Saudi Arabia Knows the Cure Against Jihadism: Baths!

Saudi Arabia is curing jihadists of jihad with spa treatments, visits from the wives

There's just one catch -- they're filling their heads with "other Salafist ideas that are only slightly less extreme". What could possibly go wrong? H/t Robert Spencer

Saudi Arabia is reportedly experimenting with a unique approach to rehabilitating Al Qaeda prisoners, including offering spa treatments, loads of exercise and even conjugal visits to the suspected terrorists.

"In order to fight terrorism, we must give them an intellectual and psychological balance... through dialogue and persuasion," said Said al-Bishi, the nation’s director of rehabilitation centers, according to the Agence France Presse.

Saudi officials told AFP a total of 2,336 Al-Qaeda prisoners have so far graduated from the various rehab programs offered by the Prince Mohammed bin Nayef Center for Counseling and Care -- with a less than 10 percent recidivism rate to radical Islam.

The center was established some seven years ago to cope with the nation’s growing ranks of Al Qaeda prisoners, AFP reports. But a new center in the capitol city of Riyadh pushes the envelope even farther with regard to the techniques enlisted to dissuade one-time jihadists from waging war against the West – and its allies.

Indeed, AFP reports that there have already been some high-profile returns of rehab grads to jihad, such as Saeed al-Shehri, who ascended to deputy leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula after supposedly undergoing the aforementioned treatments. Read on..