Bizman: Lindh was my gay lover / A step on the road to Taliban

New York Daily News ^ | 9/30/02 | JOSE MARTINEZ

[kattracks]

John Walker Lindh's "dangerous journey" into Islamic militancy was cemented by a sexual relationship with a Pakistani businessman who guided the American Taliban turncoat toward schools that fueled his hatred for the United States, a news magazine reported yesterday.

"It was the beginning of the dangerous journey, the first jaunt, the pleasure journey," Mufti Mohammad Iltimas Khan, a spiritual adviser, said of Lindh's encounter with the businessman.

Time magazine said Lindh's religious journey was marked by a series of turns that led from a wealthy San Francisco suburb to an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan - notably an encounter with a Pakistani man who says he was Lindh's lover.

'Ready to stay with me'

Lindh met Khazar Hayat in the fall of 1999 as the businessman toured California with missionaries. The meeting prompted Lindh to make a second trip to Yemen and then to Hayat's home in Pakistan.

"He was ready to stay with me," Hayat, a married father of four, told Time. "But I pushed him into the madrasah," he added, using the Islamic word for religious school.

Lindh's lawyers deny their client had a gay affair.

Lindh, 21, was captured by American soldiers last November after an Afghanistan prison uprising in which a CIA operative was killed.

He pleaded guilty in July to a single count of providing support to the Taliban - after prosecutors dropped other counts accusing Lindh of joining Al Qaeda and conspiring to kill Americans.

With Lindh facing 20 years in prison at a sentencing hearing on Friday, his lawyers have put forth a portrait of a sweet-faced kid who was drawn into radical Islam in a quest for spirituality. They deny he was a terrorist.

Magazine articles portray Lindh as a curious youth who roamed the Internet for information about Islam, protected his kid sister and sang himself to sleep as a toddler.

Lindh's parents supported their son's overseas travels and encouraged his curiosity. Frank Walker and Marilyn Lindh divorced in June 1999, months after Walker disclosed he was gay.

In February 2000, John Walker Lindh returned to Yemen, where he kept notebooks with phrases like, "We shall make jihad as long as we live."

[jjm2111]

It is very common for Muslim men to hold hands while walking down the street, even if they are not gay.

[tsomer]

...moral people were sick of the perversions and gave power to the Taliban...

That is true, and provides a lesson few seem able to grasp.

As to Lindh: I think he sought to purge his own homosexuality through the asceticism he attributed to the "missionaries" he met here. He is obviously a screwed up kid and those Wahabi agents roped him in.

This is an incredibly sad case,another lesson few will grasp.

[TheEngineer]

With all these gay Islamic extremists that we've been hearing about... I suppose the 70 virgins awaiting them in heaven are:

1. safe, or...
2. boys.

[Marysecretary]

My thoughts on that is that you can hide behind religion, act very normal, and attract people who are interested in religion. Then, when they're "hooked," you can sodomize them or do any other thing you want to them. They're looking up to you as some kind of 'god.' Too bad. This kid had a couple of dittoheads for parents. Now he suffers the consequences of all this hippy freedom his parents had and allowed him to have. 20 years of consequences.