Is the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, erected after Sept. 11 to imprison “the worst of the worst” of America’s enemies, creating terrorists? With Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent announcement that some Gitmo detainees may be released in the U.S., the question has never been more relevant.

After a January Pentagon report found that 61 former detainees had engaged in terrorist activities, several commentators concluded the answer was yes and suggested that conditions at the prison are to blame.

This may surprise you, but as a staunch proponent of the prison, I agree. But while many liberal commentators believe inhumane treatment and religious persecution transforms detainees into suicide bombers and high-level terrorists, I believe the opposite is true: that the unprecedented and extreme religious accommodation granted to Gitmo prisoners has created a culture of Islamic radicalization.

When news of the Pentagon report broke, some liberal pundits reflexively accused the American military. MSNBC flame-thrower Keith Olbermann told his audience about ex-Taliban fighter Said Ali al-Shihri, who, upon his release from Gitmo, became an Al Qaeda leader and was responsible for an attack on the American embassy in Yemen. Then Olbermann asked wryly, “What if he wasn’t a terrorist in the first place but we turned him into one by sending him to Gitmo?”

A recent Washington Post cover story asked, “Did Guantanamo turn an accused low-level Taliban fighter into a suicide bomber?” After four years at Gitmo, the “low-level” fighter, Abdallah Saleh al-Ajmi, drove a truck-full of explosives into an Iraqi army base outside Mosul, killing 13 Iraqi soldiers and injuring 42 others.

And BBC commentators speculated that harsh treatment of Binyam Mohamed, who returned to London after becoming the first Guantanamo detainee released by President Barack Obama, can be blamed for any terrorist acts he may commit in the future.

According to this view, Gitmo is, as Amnesty International describes it, “the gulag of our time.” In the words of Mr. Ajmi’s attorney, “Guantanamo took a kid … who wasn’t all that bad and turned him into a hostile, hardened individual.”

Given the media attention devoted to cases of alleged detainee abuse — who can forget Newsweek’s Koran-in-the-toilet story? — this theory may seem plausible. But such cases are more notorious than they are numerous. Most of the nearly 800 detainees who have passed through Gitmo since 9-11 have been treated humanely, their religious liberty respected.

In fact, that was the upshot of a recently released Pentagon review, which found that conditions at Guantanamo were in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Holder visited in late February and came away “impressed.” Then there is Mohammed Ismail, who, at a press conference upon his release from Gitmo in 2004, praised his treatment, saying, “They gave me a good time at Cuba.” Ismail was later captured participating in an attack on U.S. forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Media reports of life at Gitmo highlight the extreme accommodation of religious practice. Prison guards go through special sensitivity training. Each Muslim detainee is provided with a Koran, which, in accordance with Muslim teaching, is never touched by non-Muslims (i.e. the prison guards). Each prisoner receives prayer beads, culturally appropriate halal meals, prayer rugs, daily calls to prayer, and each cell contains a stenciled arrow pointing the way to Mecca.

The vast majority of Guantanamo detainees are housed in facilities where they can associate freely with one another. New arrivals are often placed in cells next to radical Islamists, who preach hatred of America and that dying in jihad is the only sure way to eternal salvation. Inmates are urged to memorize the Koran and participate in study groups. Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders are appointed as cell block leaders, and the prisons have councils of elders, which issue fatwas to other detainees.

It appears there is plenty of time for terrorist meetings at Gitmo. Recently, five detainees whom the Bush Administration accused of planning the 9/11 attacks proudly admitted their guilt. The New York Times reports that the men filed a document with a U.S. military judge titled, “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations.” The five described the 9/11 attacks and the murder of 3,000 Americans as a “model” of Islamic action and called the accusations against them “a badge of honor.” The Times said the Islamists wrote the document “at meetings they are permitted to conduct periodically at the detention camp.”

Harsh treatment regularly comes from the prisoners themselves. Muslim detainees who decline to submit to radicalization are ostracized. As one Afghan detainee told the Miami Herald, “There were detainees who did not pray or who spoke with female soldiers. We stopped speaking with these men. Sometimes we beat them.” The culture of radicalization is so pervasive at Gitmo that some former U.S. officials have called it the “American madrassa.”

None of this is to say that all prisoners are radicalized at Gitmo. Logic tells us that if someone is imprisoned for terrorist activity and then, upon his release, commits a terrorist act, he probably was predisposed to the deadly action.

This puts us between the rock and the hard place of Obama’s Gitmo policy. He has signed an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison but has not announced where the approximately 245 remaining detainees will go. Recent Supreme Court decisions make it unlikely they will be tried in U.S. civilian courts, and states with prisons that could house the detainees have made it clear they do not want them.

Many countries are unwilling to take the prisoners, and some that do will commute their sentences. Another possibility would be to incarcerate them at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where more than 600 prisoners have already been detained. But there simply is no option superior to holding the enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay.

Whatever Obama decides to do, it is likely that some detainees will be released and, after years of radicalization at Gitmo, some may take up arms or suicide belts and join the jihad. If they do, it will be the accommodation, not suppression, of religious freedom at Guantanamo that’s to blame.

Five “detainees” at Guantanamo Bay who the Bush Administration accused of planning the 9/11 attacks have proudly admitted their guilt. The New York Times reports that the men filed a document with a U.S. military judge entitled, “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations.” (The document has not been released yet, but an unnamed government official read portions of it to a Times reporter.)

The five prisoners describe the 9/11 attacks and the murder of 3,000 Americans as a “model” of Islamic action. They assert that the accusations against them “are a badge of honor, which we carry with honor.” The Times reports that this document was written by the Islamists “at meetings they are permitted to conduct periodically at the detention camp.”

Really? I have some questions. So, at the prison where we are accused of torturing prisoners, we allow them to meet regularly and consult with each other? What is this, the Islamic Book Club or the Mecca Sewing Club? Now that we have confessions, does President Obama want to revisit his decision to suspend military trials? And, finally, will the confessions now silence the “9/11 truthers,” that bizarre group of fanatics on both political extremes who for eight years have obscenely claimed that we attacked ourselves on 9/11?

Today’s Washington Post carries a chilling report on the front page that should be required reading for every politician on Capitol Hill. Last year, Shirwa Ahmed blew himself up in a homicide bombing in Somalia. What distinguishes Ahmed from other jihadists is that he was a 27-year old college student from Minneapolis and a naturalized American citizen. (Minneapolis has a large Somali Muslim population. In 2006, the region elected the first Muslim to Congress.) Ahmed’s unusual path to martyrdom got the attention of American counterterrorism officials, who now report that more than a dozen Somali American youths have disappeared so far this year. Concerned about the radicalization of Muslim youths in America, the FBI is running active investigations in at least five major American cities.

Muslim activists in Minneapolis are trying to blame the radicalization on poverty and unemployment. But two missing 19-year olds had been studying medicine and engineering at the University of Minnesota. And, as the Post reports, “…they became antisocial, speaking and eating less as they grew more devout.”

Today’s report is just another reminder of the nature of our Islamofascist enemy. No one worries when a Jew, an evangelical, a Catholic, a Mormon or a Buddhist becomes more “devout.” And while we occasionally hear news about jihadist terrorism in Iraq or Afghanistan, we cannot afford to lower our guard when it comes to threats here at home. Unfortunately, there has been disturbing news in recent days suggesting that the Obama Administration intends to cut back on enforcement of our immigration laws. I hope today’s report will force some in government to rethink that view. Meanwhile, we will continue to work with members of Congress who recognize the dangers and who are committed to strengthening our homeland security.

This week, when a reporter asked Barack Obama about his avoidance of the use of the term “war on terror” (Obama has deployed the phrase in public only once, according to the Associated Press), our lawyer president suggested that he thought it best to be careful with his words so as not to alienate moderate Muslims.

“Words matter in this situation,” Obama said, “because one of the ways we’re going to win this struggle is through the battle of hearts and minds.”

Words do matter.  And Obama has spoken a lot of them in the first couple weeks of his presidency about such things as building “mutual interest and mutual respect” with the Muslim world.  But while Obama’s words are intended to reassure Muslims, his actions may be having the opposite effect on those whose security the president is charged first and foremost with protecting — the American people.

A Gallup poll this week found that Obama’s decision “ordering that the Guantanamo Bay prison be closed” is the second least popular decision he’s made thus far. In fact, a majority of the over 1,000 Americans surveyed by Gallup disapproved of the decision.

That share might have been even lower if Gallup had taken its poll after Wednesday, when Obama told NBC:

Can we guarantee that they’re [Gitmo prisoners] not going to try to participate in another attack?  No.  But what I can guarantee is that if we don’t uphold our Constitution and our values … that will make us less safe. And that will be a recruitment tool for organizations like Al Qaeda.

Once again, the president is demonstrating he has no clue about the nature of America’s jihadist enemy.  We know that many former Gitmo detainees indeed have returned to the global jihad upon their release.  We know that Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi was repatriated to Kuwait in 2005 after three years in Gitmo and subsequently acquitted of terrorism charges by a Kuwaiti court.  He went on to kill seven people in a suicide bombing targeting Iraqi security forces in Mosul.

And this week brought news that a much praised “de-radicalization” program for imprisoned jihadists in Saudi Arabia isn’t all it was cracked up to be.  Saudi Arabia had claimed a perfect record in converting murderous jihadists into upstanding citizens.

Now the Saudi government admits that as many as 10 terrorists who completed the program had gone right back to waging jihad.

In a much-discussed interview with Politico this week, former Vice President Dick Cheney pointed out that 61 former Gitmo inmates have “gone back into the business of being terrorists.”  And the 200 or so still there are, according to Cheney, “the hard core, whose recidivism rate would be much higher.”

Obama still hasn’t said what he’ll do with the terror suspects at Gitmo once it’s closed.  But the prospect of them housed at the local penitentiary — where, as Chuck Colson has noted, their murderous ideology often becomes viral — helps explain why most Americans don’t want these thugs transferred here.

Obama speaks of the battle to win the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim world.  He seems to believe that if America just abided more closely to “our values,” Islamic terrorism would go away.  But “our values” are exactly what our enemy loathes.

While many Muslims simply want peace (proof of which was seen in the successful Iraq elections this week), Obama may find it rather more difficult to win over the Muslims who matter most: those inculcated from birth with the idea that Jews and Christians are sub-human and that death is grander than life.

We have become numb to stories of terrorists who exploit women, children and persons with disabilities by forcing them to become homicide bombers.  But this week, the jihadists put an evil twist on their deplorable acts.  An Iraqi woman is charged with recruiting more than 80 female homicide bombers.  Nothing new there, but get this: the woman, Samira Jassam, confessed to ordering that the girls be raped so that she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

The heart and mind of an enemy animated more by the prospect of our death than by its own survival cannot be won over by soothing words from the Oval Office.

National security issues probably weren’t foremost on Obama’s mind this week.  Instead, he found himself in the middle of another scandal about one of his cabinet appointees.  When former Sen. Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination to become Secretary of Health and Human Services after it was discovered he had cheated on his taxes, Obama admitted, “I think I messed up.  I screwed up.”

I appreciate Obama’s candor.  But I hope the mistakes that have plagued his nomination choices do not presage more screw ups on national security matters.  In his interview with Politico, Cheney warned of a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a nuclear or biological attack in the coming years and said the Obama administration’s policies may make it more likely to succeed.

“Words matter,” and so do actions.  If Obama’s actions lead to the obliteration of a U.S. city, the words “I screwed up” won’t be enough.

Scanning the new White House website can be an exercise in anger management for conservatives. The two dozen items under “The Agenda” section constitute a laundry list of leftwing policy goals and big government initiatives. But I was encouraged to see that our new president seemed to have at least one item prioritized correctly. Under “Homeland Security,” President Obama acknowledges that “[t]he first responsibility of any president is to protect the American people.”

Sadly, in the opening days of his administration, President Obama appears determined to accomplish something much different: to reassure the Muslim world that we no longer have the resolve to protect ourselves.

Last week, he extended new rights to terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay while authorizing the sentencing to death of innocent children around the world through taxpayer-funded abortion.

Things didn’t improve this week. In his first TV interview as president, with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya news channel, Obama made three assertions that provide insight into our new president’s worldview. It’s not very reassuring.

First, President Obama said he felt his “job” was to communicate “to the Muslim world … that the Americans are not your enemy.” Why does the American president feel compelled to reassure Muslims that Americans are not their enemy? It was the United States that was attacked on 9-11 by jihadists acting in the name of Islam. Our response to that cowardly attack was to send our military not to subjugate Muslims but to liberate millions in Iraq and Afghanistan from the rule of tyrants.

Citizens of both countries were able to vote for the first time in their lives. In Afghanistan today, in areas where the U.S. is in control, Muslim girls are permitted to go to school. Where radical Islamists are in control, acid is thrown in the faces of girls who try to go to school, and their classrooms are blown up.

After the 9-11 attack, we went out of our way to ensure that mosques in the United States were safe from any kind of backlash. American politicians visited mosques and prefaced every statement about the attack by reassuring Muslims that America was not at war with a faith but only with its extreme adherents.

Muslims are arguably treated better in America today than they were before Muslim extremists declared war on us. We have Muslim members of Congress, and we go out of our way to accommodate Islamic religious practices. Taxpayer money is spent around the world to renovate mosques, and the U.S. gives billions in humanitarian assistance and foreign military aid to Muslim countries.

One might think Muslims would be the ones trying to reassure us that they are not our enemy. But I have yet to hear one Muslim leader do so. In fact, throughout the Muslim world, Christians and Jews continue to be persecuted. We hear that the U.S. and Israel are to blame for everything from Islamic nations’ lack of economic development to 9-11 itself.

Every day in the Palestinian territories — on television, in movies and in music — there is a steady diet of incitements against Jews, who are routinely compared to apes and monkeys. Palestinian students are taught that Jews use the blood of kidnapped Muslim children in religious ceremonies.

During his interview, President Obama told his Muslim audience that he had another task: “to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives.”

Even if the president is right, my first reaction is: So what? Muslims who simply want to enjoy peace and quiet are not the problem. It’s the Muslims who nurture groups like Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and countless other murderous fanatics who have become the subject of investigation.

I met with Indian leaders this week to talk about the problem of Islamic terror in the world’s largest democracy. They told me that extremism is a big problem among the 14 percent of their population that’s Muslim, and the situation is deteriorating

Even if only ten percent of the Muslim world supports these murderers, then our enemy numbers 150 million.

Of course, freedom-loving nations cannot rely on the “international community” for help. As Joseph Loconte reports in The Weekly Standard Online, the United Nations General Assembly recently approved a “defamation of religions” resolution complaining that Islam is “frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.” The resolution encourages member states to take legal action against “discrimination, intimidation, and acts of violence in the name of religion.” But, as Loconte notes, the resolution names only Islam and Muslims as “targets of defamation… In a breathtaking omission, the U.N. document makes no mention of the appalling levels of persecution against dissenting Muslims and non-Muslim minorities in much of the Arab world.”

President Obama talks about a new kind of foreign policy that emphasizes diplomacy over dictation. But what about the diplomacy of freedom? Like Obama, President Bush routinely reassured Muslims that Americans are not their enemy. But, unlike Obama, he did it by reassuring them that the United States would not abandon them in their struggle for freedom.

Obama also said that America was not born as a colonial power and that he hoped for a restoration of “the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.” But 30 years ago, the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran declared war against the West, a war he initiated by seizing the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and taking American hostages.

Twenty years ago, the U.S. shot down two Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra, Hezbollah militants tortured and killed an American Marine, and the Soviet Union finished pulling out of Afghanistan, a move that allowed the Taliban to entrench itself there.

Perhaps our President wants to take us back to a time of American hostages and fundamentalist coups. Or maybe he’s just a very poor student of history. Either way, it’s not very reassuring.