Posted on 11/17/2014 8:36:39 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Peter Kassig, whom ISIS claimed Sunday to have beheaded and who took the Muslim name Abdel Rahman after his conversion, was struggling to find meaning and purpose in life, which compelled him to go to the Middle East to offer medical help to Syrian refugees, especially after fighting as a U.S. soldier in Iraq and having a divorce.
Kassig, 26, an Indianapolis native, was working as a humanitarian aid worker in Syria when he was captured in the ISIS stronghold Deir Ezzour in eastern Syria on Oct. 1, 2013, according to a Facebook page operated by Kassig's family.
He was traveling in an ambulance to deliver medical supplies.
"We are heartbroken to learn that our son, Abdul-Rahman Peter Kassig, has lost his life as a result of his love for the Syrian people and his desire to ease their suffering," Ed and Paula Kassig, the parents of Kassig, said in a statement Sunday, the day the Islamic State, or ISIS, released the video of his beheading.
In a June 2012 interview with CNN, Kassig explained what led him to decide to take the risky decision of going to the troubled region to help refugees.
He joined the U.S. Army Rangers in 2006 and was deployed to Iraq in 2007. But he was honorably discharged for medical reasons soon thereafter.
Back in the United States, he began to study political science and train for 1500-meter runs. But he wasn't happy. "I was going to school with kids who look the same, were the same age as me, but we weren't the same," he said. "I wanted more of a challenge, a sense of purpose."
In 2010, Kassig began his certification as an emergency medical technician. By the next two years, he had fallen in love, gotten married and divorced.
"I needed to make a drastic decision. It was a huge identity thing; it was time to re-evaluate. I needed a game changer," he said.
That's when he decided to go to Beirut, the capital of Lebanon.
"We each get one life and that's it. We get one shot at this and we don't get any do-overs, and for me, it was time to put up or shut up," he added. "The way I saw it, I didn't have a choice. This is what I was put here to do. I guess I am just a hopeless romantic, and I am an idealist, and I believe in hopeless causes."
In another interview, with Time magazine, in January 2013, Kassig once again said, "This work is really the only thing that I have found that gives my life both meaning and direction."
Kassig found a calling in Lebanon, according to colleagues, who spoke to the Los Angeles Times.
He linked up with a humanitarian network in Lebanon, which has a large population of displaced and wounded from the Syrian conflict. Kassig was in Lebanon from the spring of 2012 until sometime in the summer of 2013, when he left for Syria via Turkey, according to Pando.com.
Ahmad Iskandar, who grew up and lives in the Burj al Barajneh Palestinian camp in south Beirut, initially helped Kassig in his work with Syrian and Palestinian refugees.
"At first, people in the camp were uncomfortable about this American guy — like 'who is he and why is he here?' I would always go with him and translate," Iskandar was quoted as saying, "but after about a month, they started to realize that he carried many things in his heart for the refugees and the people. They looked at him as a good person who left everything behind to come help people."
It was during the time in the Palestinian camp that Kassig began to show interest in Islam, Iskandar said.
"One guy in particular, who is a Palestinian and a sheikh who supports Islamist Jihad [the Palestinian Islamist group exiled to Lebanon in 1988 and later headquartered in Damascus], showed [Kassig] how to pray, took him to eat with his family, brought him to the mosque. At one point he stopped drinking, stopped smoking. He was always asking what is halal, saying 'Alhamdulillah' (praise God)."
On Nov. 8, Kassig's friends in Tripoli, Lebanon, held a press conference, urging ISIS not to kill him.
"Islam does not allow Muslim to kill Muslim, especially if the Muslim in question has done good work," Naharnet.com quoted Firas Agha, a Syrian refugee living in Tripoli who shared an apartment with Kassig, as saying.
Kassig "was a very enthusiastic young man, so much that he would help refugees out of his own pocket," Agha added.
Kassig founded a nongovernmental aid group, Special Emergency Response and Assistance, and later moved operations to Turkey. It was funded mostly by private donors in the United States, especially Kassig's friends and relatives.
ISIS thought Kassig was a spy or with the CIA, "just because he is an American," a fellow aid worker was quoted as saying. "But it's not true. ... He used to say that not every American supports the policies of the American government."
Kassig's friends from Syria say he would rarely talk about his time in the Army. Some of them felt the bloodshed he had witnessed in Iraq could have led him to try to make up for it by helping refugees. He never thought that conflict was a solution.
"Fed by a strong desire to use his life to save the lives of others, Abdul-Rahman was drawn to the camps that are filled with displaced families and to understaffed hospitals inside Syria," Kassig's family said in the statement Sunday. "We know he found his home amongst the Syrian people, and he hurt when they were hurting."
Did anyone notice that Obama referred to him by his Muslim name rather than his Christian name? Now why would he do that?
Seems he found the purpose in life:
“The end”...
Well, from the picture shown here, it looks like Dad’s a fisherman so he can’t be all that bad!! I’m not gonna say his parents are a bunch of left wing liberals who steered their kid down the wrong way. They could just be parents who love their son no matter what idiotic decisions he’s made. I am speaking as a parent myself. You can train your kids to the best of your ability. In the end, they have a life to lead and decisions to make. You only hope the lessons you taught them stick before they get in real trouble.
As for going to Beirut, I have been there and though it’s been more than 30 years ago, I don’t think much has changed. It’s not a place I would ever advise anyone to go without being heavily armed and having a lot of friends with you who are also heavily armed. Even then, why go? If he wanted to help the poor and disadvantaged, that’s very good and very admirable. However, you can do that right here in America. There are many church charitable groups that go on ‘missions’ to the poor and disadvantaged and help them out here. There’s Habitat for Humanity and many more good groups doing good work for the poor right here in America. I think I would feel better if my son told me he’s going to West Africa to help fight Ebola than going to Beirut to help refugees.
In the end, it brings to mind the line from the Indiana Jones 3 movie when the bad guy chose the wrong chalice. As the Knight Templar said, “he chose poorly”. It cost him his life....
I have a question for our military guys and gals. According to the article he joined the Rangers in 2006, is that a unit you can just join or do you have to be in the Army for a certain amount of time? Can you be a Ranger at 18? Secondly he was deployed and discharged honorably in 2007 for medical reasons? Sounds like Psychiatric problems to me. Not buying the timeline.
I guess the naive kid found the meaning of life, and the national IQ went up a fraction of a point.
You can’t “just join.” But you don’t have to serve previously. You can get an Option 40 contract which guarantees you a shot when you enlist. But those are very limited for infantrymen and almost nonexistent for other MOS. You have to be very good to get one, and then it’s not guaranteed. There’s a strict selection process, and if you fail (which many do), you get sent wherever the Army wants to send you.
There are plenty of community organizer jobs right here in the US. Just ask hussein.
Must have come from a wealthy family. Who has the time or means to search for the quest of a purpose in life?
Kassig read their book. He embraced their book. Their book says they can cut his head off. That’s their take on it. It did not matter that Kassig thought the book said otherwise since he embraced the book and thought that protected him. What mattered is that the guys with the knives believed that their book gave them the right to say that Kassig was not what Kassig said he was.
islam is called a religion, it is no more a religion than the Crips and the Bloods are. It is no more a religion than MS13 and the list goes on are.
Unfortunately for Kassig it appears that he believed everything he read in the Koran without understanding what what he was reading meant to the “real” followers. He was wrong headed about everything now he is no headed...
Get it right, per liberal puke and former Indy Star columnist now writing for WTHR, Bob Kravitz——
Bob Kravitz @bkravitz · 16 hours ago
Very nice of the Oak Ridge Boys to mention Kassig before the national anthem, but his name is Abdul Rahman, not Peter. Respect it.#ColtsWTHR
RE: Very nice of the Oak Ridge Boys to mention Kassig before the national anthem, but his name is Abdul Rahman,
You mean Muhammad Ali gets mad when you call him Cassius Clay? :)
He has been confirmed as serving in ACO 1/75th.
Is that normal for an 18 or 18 year old kid? I don’t know. Not my area of expertise,
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