When he was enjoying Halo, Zakaria Amara was just a normal young adult male, according to a report in the Chronicle-Herald (Nova Scotia).

It was only after marrying a zealous Islamic woman that Amara stopped playing video games, denouncing them, in fact. He also stopped watching T.V. and going to the movies. Instead, according to Canadian authorities, Amara joined a homegrown terror cell and helped plot truck bombings. Fortunately, the group was arrested before any of their deadly plans came to fruition.

Some of Amara's thoughts on games, as documented by the Globe and Mail include:

"Why do you want to destroy yourself with useless things? Life is to short, if you don't act, work and behave now, then life will fly like an arrow."

GP suspects that if Amara was still gaming and detonated a truck bomb, certain quarters would be loudly claiming that Halo made him into a terrorist.

So is it okay for the pro-game crowd to say that playing Halo kept him from being a terrorist?

Or do video games simply have no effect on such things?

By the way, a GP shout-out to reader Jason Westhaver for the tip on this one...

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