There really hadn't been a choice, but the leaders had made a great to-do over negotiating the terms of amnesty. The treaty, made at the highest levels, promised a consecrated land for any and all members of the Al-Qa'ida.

     For many covert members, long before successfully integrated into various societies, the amnesty meant rejoining their brethren in a place where the high ideals of the faction could be made to flourish without the interference of outsiders.

     For the ones living lives on the run because their faces were known by the myriad law-enforcement agencies, the amnesty meant rest. They no longer needed to watch every shadow, no longer fearing or expecting each casual passerby to be the Mossad or the CIA awaiting the opportunity to exercise extreme injunction on, what they considered, a world-class criminal.

     Of course, the two-year pilgrimage to the newly terra-formed planet would be a deterrent to some, but what options were there? The steadily tightening noose of the UN and NATO forces, the waning of support from other Muslims, and the ever-smaller trickle of money as banks cooperated with the infidels to remove the ability to wage war on a global scale, had all contributed to the outcome.

     Nor was the amnesty limited to their faction. Other groups, similarly affected by the world disavowal of terroristic methods, faced the same choice - leave and form your own society or join this one.

     Many had fared poorly in the multi-decade long campaign and no longer could muster the 5000 individuals necessary to be assigned a world and were delegated to space colonies orbiting stars with no planets or energy rich gas giants. But the Al-Qa'ida sent out the call to non-members, other Muslims seeking greater grace and glory or wishing to return to the fold of the only true prophet.

     10,000 faithful answered the call. 10,000 men came forth with their chattel to rise to the command. The gathering took place in New Kabul with Muslims, still brothers if misguided ones, serving as their processors.

     Individually, every pilgrim was interviewed and asked to choose between Earth and the unnamed planet. A choice made between this impossible life and a merely difficult one. Choosing between one where the trials were those of surviving the nature of an untamed world, or one where the mandates of the Quran must be ignored for survival.

     In private interviews each was asked to sign the oath of loyalty to the Earth or asked to sign the document the Al-Qa'ida leadership had written. The first document promised a state of their own on Earth with a government elected by the majority and overseen by the UN Security Council. The second reminded each of the duties of the true worshipper and outlined the theocracy of the new world.

     One last chance to deny one's God and his prophets, no man would be so weak. One by one, they were sealed in the pods that would sustain their sleep until ejected on the soil of the new world.

     Did they dream of their new society, growing strong and free on a fruitful new world? Did they imagine their sons, growing up straight and sturdy? Did they picture worshipping in the mosque with the consecrated rubbings brought from Mecca? Did they dream of comfortably crowded marketplaces undisturbed by the unveiled foreign woman with her camera and sound crew? Did their hearts leap for the autonomy to live as they chose?

     They awakened on the shores of a waveless sea. The piles of building materials and farm equipment cast long shadows in the bright orange morning. In the distance, low white-capped mountains glinted in the light of a strange sun, beckoning the explorer in each of them. The clerics sounded the call to thanksgiving. They knelt on the gravelly beach and bowed to their God who, like all the Gods of men, does not reckon by light-years to which prayers he listens.

     They stood on the new world, proud and defiant. The infidels had sworn there would be no interference ever, and no verbal contact for one hundred years. This was their place as none other had ever been. A mighty celebration was planned, and each man called to his wife and waited for her to obey him, her master.

     To a man, each of the 10,000 who had answered the call had made his last Earthy decision and had awoken on New Mecca. 10,000 women had been given the same choice, for some the first decision they'd ever been asked to make, and hadn't.

     Now living with their children in a semi-autonomous nation-state, but still properly veiled and pious Muslims, they had, to a woman, chosen equality instead.