Mississippi: Muslim Newlyweds Jaelyn Delshaun Young and Muhammad Oda Dakhlalla Arrested for Attempting to Join ISIS

Jaelyn Delshaun Young was a sophomore studying chemistry at Mississippi State University. However, after converting to Islam, she hatched a plot to join ISIS by marrying another Muslim student and posing as honeymooners. Her new husband, Muhammad Oda Dakhlalla, has a degree in psychology and was about to start graduate school.

How many more young people have to throw away their lives before we can have an honest discussion about Islam? Will politicians and the media continue to assure us that jihad is the result of joblessness and illiteracy when so many jihadists are highly educated young people with bright futures and loving families?

Jaelyn Delshaun Young and Muhammad Oda Dakhlalla

JACKSON, Mississippi – The would-be blushing bride and groom sat in a Mississippi courtroom Tuesday, side-by-side, facing charges that they tried to join the world’s most notorious terrorist organization.

Criminal charges filed Saturday say Jaelyn Delshaun Young, 20, and Muhammad Oda Dakhlalla, 22, were arrested that morning at a regional airport near Columbus, Mississippi, allegedly on their way to join jihad.

Officials say the couple were trying to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS.) And they claim it was the 19-year-old Young who was the mastermind behind the plot to do so, which involved getting married and pretending to be on a honeymoon to get there, reports CBS affiliate WJTV in Jackson.

Both are officially charged with attempting and conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist group. An affidavit by an FBI agent says both confessed their plans after their arrest.

At a second hearing Tuesday in the case in Federal Court in Oxford before U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Allan Alexander, it was unveiled that on social media sites, Young expressed her happiness about the recent shooting in Chattanooga where five service members were killed, reports WJTV.

Judge Alexander Tdenied bail, saying that even though the pair have never been in trouble with the law and have relatives willing to oversee their home confinement, their desire commit terrorism is “probably still there.”

Urging the court to keep the suspects in custody, Assistant U.S. Attorney Clay Joyner likened them to Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, saying that like him, they could commit violence with knives, vehicles or homemade weapons.

“They don’t need a gun to do harm,” Joyner said. “They don’t need military training to do harm. What they need is a violent, extremist ideology, and that’s exactly what they have espoused.” (Continue Reading.)

To understand why Jaelyn Delshaun Young and Muhammad Oda Dakhlalla were willing to leave comfortable lives in the United States in order to join ISIS, watch this: