THE ROAD TO TREASON >By Jeff y >The Boston Globe

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THE ROAD TO TREASON >By Jeff y >The Boston Globe

December 13, 2001

It isn't the case that the parents of --

the Marin County child of privilege turned Taliban

terrorist -- never drew the line with their son.

True, they didn't do so when he was 14 and his

consuming passion was collecting hip-hop CDs with

especially nasty lyrics.

And true, they didn't put their foot down when he

announced at 16 that he was going to drop out of

Tamiscal High School -- the elite "alternative" school

where students determined their own course of study

and only saw a teacher once a week.

And granted, they didn't interfere when he abruptly

decided to become a Muslim after reading *The

Autobiography of Malcolm X,* grew a beard, and took to

wearing long white robes and an oversized skullcap. On

the contrary: His father was "proud of for

pursuing an alternative course" and his mother told

friends that it was "good for a child to find a

passion."

Nor did they object when he began spending more and

more time at a local mosque and set about trying to

memorize the Koran.

Nor when he asked his parents to pay his way to Yemen

so he could learn to speak "pure" Arabic.

Nor when they learned that his new circle of friends

included gunmen who had been to Chechnya to fight the

Russians.

Nor when he headed to Pakistan to join a madrassah in

a region known to be a stronghold of Islamist

extremists.

His parents also didn't balk when he went to fight in

Afghanistan -- but that, at least, they didn't know

about: hadn't told them. Perhaps by that point

he had learned to take their consent for granted.

Only once, it seems, did Lindh and Marilyn

actually deny their son something he wanted.

When he first adopted Islam and took the name

Suleyman, they refused to use it and insisted on

calling him . After all, he had been named for

one of the giants of our time: Lennon.

Their refusal must have amazed him. For as long as he

could remember, his oh-so-progressive parents had

answered "Yes" to his every whim, indulged his every

fancy, permitted -- even praised -- his every passion.

The only thing they insisted on was that nothing be

insisted on. Nothing in his life was important

enough for them to make an issue of: not his

schooling, not his religion, not his appearance, not

even whether he stayed in America or moved -- while

still a minor -- to a benighted Third World oligarchy

halfway around the world. Nothing. Except, of

course, their right to call him by the name of their

favorite Beatle.

Devout practitioners of the self-obsessed

nonjudgmentalism for which the Bay Area is renowned,

Lindh and appear never to have rebuked their

son or criticized his choices. In their world, there

were no absolutes, no fixed truths, no mandatory

behavior, no thou-shalt-nots. If they had one

conviction, it was that all convictions are worthy --

that nothing is intolerable except intolerance.

But even in Marin County, there are times when

children need to hear "No" and "Don't." They need to

know that there are limits they must respect and

expectations they must try to live up to. If they

cannot find those limits and expectations at home,

they are apt to look for them elsewhere.

Newsweek calls it "truly perplexing" that , who

"grew up in possibly the most liberal, tolerant place

in America . . . was drawn to the most illiberal,

intolerant sect in Islam." There is nothing

perplexing about it. He craved standards and

discipline. Mom and Dad didn't offer any. The

Taliban did.

Even when it was clear that their son was sinking into

Islamist fanaticism, they wouldn't pull back on the

reins. When Osama bin Laden's terrorists bombed the

USS Cole and killed 17 American servicemen,

e-mailed his father that the attack had been

justified, since by docking the ship in Yemen, the

United States had committed "an act of war." Lindh now

says that the message "raised my concerns" -- but that

didn't stop him from wiring another $1,200.

After all, says Dad, "my days of molding him were

over." It isn't clear that they ever began.

It undoubtedly came as a jolt to his parents when

turned up at the fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif,

sporting an AK-47 and calling himself Abdul Hamid.

But the revelation that their son had enlisted in Al

Qaeda and supported the Sept. 11 attacks brought no

words of reproach -- or self-reproach -- to their

lips. deserved "a little kick in the butt" for

keeping them in the dark about his plans, his father

said, but otherwise they just wanted to "give him a

big hug." His mother, meanwhile, was quite sure that,

"if he got involved with the Taliban he must have been

brainwashed. . . . When you're young and

impressionable, it's easy to be led by charismatic

people."

Yes, it is, and it's a pity that that didn't occur to

her sooner. If she and Lindh had been less concerned

with flaunting their open-mindedness and more

concerned with developing their son's moral judgment,

he wouldn't be where he is today. is

responsible for his own behavior and he will pay the

price the law requires. But his road to treason and

jihad didn't begin in Afghanistan. It began in Marin

County, with parents who never said no.