Rukmini Callimachi, the New York Times’ ISIS reporter, discusses her beat.: "He would suddenly confide in me, and he was telling me all of the things that al-Shabaab was doing that were violating sharia, because actually in sharia law you’re not allowed to kill women, children, and the elderly. You’re supposed to do operations in a way that avoids those targets. Obviously when they’re doing an operation on a school, there are a lot of girls. He showed this very human side of himself. I don’t know his age. But I’m guessing he’s was a young man. He spoke English so well and with so many Americanisms that I’m almost positive he’s an American citizen. I saw him waffling and I saw him struggling with it. I had to ... I basically had to do some soul searching and decide what to do in this situation. His name was Bilal. Anyway, I finally came back to him and said, “I can’t put you in touch with these people. But I can point you to people on social media that you can reach out to this if this is what you want to do.”"
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