Was Daniel Pearl Targeted Because He Was a Jew?

New information about the video tape revealing the murder of kidnapped reporter Daniel Pearl by Islamic extremists in Pakistan suggests that Pearl was targeted because he was Jewish.

Conflicting reports about the video claim that Pearl was made to recite his Jewish lineage immediately before he was slain. The Associated Press reported that the video showed Pearl saying, "I am a Jew, my mother is a Jew."

The New York Times reported that one of the suspects in the case told a judge in Karachi that the chief suspect in the case said two days before Pearl's disappearance that he wanted to kidnap someone who is "anti-Islam and a Jew."

The kidnappers also claimed that Pearl was an undercover agent of the CIA, or of the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency.

Pearl, who was head of the Wall Street Journal's South Asia bureau, disappeared January 23 on his way to interview a Muslim fundamentalist leader in Pakistan. The U.S. government and Pakistani officials pled for his release, but the state department and the Wall Street Journal confirmed Thursday, February 21, that Pearl had been killed by his captors.

Beliefnet members have had strong reactions, on both the Judaism and the Islam message boards, to the news that Pearl may have been kidnapped and killed because he was Jewish. Below are some of these reactions:

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