"I'm proud of John. He's a really good boy. A really sweet boy."
The Voice of Treason
An American has been taken prisoner in Afghanistan. But it's not what you think--the prisoner, John Walker, alias "Abdul Hamid," is a 20-year-old Washington native who was fighting on the enemy side and ended up a survivor of last week's prison riot at Qala-i-Jangi, a fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif. A day after breaking the story, Newsweek tracks down Walker's parents, Frank Lindh and Marilyn Walker. Turns out Walker is a child of divorce who was raised as a Catholic but, according to his mother, "was exposed to her following of Buddhist teachings. 'It's very inclusive of all people and [has] a sense of social justice,' she says."
Rejecting his parents' Cafeterian faith, he converted to Islam at 16, and his parents approved. "I told him once that maybe he was always a Muslim, because he had clearly found something important for him there," dad tells Newsweek.
His mom, however, insists it isn't his fault he betrayed his country. "If he got involved with the Taliban, he must have been brainwashed," she says. He went to Pakistan, she said, because of his commitment to helping the poor. "I think if he got caught up with Taliban people, it's because they sucked that part of him in." She adds: "I'm proud of John. He's a really good boy. A really sweet boy."
"Everyone who knows him loves him," his mother also says. "Everyone expected him to become a scholar." Well, talib does mean "student."
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