Mississippi man jailed after trying to join ISIS says he was blinded by love

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Muhammad ‘Mo’ Dakhlalla, a former University of Mississippi student, says that he tried to join ISIS because he was blinded by the love he had for his wife, Jaelyn Young.

The 24-year-old, who was sentenced in August to eight years on federal terrorism charges, said during an interview with CNN that “love can ultimately… blind out your intelligence, your reasoning. I believe that.”

“I mean, without that love there, I don’t believe I would be here today, with my charge and talking to you today… I wouldn’t have even considered it at all,” he added.

Dakhlalla was raised a Muslim, and his father is an imam, but he was still surprised when Young, who he had secretly married, converted to Islam.

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“She was beautiful and things like that, but also another thing that I find attractive in a woman is one who’s, you know, bright, intelligent, open-minded,” he recalled. “And that’s how I got to know her a bit. We started hanging out. She not only was interested in me, but she had told me prior to us being together that she was interested in Islam.”

According to Dakhlalla, the two of them became radicalized after seeing posts made by ISIS online, saying, “When she first looked at these videos, she had… a strong belief that, ‘OK, this is the group to really help out, you know, the Muslims.'”

“Throughout the time she convinced me of that… I don’t know exactly how, you know, it came to be, but I know that she knew I loved her at that time, and I was just going to follow whatever she said, and I felt like she knew that, like, I was going to follow anything that she said,” he said.

Young and Dakhlalla were arrested in August 2015 before they could board a flight. They had tickets to Istanbul and intended to go to Syria to join ISIS.