04.060 And my handwriting is very similar.

01:24:06.160 It is.

01:24:07.440 I'm not a writer, but I'm good at handwriting.

01:24:09.420 I'll show you one more, one more, one more thing.

01:24:14.940 So this is the actual document that Thomas Paine wrote to Benjamin Franklin.

01:24:21.260 Yeah.

01:24:22.000 Oh my God.

01:24:23.100 Yeah.

01:24:23.760 It's pretty amazing, isn't it?

01:24:25.000 It is.

01:24:25.420 And it goes on page.

01:24:26.720 I know.

01:24:27.100 I wish I could read all of it.

01:24:28.220 Yeah.

01:24:28.560 Well, I'll leave it with you for a few and you read it.

01:24:32.180 This I thought you might, uh, enjoy as well.

01:24:35.560 This is the plan, but this is the first American printing of it.

01:24:39.240 Oh, uh, this was, please say it's edited.

01:24:43.800 It's not edited.

01:24:44.900 Oh, well, I, I'm going to have to go in there and scrap out every misogyny, homophobic, every

01:24:49.220 year.

01:24:49.600 Well, actually, I think what's interesting is this came, Thomas Jefferson said when they

01:24:58.880 started the Barbary pirates, uh, the war with Barbary pirates, it was our first war and

01:25:04.220 it was a war against Islam and, um, and Thomas Jefferson, he fought it and, uh, but he didn't

01:25:12.780 snuff it out.

01:25:14.360 And so he said, everyone in America should read the Quran.

01:25:18.980 And so they printed the entire Quran.

01:25:21.740 He didn't edit.

01:25:22.620 He didn't take it out of context.

01:25:24.080 But what he did do is they added to the reader.

01:25:28.680 And it says here that you have to read this and you will not believe the absurdities of

01:25:39.520 how many people in the world believe that this stuff is true.

01:25:44.820 And it comes with a warning that if we don't understand this book, they will never stop.

01:25:53.300 This is a book of jihad.

01:25:55.200 It's a manual for jihad and you can interpret it to believe anything you want.

01:26:01.940 Like you can, like the apologists can interpret it however they want.

01:26:06.220 But Muhammad took it literally, the book.

01:26:08.940 He didn't interpret it.

01:26:09.880 He heard and he obeyed.

01:26:11.880 And it, and every ruling of jihad is in that book.

01:26:15.600 It's a dangerous book.

01:26:17.440 And, but it's, can easily be refuted to because it's, it's inhumane.

01:26:22.240 It doesn't apply to modern times.

01:26:24.400 It can't be changed.

01:26:26.220 And it's just unscientific even like Muhammad, for example, he was a merchant.

01:26:33.520 I think the closest he knew to like the embryology was goats, you know, goats having miscarriages

01:26:42.540 or whatever, because he talks about the fetus.

01:26:46.100 And he talks about how there's not a heartbeat until like three weeks into the process.

01:26:55.240 And so you can, in Islam, you can have an abortion within, before 21 days.

01:27:02.460 And, and I know in the Bible it says life starts at contraception.

01:27:08.180 But science says it's, it's with a zygote and then it becomes a baby.

01:27:12.400 I, but I, I like that.

01:27:15.340 Those are the things that fascinate people.

01:27:17.200 Also like another unscientific thing that Muhammad said is that he said that sperm comes from

01:27:22.540 the ribs of man.

01:27:23.880 Then what does, what is the scrotum for?

01:27:26.260 He was a merchant who was illiterate.

01:27:28.700 He didn't know science.

01:27:29.960 So tell me, how come you're not dead?

01:27:34.060 Uh, I don't think anyone cares about killing me.

01:27:38.720 Thank goodness.

01:27:39.380 They got bigger fish to fry, but you know.

01:27:42.260 I mean, I, I, I've, I've sat with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

01:27:45.340 I don't know if you know her.

01:27:46.480 Yeah, I admire her.

01:27:47.460 Uh, incredibly brave and, uh.

01:27:50.940 So intelligent, yeah.

01:27:52.700 And she had a security person right off the side of the camera.

01:27:57.920 Um, how come, I mean, you're, you have said several things that.

01:28:02.860 I said that Koran is a terrible book.

01:28:04.780 Yeah.

01:28:05.140 You've said several things that would mark you.

01:28:07.920 Yeah.

01:28:08.300 Is your, is your ex-husband, John, is he dead?

01:28:11.580 He's probably dead.

01:28:12.960 He died in 2017 in the Battle of Mayardine.

01:28:16.680 It was the Russians and the Syrian government attacking an entire city.

01:28:20.860 They blew it up.

01:28:22.800 And of course there's no evidence.

01:28:25.040 They can't, they can't.

01:28:26.560 So no one can investigate and find the, the DNA because the war's going on.

01:28:32.200 Until the war's over, then they can go to these areas and find.

01:28:36.680 Are you close to his family?

01:28:39.980 I love his mother.

01:28:41.700 His mother's, was a better mother to me than my own mother.

01:28:46.040 And I know that's because she's got a very good Christian heart.

01:28:49.800 Um, my children are Christian, Orthodox Christian.

01:28:54.060 Um, I, I, I love his mother.

01:28:57.540 We're very close.

01:28:58.500 His dad is a very staunch military type of man.

01:29:03.120 Uh, very proud.

01:29:04.600 He has every reason to be proud.

01:29:06.380 He, he did everything by the book.

01:29:08.680 He was very successful, you know, quarterback in West Point.

01:29:12.060 I mean, he, he's a doctor.

01:29:14.500 I mean, I can, but we don't, we're from two different worlds.

01:29:20.000 It's almost like I wouldn't have, never have anything to do with them if it wasn't for John and my children.

01:29:24.380 So we don't get along too well, but he loves my children.

01:29:30.060 And, and that's, I mean, I couldn't ask for more, you know, like my children are privileged.

01:29:38.100 I don't always say the right thing.

01:29:39.860 Like sometimes I flip out and say, well, at least you're not in an orphanage or at least you're not in a boarding school.

01:29:44.140 But those aren't the right things I say, I should say.

01:29:46.720 But they are loved, you know, most people in the world would die for it to be in their place.

01:29:53.200 And they know that.

01:29:55.360 That's drive you nuts hearing people talk about America.

01:29:58.980 Because.

01:30:00.380 Yeah, I hate, like a lot of things that I hear, like the inequality.

01:30:04.360 I'm like, you have no idea what you're talking about.

01:30:07.000 Like, and the racism, people talk about America being racist.

01:30:10.040 I'm like, you have, this is, this isn't true.

01:30:12.740 America is not racist.

01:30:13.820 I've lived in Europe and they are very hostile.

01:30:18.000 Like I had to live with racism most of my life there.

01:30:21.860 And then when I came to America, I was like, people are so nice.

01:30:26.240 And, you know, a little bit of.

01:30:27.340 We have our problems, but everybody does.

01:30:29.720 The history is bad everywhere in the world.

01:30:32.780 There's always genocide.

01:30:33.860 There's always this competition of survival of the fittest and who has the stronger weapons.

01:30:38.720 And I get it.

01:30:39.840 Even with Israel, I understand now, you know, a much better picture.

01:30:46.380 Now that I know Jewish people, I understand.

01:30:49.060 I'm studying the history of Israel.

01:30:51.500 What Israel has done, you know, the Jewish people have done for that land.

01:30:55.740 And they had nowhere else to go.

01:30:57.840 And it wasn't even developed by the Palestinians.

01:31:00.760 The Palestinians weren't even a thing until like, like the Philistines or the Palestinians in the Bible.

01:31:07.860 They're not the same people that live today.

01:31:10.760 These are, the Palestinians are, you know, they probably have, you know, hereditary Jewish lines in their family.

01:31:20.580 But a lot of them are Egyptians, you know, and they never made Israel a democratic country the way that it is.

01:31:28.720 It was empty land.

01:31:30.740 It was just desert with nomads.

01:31:32.760 And these nomads are the most primitive human beings you can imagine.

01:31:36.080 They don't have any concept of science or recycling or human rights.

01:31:41.400 They don't know.

01:31:42.500 They just, all they know is their poetry, songs and drinking tea.

01:31:45.760 And I sound crass.

01:31:48.640 I'm sorry.

01:31:49.240 It's all right.

01:31:50.040 But it's from my experience, I've seen it all.

01:31:52.520 And I know Israel helps the Palestinians and the Palestinians do not, they don't shed light on it.

01:32:00.360 They just completely, it's all like they're the victim.

01:32:03.340 And that's the problem with Muslims.

01:32:04.760 They always play the victim.

01:32:06.440 Well, how about thinking about for 1400 years, how many people were victimized by jihad?

01:32:12.700 Millions of people's lives were ruined.

01:32:17.580 You know, you get genocides from every part, you know, from anyone who wasn't Muslim.

01:32:22.860 You surrender or you die or you pay the jizya and you're humiliated.

01:32:29.880 What are you going to do now?

01:32:32.280 Well, for the last four years, I've been really trying hard to work with NGOs to get into prison systems to do a de-radicalization program.

01:32:41.160 I want a mandatory education for these people.

01:32:44.640 I want them to learn exactly what I learned.

01:32:47.580 I, you know, what did I study?

01:32:51.340 I started American history.

01:32:54.860 I studied human rights.

01:32:56.360 I studied things like YouTube channels, like Crash Course History and Science.

01:33:01.000 So educational.

01:33:02.580 And it's free.

01:33:03.600 I did Coursera courses.

01:33:05.340 Are you familiar with Coursera?

01:33:06.460 So they're like Ivy League schools who do classes online.

01:33:10.340 You can pay for certificates or you don't pay.

01:33:12.880 It's free.

01:33:13.700 But since it's free, these things taught me how to be a good citizen.

01:33:20.120 Like, you know, it reprogrammed me.

01:33:21.840 I needed it, but I was open to it.

01:33:23.640 I wanted to relearn because I wanted to survive.

01:33:26.320 I mean, I wanted my children to survive.

01:33:27.700 One thing I cannot understand about the Muslims who are still stuck in that mentality is that they really don't believe this life is real.

01:33:37.680 They're delusional.

01:33:38.980 They're living in a fantasy world.

01:33:40.580 And I was there once.

01:33:41.860 We need to break that free from them because that's an oppression on them even.

01:33:46.880 Even they've been exploited.

01:33:49.120 But as a, you know, they've been exploited and then they spread tyranny and then they think they're the victims.

01:33:54.200 I just want them, like, okay, if we imprison them or under house arrest, they need education because education is enlightenment.

01:34:03.540 And they will get that.

01:34:05.520 You know, if we do comparative studies of different value systems, it's really important.

01:34:12.300 If I can learn, and I'm telling you, I was never a very bright child.

01:34:16.900 If I can learn, they can learn.

01:34:18.460 But not enough people support it because they don't have the heart to invest in helping these extremists, even like neo-Nazi, you know, neo-Nazis.

01:34:33.380 Is there a lot of familiarity?

01:34:34.740 Antifa and...

01:34:35.820 Is there a...

01:34:37.020 So much in common.

01:34:38.200 So much in common?

01:34:39.060 So much in common.

01:34:39.920 And the main point is using violence to achieve a political means.

01:34:45.200 If we could just teach them, look, you don't have to turn to violence.

01:34:49.120 You have to do it through the political process, through process.

01:34:52.560 It takes patience.

01:34:53.940 It takes teamwork.

01:34:55.380 But you don't have to kill people for it.

01:34:57.600 If you have to kill people for an idea, guess what?

01:35:00.340 It's a bad idea.

01:35:01.800 You know, and they need logic.

01:35:03.340 But when they're in this collective mindset and they're, like, trapped in these camps and things, they're not hearing my voice.

01:35:11.480 They're hearing only each other's voices.

01:35:13.980 And right now in these camps, the Kurdish camps, the extremist women are bullying and killing women who don't want to be affiliated with ISIS.

01:35:25.820 The 14-year-old girl got killed the other week because she didn't want to cover.

01:35:30.480 Like, she just didn't want to wear a face veil.

01:35:32.100 And women who talk to reporters, they get poop thrown at them.

01:35:37.380 Their children are beaten up.

01:35:39.740 I just can't understand.

01:35:40.840 I understand.

01:35:41.340 There's 70,000 people in a camp.

01:35:43.600 We have lots of money to go to war.

01:35:46.560 But we need to go into these camps and separate the dangerous people from the harmless people.

01:35:53.660 It's really important.

01:35:55.300 These harmful mothers who are still brainwashed by ISIS are child abusers.

01:36:00.580 They are not good.

01:36:03.260 They should not have rights to their children.

01:36:06.700 I know it's cruel to separate your children.

01:36:09.160 But even I needed separation from my own children to grow as a human being.

01:36:14.720 I needed an identity.

01:36:16.260 I needed to re-educate and reprogram myself to survive for my children's sake.

01:36:21.300 And it's the only way.

01:36:25.700 It's just like there's not enough people who care about those people in the camps because it's far away.

01:36:31.660 But if we don't do something about it, the Kurds are suffering.

01:36:36.220 They can't cope with the amount of people.

01:36:39.740 They don't have the resources to feed these people even.

01:36:42.720 And they're going to let them go.

01:36:44.500 And ISIS are waiting.

01:36:46.080 ISIS are determined to come back.

01:36:48.380 And I just want to end it.

01:36:51.140 I just, if I feel like if we could just educate these people and make these people see that Islam is something of the past and it should stay in the past.

01:37:00.860 But we have enlightened, you know, there was a stage of enlightenment thinkers, which was the best thing ever.

01:37:08.420 And now we have things like the, you know, the scientific methodology.

01:37:13.980 We understand how that works.

01:37:15.660 We, we've grown.

01:37:17.280 We live in the age of knowledge and they're in the dark ages.

01:37:20.280 Well, we've got to get them out.

01:37:21.560 And especially the American children.

01:37:23.320 There are American children there.

01:37:25.060 They don't deserve to be there.

01:37:28.180 Tanya.

01:37:29.040 Yes, sir.

01:37:29.840 Thank you.

01:37:30.320 You're welcome.

01:37:36.620 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

01:38:00.320 Thank you.

01:38:01.020 Thank you.

01:38:01.040 Thank you.

The Glenn Beck Program - October 05, 2019

Ep 53 ｜ The Truth About Jihad – From A Woman Who Escaped It ｜ Tania Joya ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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