Journey to Jihadism
By Carole Hornsby Haynes, Ph.D. | August 14, 2015
Widespread violence, drug use, break-down of the traditional family, and amorality engulf America. This is not by accident!
For two centuries there has been a battle between the Bible-based values of our American Revolution and the secular humanists’ values of the French Revolution. Because of the shift in the teaching philosophy in American classrooms from traditional to progressive, an increasing number of young people are becoming secular humanists.
As a result, public schools are morally dysfunctional. They are contributing to youth delinquency through their sex-obsessed culture and promotion of semi-pornographic sex education that leads to premarital sex, pornographic literature in English classes, and drug abuse by plying students with stimulants like Ritalin.
Public schools have destroyed children’s belief in religious morality by teaching moral relativism. Gone are the restraints of the absolute morals of the Bible that are the bedrock of our nation.
In decades past, when schools respected a child’s religion rather than trying to destroy it, we did not see this level of violence, theft, vandalism, drugs, suicides, massacres, shootings, and illiterate children.
The loss of a spiritual and moral anchor is playing out in deadly rampages by young people across America.
One such rampage was by Carlos Bledsoe who was reared in a Memphis, Tennessee middle class family. His was a loving Christian family with deep roots in the Baptist church and a closely knit community.
His father, Melvin, had achieved the American Dream as he built a successful tour business to transport visitors to Sam Phillips’ Sun Studio where Elvis cut his first record, Graceland, Staxx Records soul music museum, and the great B.B. King’s Blues Club. His dream was for Carlos to run the business so he and his wife could enjoy early retirement.
Carlos attended Craigmont, a public school, where he fell in with the wrong crowd and had run-ins with the law over fights, road rage, and gang-related incidents, although there were no formal charges.
After graduation, Carlos attended Tennessee State University in Nashville, where trouble followed him. Charged with possession of drugs and unlawful possession of a weapon, he faced a possible prison sentence of up to 14 years. He was given a one year probation and a stern warning to straighten out his life.
In an effort to fill the void in his life, he went on a religious quest for spiritual grounding. After hearing Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan speak, Carlos decided to attend a free course at TSU, “Introduction to Islam,” taught by a proselytizing arm of the Nashville Islamic Center.
Carlos stated in letters that he attended services at the Islamic Center and was embraced by the congregation as “a long lost brother.” This resonated with him and it was in Nashville that he took the first step in his journey to jihad. He converted to Islam and changed his name.
In 2007 he traveled to Yemen where he spent days memorizing, discussing, and debating the Quran. After his arrest for overstaying his visa and acquiring fraudulent documents, he was placed in a political prison with hardcore jihadists. Carlos said it was there that he decided on carrying out violent jihad.
He returned to Memphis in 2009. In neighboring Little Rock, Arkansas, Carlos carried out his jihad mission, the first deadly terrorist attack on U.S. soil after 9/11. Instead of running the family business, Carlos is serving a life sentence in prison.
What happened to the “happy-go-lucky jokester” who had been reared in a loving Christian home by devoted parents? Did they know what Carlos was being taught at Craigmont? Did they understand how his spiritual grounding was being assaulted by the atheistic environment for most of his waking hours?
In Nashville, Carlos was at a vulnerable crossroad in his life that was the result of drug and alcohol use and unrelated arrest. Devoid of a spiritual anchor, he turned to Islam and to jihadism.
How many more massacres must this nation endure before parents rise up to denounce public education and abolish this atheistic government institution?
Copyright ©2015 Carole Hornsby Haynes, Ph.D. All rights reserved