MIA DC Muslim 5: All virgin kids, just going to Pakistan to find wives. Yeah. That's the ticket. Right there.

While their youthful charges (shown above) are cooling their jihadi heels in a Pakistani slammer, Muslim "community leaders" whirl like dervishes, spinning the story for all it's worth.

They find a willing audience at NPR:

The five young American men detained in Pakistan earlier this week betrayed no hints of extremism back home. Yet they suddenly left their families in the Washington, D.C., area and turned up in Pakistan, where authorities believe they were looking to gain entry to terrorist training camps. Back home, community leaders are trying to make sure that such an episode doesn't happen again. (Ed. note: I take 'episode' to mean their little junior jihadis getting caught. see: MIA DC Muslim 5: Families hoped to find sons and discreetly return them to the US)

"It was like, you know, an earthquake just hit us. We're just stunned, bubble-eyed," youth group leader Mustafa Maryam says. He met with the young men every week. They prayed at a single-story building just off Route 1. It's surrounded by car dealerships and a Firestone tire shop. It was supposed to be a place where Muslim leaders like Maryam could protect the community's kids.

"We'd rather have you at the mosque than in the street. We'd rather you have — and be in — a positive environment than with thugs," he says. But those thugs weren't on the street; apparently they were online. According to reports, the five young men were radicalized after watching YouTube videos and communicating on social networking sites.

Maryam didn't see hints in any of this. He sees more truth in the reports that the men, devout Muslims, had traveled to Pakistan to find wives.

"As far as I know, they're all virgin kids. Everybody dreams about the day that they'll get married. So many conversations, so many discussions about marriage," he says. "That makes more sense to me than this stuff I'm hearing."

At the mosque's youth group, Maryam tried to bring the young people together to protect them — they played basketball and soccer, went to movies and meals together. And yet it didn't work.

Paging ICNA.