Part 3 • The first video
Jill meets Ink Eyes, her chief captor, and makes a video seeking the release of Iraqi women.
By Jill Carroll and
Peter Grier
| Staff writers of
The Christian Science Monitor
(J.C.) Monday morning - two days after the kidnapping - my captors began trying to convert me to Islam.
He was eager to show me the similarities between Islam and Christianity, so he was telling me how many stories from the Bible are actually in the Koran. I was anxious to make him like me and feel I was sympathetic to him, so much so that I began using more of my Arabic.
He and the others marveled at how much of their language I seemed to have picked up in just one day.
I tried to listen to Abu Ali's lesson attentively as he translated complicated Koranic Arabic into more basic Arabic he thought I could understand. He was very pleased that I showed interest in learning. He kept saying there was no pressure, no pressure in Islam, that they were forbidden from forcing people to convert. True acceptance must come from a free will.
They'd kidnapped me, and they all had guns ready to kill me, but, oh no, no pressure there. I falsely assured him that I felt no pressure. I have always been interested in learning about Islam. But only so that I can understand the people I'm covering as a journalist.
Later on, this would come back to haunt me.
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