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Young, restless and increasingly radical

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Jan 18, 2008

My previous blog entry featured the letter of a 14-year-old Catholic girl, Rebecca, who admires my work and has written a paper about it. I jokingly asked her what grade she received. (I’m still waiting for the answer.)

But even as I called the post “A+ for passion,” I realized the paradox of my title: If burning conviction deserves high marks, then would I give an A+ to a 14-year-old Muslim whose passion is so intense that he (or she) would kill Rebecca and me for our open-mindedness?

It’s a serious question for students everywhere because radicalism is increasingly an affliction of youth.

So says Hind Fraihi, a 30-year-old journalist in Europe. Having gone “undercover in little Morocco” — the title of her best-selling book about the spread of political Islam in Belgium — she’s noticed that it’s not only young Muslim men who are turning extreme. It’s also young Muslim women, many of whom want to marry would-be martyrs. They’re called “jihad brides.”

Sigh. At least they’re reducing the billable hours of divorce lawyers. Of course, you just know that some will dismiss Ms. Fraihi’s analysis merely because she’s a woman. (”Very emotional,” as many Muslim men love to mutter in their own stellar displays of logic.)

In that case, they’ll have to contend with Ibrahim “Eboo” Patel, a young Muslim Rhodes scholar and Ph.D. Eboo points out that “acts of religious violence abroad as well as religious hate crimes in the United States are overwhelmingly committed by young people. However, conferences on interfaith cooperation are generally attended by by older people.”

That’s why he started the Interfaith Youth Core, an organization that mentors students to live their faith in concrete acts of service toward others. It’s an important contribution to peace. God bless.

At the same time, there’s something more to be done. And it starts with recognizing why young Muslims are feeling humiliated. Western foreign policy? Not exclusively. It’s also about what Muslims are doing to each other.

I’ve spoken with a number of young Muslim men who knew Mohammad Siddique Khan, ringleader of the 2005 London bombings. (Police consider his “jihadi bride” to be an accomplice.) They’ve told me that Khan left his family’s moderate mosque to attend a Wahhabi mosque nearby. Why? Because the Wahhabis provide — get this — a “safe space” in which boys like Khan can ask questions, express theological doubts and challenge the moderate imams who repeatedly send the messages: shut up, don’t think and do as you’re told.

In an age when young people are constantly using their minds to navigate the ocean of information they receive through the web, it’s not only insulting to be told you can’t think. It’s unrealistic.

The Wahhabis “get” this. They tap into the rage that young Muslims are feeling not just about the racism of outsiders, but also about the tribalism of their own communities.

For Mohammad Siddique Khan, stifling tribalism went deeper. He desperately wanted to marry a Muslim woman from outside of his Pakistani community, only to prohibited by his moderate parents and clerics.

The Wahhabis assured Khan that the moderates are abusing Islam by preventing his marriage. They were right. While approving of his non-Pakistani fiance, they lured the young man into their midst with other reasons to feel demeaned — Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Palestine, Kashmir.

Never did they inform Khan that in the past 100 years, more Muslims have been tortured and murdered at the hands of other Muslims than any foreign imperial power. Never did they play DVDs of Black Muslims dying at the feet of Arab militias in Darfur. No mention that Sunnis routinely target Shiites in Pakistan, that Shiites routinely target Sunnis in Iraq, or that Palestinians in Lebanon get by on odd jobs because they’re not allowed to buy property, let alone become professionals.

Mohammad Siddique Khan got the love of his life, and then sacrificed his love for life. I don’t simply mean that he abdicated his interest in living. I mean that he ditched any interest in asking questions.

I emphasize asking questions because that seems to be a crucial part of the solution. But don’t take it from me — a dyed-in-the-wool missionary for ijtihad. Hell, I’m biased. Maybe even emotional!

Rather, take it from Jared Cohen, a 25-year-old who hangs out with kids from Syria to Iran to Saudi and everywhere in-between. His face-to-face conversations have produced Children of Jihad: A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East. In a recent appearance on CSPAN’s Booktv, Cohen claimed that for young Muslims to reform their societies, they’ve first got to feel the permission to ask questions.

My personal conversations with youth in the Middle East prove Jared Cohen’s point. In Cairo, I was amazed by how many young Muslim men approached me to say, “Thank you for posting the Arabic version of your book online. I’m reading it, my friends are reading it and it’s now making the rounds of the democracy movement.” This, in a city where President’s Hosni Mubarak’s thugs club 20-year-olds for protesting a two-decades-old “emergency” law.

In our wired era, where you have instant access to information about how the other half lives, youth need to explore the world — if not physically then at least intellectually.

The Wahhabis understand this. Their trick is to open the doors of ijtihad, usher you through and then narrow the doors behind you until nary a stream of sun trickles through.

Reform-minded Muslims don’t have all the answers. What we have is crucial questions. In asking them out loud, we’ll be doing all of humanity a service.

As Leonard Cohen (no relation to Jared) once cooed, “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Tupac couldn’t have said it better.