Focal Point: Art therapy for jihadists

This post marks the beginning of a new collaboration between Passport and the award-winning PBS show Wide Angle. In the coming weeks, we will be featuring exclusive clips from their new online series Focal Point. -JK

Focal Point is a new online-exclusive series of documentary shorts from Wide Angle, public television’s Emmy-Award winning international affairs documentary series. Like Wide Angle, Focal Point offers a deeper understanding of forces shaping the world today through compelling human stories. Passport plans to feature video excerpts from upcoming episodes.

In the first episode of Focal Point, From Jihad to Rehab, Canadian journalist Nancy Durham takes us inside a rehabilitation center in Saudi Arabia, where art therapy and religious re-education are being used to reform militant jihadists, like Ahmed al-Shaya, who went to Iraq on a suicide mission in 2004 where he killed 12 people but survived himself. We meet Juma Al-Dossary who has just returned to Saudi Arabia after spending six years in Guantanamo, and speak with Dr. Awad Alymai, the detainees’ art therapist, about his patients’ transformation.

Here’s a clip:

See the full episode here.