21. The Assassins Used Sex and Sensual Pleasure to Turn Innocent Young Men Into Suicidal Terrorists
In their pleasure gardens, the Assassins plied their innocent young recruits with wine, kept them high on hash, and fed them mouth-watering delicacies. The cult’s temptresses would then work to convince the besotted young men that they were in paradise, and that their seductresses were the houris promised those who made it into heaven. Then, after days of wallowing in delights and indulging in heavenly pleasures, the young man would be drugged senseless once more, and removed from the gardens.
Waking back in his bare cell and austere surroundings, the recruit was informed that he had been in paradise, sent there by the grace of the Old Man of the Mountain, who held the keys to heaven. The recruit was then told that he could return to paradise – if he died while killing the Sheik’s enemies. It worked: suicide squads of horny young fanatics, high on hash and desperate to die while killing the cult’s enemies, descended from the Assassins’ mountain holdfasts to terrorize the Middle East.