In researching “Body of Lies,” my new novel about the Middle East, I asked the heads of several Arab intelligence services about interrogation techniques. They each said that in questioning Al Qaeda members, a useful method was to have a devout Muslim sheik present during the interrogation—someone who could pray with a young convert to Al Qaeda’s brand of Salafist Islam and convince him that this was a false path of Islam, not the true path.
Which raises an interesting question: Should clerics from any religion be part of an interrogation process? Having a sheik in the interrogation room is certainly better than extracting information through “waterboarding,” or some other grotesque form of torture. But what are the proper limits? When the British were interrogating IRA terrorists, for example, should they have brought a Catholic priest into the cell block, in the hope of extracting useful information? When Timothy McVeigh was questioned about the Oklahoma City bombing, should a priest or minister have urged him to “repent, repent!”?
What about information obtained during confession? If a priest hears a penitent confess that he has placed a bomb at Dulles Airport, what responsibility does he have (if any) to warn authorities?
These questions aren’t easy to answer, but here’s my own view: At the heart of Islamic terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda is a perverted notion of Islam. The converts to this false path need to be “deprogrammed,” much like the members of any other cult. The best people to do this—perhaps the only people—are Muslim clerics who can speak with authority about the meaning of the Koran and the hadith, or sayings of the Prophet Mohammed. The Saudis have created an innovative “deprogramming” effort that has steered hundreds of Al Qaeda captives back toward a less violent (but still Wahabbist) form of Islam. Jordan has a similar program. So does the United Arab Emirates.
A skillful interrogator can use religious concepts, even if he isn’t a sheik. I can cite one remarkable real-life example, drawn from Jordan, the country where my novel “Body of Lies” is set. After the horrific hotel bombings in Amman in November 2005, the Jordanians captured the wife of one of the bombers. The chief of the Al Qaeda branch of the Jordanian General Intelligence Department knew that it was urgent to obtain information quickly. He interrogated the woman himself. He began by saying that women were the source of strength of the Arab and Muslim world—the source of everything that was good and pure.
Knowing that she was childless, he addressed her throughout as “Mother.” On a television screen behind him were images of the carnage at the hotels, where dozens of Jordanian families had been killed or wounded.
The Jordanian interrogator asked the distraught woman why she had participated in these terrible acts. She answered that her husband had ordered her to do so. “These acts are against God’s will,” said the interrogator. “Don’t you understand that it is wrong to obey your husband before God?” The woman began to break in that moment. “You need to repent,” the interrogator said. And she did, providing a full confession that helped break up the cell and save many more lives.
If God’s priests are present in an interrogation room, whose side are they on? My own answer would be that they take the side of the victims—the victims of terrorist bombings, past and future, who might be saved by a penitant’s confession; and also the prisoners who may be victims of torture and other outrages against human dignity.
David Ignatius, co-moderator of PostGlobal, is a Washington Post columnist with a wide-ranging career in journalism, having served at various times as a reporter, foreign correspondent and editor. He has also written widely for magazines and published six novels.
