The Allure Of Al Qaeda To Young, Jobless Muslim Men

by Franz Schurmann

Almost a half-century ago my professor at Kyoto University, Iwamura Shinobu and I went to virtually 100 percent Muslim Afghanistan looking for a lost tribe of Genghis Khan's armies. We found them, and we also learned a lot about Afghanistan. What Afghan young men universally complained about -- because of purdah (public separation of the sexes) we could not speak with women -- was the high cost their families had to pay to get a bride for them.

When we were there, the Afghanistan gender ratio appeared to be normal, roughly half and half. But because large numbers of childbearing women died young there were fewer women available to marry. Those wealthy men who wanted to replace their lost wives or add a second, third or fourth wife, as allowed by Islam, had the money to buy the prettiest and healthiest girls. Several times our hosts offered me land, sheep and wives if I settled in their village. They thought it would be an honor for the village. But I knew it would also come at the expense of the village's poor families.

Many young Afghan men left the villages to look for jobs so they could earn money for their bride price. Some of them went to the "kampani" (company), the first and only UN project in Afghanistan at that time, which involved building a dam on the Helmand River to provide water and power to the wandering Kuchi's (nomads). The young men hoped they could find jobs in Kabul, then Afghanistan's only "modern" city. But most ended up jobless. As a result, they were soon dragooned into the army. Because there wasn't enough land and sheep they were a burden to their family in the village. The army was their only option.

Over the last half-century nothing much seems to have changed in the 90 percent of Afghanistan that still is rural, except that the number of soldiers has greatly increased. Again, there are few regular jobs, since security is bad and getting worse. The opium trade may have become the best way for young men to earn their bride price.

The syndrome of pervasive unemployment and bloated armies marks the vast swath of countries from Morocco on the Atlantic to Pakistan on the Indian Ocean. But now a second set of military actors has joined the armies that were always ready to absorb the rural boys. In many if not most of the countries of the Middle East, fearsome revolutionary organizations have arisen that are loosely or tightly linked with Al Qaeda. The same kind of young men who go into the armies also go into the new revolutionary organizations.

Those countries where civil war has clearly broken out are, from west to east, Algeria, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya and Afghanistan. The recent clashes between the army and militants in Pakistan bode ill for the non-violence that hitherto marked the Pakistani government's dealings with pro-Taliban militants.

When they were in power, the Taliban banned all music. But according to the London-based, Arabic-language As-Sharq al-Awsat of Sept. 27, Al Qaeda or its many affiliated groups do not. In fact, they have released cassettes of music in which they urge young men "to forsake this world and meditate on the beautiful women in paradise." These cassettes have been circulating throughout the Middle East and have now turned up in Muslim communities in the United Kingdom.

Some of the cassettes date from the late 1980s, when Afghan and Arab mujahideen fought to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. According to As-Sharq al-Awsat, 90 percent of the Arab mujahideen died in that war. The message is that the same is true of the current fighters.

The most popular cassettes are about the heavenly "huri's," women with shining black irises set in chalk-white eyes. The eyes look like those of desert gazelles found all over Middle East and African deserts. The huri's are a key part of the Muslim belief that those who live and die on "the road of Allah" will be rewarded with a heavenly wife such as cannot be found on earth.

Islam is a religion that stresses large, tightly knit families. It is also a religion of poetry and tradition. To not marry breaks the lines of descent. For a young man, a secular army offers little more than food and shelter. But to fight and die on the road of Allah gives him a beautiful wife and brings honor to his family.

When we were in Afghanistan, Professor Iwamura and I noted an aura of sadness among the young men. It was evident in their dances, which were slow and melancholy. When they recited Persian poetry we could understand only some of the words, but still we felt a pervasive sense of earthly hopelessness and heavenly salvation. Perhaps what the Arab and Israeli psychiatrists of the "60 Minutes" program heard was similar to what we heard in Afghanistan. Maybe the suicide bombers find a road that takes them away from a life that goes nowhere, to an afterlife that earthlings can barely imagine.