Jesse Morton: The Jihadi Who Changed His Mind
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 1 September 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jesse Morton was once a radical jihadi involved in the American offshoot of the banned British extremist group Al-Muhajiroun.
Al-Muhajiroun's leader, Anjem Choudary, was convicted of inviting others to support the so-called Islamic State, and is awaiting sentencing. And Morton himself crossed the line and was sentenced to 11 1/2 years in prison for making violent threats in America. But while he was locked up, Morton underwent a profound transformation and is now speaking out against Islamic extremism.
Morton, who is now free and working at a think tank at George Washington University, talks to David Aaronovitch about how he was seduced by jihadi ideology, how he snared others with radical interpretations of Islamic texts, and eventually how he came to see the errors in his own thinking and is working to repair the damage he caused along the way.
CONTRIBUTORS:
Jesse Morton Dominic Casciani, BBC Home Affairs Correspondent
PRODUCER: Mike Wendling EDITOR: Innes Bowen
PHOTO CREDIT: Al Drago/New York Times/Redux/Eyevine
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, my name is Mike. I'm one of the producers here at the briefing room, and I'm going to tell you a little bit of the back story to what you're about to hear. |
| 0:07.0 | Five years ago, I was making a documentary about radical Islam in the United States, and I came across a man named Eunice Abdullah Muhammad. |
| 0:15.7 | He ran an extremist group called Revolution Muslim. |
| 0:19.8 | Now, fast forward to today, and Eunice Abdullah Muhammad now goes by his birth name, Jesse |
| 0:25.2 | Morton. |
| 0:26.1 | He's renounced extremism. |
| 0:28.0 | He's become de-radicalized. |
| 0:29.8 | He's been to jail, and he's been out again. |
| 0:32.1 | And in the program you're about to hear, he tells us his remarkable story. |
| 0:46.6 | No. here, he tells us his remarkable story. I was faced with a choice of either going back to the United States to face the music |
| 0:51.0 | or to travel and to join a jihadist group. |
| 0:53.2 | And I had actually made arrangements to leave at midnight that night with a Quranic instructor. |
| 0:57.0 | I had met in a very small mosque in Casablanca. |
| 1:00.0 | And I found myself one night making a prayer that a Muslim makes when he has a major decision to make. |
| 1:06.0 | However, when I got up from this prayer, I had to walk by the crib where my two infant children were sleeping. |
| 1:12.2 | And I saw them sleeping. |
| 1:13.7 | He looked at my wife sleeping in the bed, and I realized that I needed my family, and my family needed me. |
| 1:22.5 | Jesse Morton was, until 2011, one of America's leading jihadist preachers. |
| 1:28.3 | He was the US counterpart to this British man. |
| 1:32.3 | My dear Muslims, we do raise funds for the widows and the orphans, |
| 1:38.3 | but in the eyes of this government that is called terrorist funding. British extremist Anjim Chowdhury. |
| 1:47.0 | The two men shared an ideology and were part of the same network. |
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