London Bridge killer: Was he adequately rehabilitated?

Following on from the last video concerning why Usman Khan wore a fake suicide vest, we now ask the question as to whether Usman Khan was correctly rehabilitated while in Belmarsh prison, and whether the program he volunteered for, the 'Desistance and Disengagement Program' (DDP) was effective in de-radicalizing him? The answer, from what happened yesterday at the Fishmonger's Hall, next to the London Bridge, is a clear no! He was invited to the Fishmonger's Hall on the invitation of Jack Meritt, the coordinator for the event, named 'Learning Together', a meeting to showcase rehabilitated prisoners of this program. Unfortunately, Jack Merritt was the first person Usman killed, suggesting to us that not only was he not rehabilitated, this meeting was used by Usman to make a statement of his own. He came with the fake suicide vest hidden under his jacket, and possibly with the knife (we are also told that he may have had a gun in a sack he was carrying), so his actions were all premeditated. Why the Cambridge University led program ('Learning Together') chose that building, right on the very same bridge where 2 years previous 3 other Muslim men killed 8 other civilians, using similar knives, and wearing similar fake suicide vests, is beyond us, but the fact that Usman used the meeting for his own purposes, is not.  The DDP program did not rehabilitate Usman, and the reason seems to us quite obvious. It is geared to a Western setting and to Western prisoners, and not to radical Muslims. Western prisoners tend to be from working class neighborhoods, often from broken families, with little education, who are non-religious, and grow up as social misfits, and thus have an identity crisis, which usually leads to drugs and drink, and then to criminal activities. This program, which says it offers the prisoners self-esteem, meaning, purpose, and confronts the radical narrative, is not what a Muslim radical needs, because it doesn't understand him, nor confronts what motivates him, nor his ideology which causes him to use violence, to say nothing about the sources for that ideology. Usman already had his identity in Islam, and that is where he got his self-esteem, as well as his purpose in life from. He doesn't want to be de-radicalized, because that would divorce him from his identity, his self-esteem, as well as his meaning and purpose for everything he believes.  But, a Western, non-religious academic criminologist wouldn't understand anything about that, because he doesn’t get his self-esteem and purpose for life from any religion which is authorized by one book and modelled by one man. But, we as Christians understand the Usman Khans quite well, because we start from the same paradigm as him. We understand how a religious book (the Qur'an) can be so authoritative and powerful, and how an adherent will read its verses literally, and apply them assiduously, as Usman did in this instance. Almost everything Usman did can be found in the Qur'an (outside of referring to a suicide vest specifically, because they wouldn't have existed in the 7th-8th century). That is why we know that if you want to understand and change the actions of a radical Muslim, you had better begin by reading the Qur'an, and reading the biography of their prophet Muhammad. There you will find the violence which is being evidenced almost daily around the world by Muslims against those they disagree with. We, as Christians, not only understand this, we are the only ones who have a solution for these radical Muslims, because we have a much better book, as well as a much more peaceful book, and a much better man, and certainly a much more peaceful man to 'come home' to; namely, the Bible and Jesus Christ. If you really want to rehabilitate Jihadis like Usman Khan, you are going to have to change your narrative, and look at what really motivates him, which is one book and one man. But no secular academic would dare adopt that narrative, because then they would have to confront both the book and the man, and that's something they dare not do...but we can, and we will! © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2019 (25,780)