In this article, the devout Muslim youth incline toward violent jihad. It is noteworthy that the Islamic revivalism is taking place among the young people, who know more about Islam than their elders, and that it causes them to listen favorably to the jihadist message. The Times, of course, does not explore the implications of that.
"Generation Faithful: In Algeria, a Tug of War for Young Minds," by Michael Slackman in the New York Times, June 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):
ALGIERS — First, Abdel Malek Outas’s teachers taught him to write math equations in Arabic, and embrace Islam and the Arab world. Then they told him to write in Latin letters that are no longer branded unpatriotic, and open his mind to the West. [...]The confusion has bled off the pages of his math book and deep into his life. One moment, he is rapping; another, he recounts how he flirted with terrorism, agreeing two years ago to go with a recruiter to kill apostates in the name of jihad.
At a time of religious revival across the Muslim world, Algeria’s youth are in play. The focus of this contest is the schools, where for decades Islamists controlled what children learned, and how they learned, officials and education experts here said.
Now the government is urgently trying to re-engineer Algerian identity, changing the curriculum to wrest momentum from the Islamists, provide its youth with more employable skills, and combat the terrorism it fears schools have inadvertently encouraged.
It appears to be the most ambitious attempt in the region to change a school system to make its students less vulnerable to religious extremism.
But many educators are resisting the changes, and many disenchanted young men are dropping out of schools. It is a tense time in Algiers, where city streets are crowded with police officers and security checkpoints and alive with fears that Algeria is facing a resurgence of Islamic terrorism. From 1991 to 2002, as many as 200,000 Algerians died in fighting between government forces and Islamic terrorists. Now one of the main terrorist groups, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, or G.S.P.C., has affiliated with Al Qaeda, rebranding itself as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
There is a sense that this country could still go either way. Young people here in the capital appear extremely observant, filling mosques for the daily prayers, insisting that they have a place to pray in school. The strictest form of Islam, Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia, has become the gold standard for the young.
And yet, the young in Algiers also appear far more socially liberal than their peers in places like Egypt and Jordan. Young veiled women walk hand in hand, or sit leg to leg, with young men, public flirtations unthinkable in most other Muslim countries.
[...]
Malek says he hopes to graduate from high school next year and now wants to join the military, just like his father. He is a long way from being the person who had accepted what he says the terrorist recruiter told him — that soldiers, like his own father, are apostates and should be killed. His resolution lasted for three days, until his imam found out and persuaded him not to go.
But the call to jihad still tugs at him. In his world, jihad, or struggle, is a duty for Muslims, but as Malek explains, the challenge is who will convince young people of the proper form that struggle should take.
“They really convince you,” he said of the extremists.
Then later, with great sincerity, he asked: “Can you help me? I want to go to New York and rap.”
The Family
In Algeria, your sense of identity often depends on when you went to school.
Hassinah Bou Bekeur, 26, enjoys watching the Saudi satellite channels and the news in Arabic. She watches with her mother and four younger sisters in one room. But her father, Nasreddin, 60, stays in another room so he can watch in French, the language of his education.
“He is not very strict,” she said of her father, with a touch of affection and disappointment in her voice. “We have more awareness of religion now.”
She took the veil when she was 20; one sister did so at 17, and another sister at 15. The youngest, Zeinab, is only 12 and does not yet wear the veil. The veil is a symbol of the distance between father and children. While Mr. Bou Bekeur studied the Koran, Islam was not the cornerstone of his identity. He says he even drank alcohol — which is prohibited by Islam — until 1986. “I never knew that,” said Amal, his 17-year-old daughter, and then with a smile, she waved her fist at her father and said, “I will kill you.”
[...]
“The foundation of religion, I learned in school,” said Mr. Bou Bekeur’s son, Abdel Rahman, 25. “We pray more than them and we know religion better than them,” he said of his father’s generation. “We are more religious. My father used to drink. I never drank. My father asked me if it was O.K. to take a car loan. I told him, no, it is haram,” forbidden in Islam.
So his father did not take the loan. His father is a quiet man in a house of strong-willed people. He can barely help his children with their homework, because his Arabic is poor. And he worries about their future, and the future of his country.
[...]
Four years ago, Amine Aba, 19, one of Malek’s best friends, decided it was time to take his religion more seriously, to stop listening to music, to stop dancing, to stop hanging around with Malek — most of which he accomplished most of the time.
“Muslim countries have been influenced by the Europeans,” Amine said, explaining why he thought he had not been religious enough for most of his life. “We have neglected our religion,” he said.
“Like us,” said Malek, who was nearby with a new buddy, Muhammad Lamine Messaoudi, a baby-faced 18-year-old with a bit of a paunch and a constant smile. The two burst into nervous laughter.
Malek, Amine and Lamine are each dealing with the forces shaping their world in slightly different ways. Amine has chosen religion; Malek, who has gelled hair and a slight stutter, has taken a middle road of religion, girls and rap; and Lamine appears a sentry of the left, interested in beer, girls and, he hopes, a life in France.
Each has felt the push and pull of the political-ideological fight going on in Algerian schools, between those who want to maintain the status quo and those who hope to reopen a window to the West. The messages the young men receive through teachers and the curriculum are still, almost uniformly, aimed at reinforcing their Arab-Islamic identity. But that is changing, slowly, and not without a fight.
“We would never have imagined Algeria could one day be faced with violence that would come from Islam,” said Fatiha Yomsi, an adviser to the minister of education.
Students go to school amid subdued tension because many educators do not like the changes that are coming.
“He is an Islamist. He would not shake my hand before,” Ms. Yomsi said as she introduced an Arabic teacher during a morning tour of Al Said Hamdeen high school here. Then as she walked around, she pointed out the front line in the struggle, keeping boys and girls together in class.
“You see, all these classes are mixed,” she said. “It is very important. We fought for this. That is why I am targeted for death.”
[...]
After he left, Lamine was asked how he felt about Amine. He has frequently teased him, suggesting that they go together to the bar for a beer. Lamine does not go with Malek to pray, talks often about drinking alcohol and said that two years ago he was arrested trying to sneak onto a ship to get to France.
“He’s O.K.,” Lamine said. “I’d like to be like him. I’d like to be religious someday, too.”
"The Times, of course, does not explore the implications of that."
I've read Michael Slackman's articles before in the NYT. He is a total Dhimmi. And if his surname is Jewish, which I think it is, that makes him a Jewish Dhimmi. Even worse. I guess he thinks being the "Son of an ape and pig" is just fine.
More on Obama advisers: Bin Laden can appeal to U.S. courts
It amazes me to see that author of this article does not appear troubled in the slightest about the binary choice which Islam appears to offer - a choice which, in the end, only leaves Islam more entrenched, and therefore is no choice at all - Jihad through violence, or Jihad through other means. That euphemism of "struggle", whether violently or through other means is all designed to perpetuate Islam and to corrode and destroy those cultures and societies which Islam encounters.
The author implies that the path of nonviolent Jihad is preferable to the violent one, and depicts the "battle for minds" as one which can be "won" or "lost" for our interests depending on which flavor of Jihad young Muslims choose. The author is completely incurious about the real implications of this binary non-choice for us: as long as Islam persists, as long as Muslims accept the "duty of Jihad" (that is, the duty to adhere to and spread the religion of Islam), then Islam will be perpetuated and strengthened whether Muslims choose to do so violently or non-violently. We lose, they win.
It is truly insane that nearly 7 years after 9/11, and without a shred of evidence that non-violent Jihad is somehow better in the long run for the West than violent Jihad, it stuns me that so many in the West still act as if they believe that Muslims and Islam can offer us anything but misery and catastrophe. This shillyshallying is all going in one direction only, and that is one in which Islam gradually strengthens its stranglehold on our society, one Mosque, one subversion, one Muslim at a time, while we gradually suffocate and die. Will we will wait for the Muslims' hearts and minds to be won until they, smiling in their Mosques, stand over us triumphant? Apparently so - our side writes articles like this, while Muslims revel at the magnitude of our stupidity and our cowardice.
jsla - As I said before, the author of this piece is a voluntary Dhimmi, which makes him an imbecile.
As far as "Muslim hearts and minds" go - as I see it, the totalitarian ideology of Islam negates any love in their hearts, and any brain activity in their minds. Sort of like the inhabitants of Oceania, Orwell's dystopia, in "1984." Total 'bots.
jsla - excellent observation.
Regardless of whether the author fails to adequately explore Islam's flaws and its attraction for the young, the article does pick up on the mixed feelings of many young muslims about what to base their sense of identity on.
I'm doubtful of our ability to change any of these young believers to infidels but we should be encouraging any move to widen the base of their identity beyond Islam.
That means encouraging things like mixed schools, language programs, sport, secularism, questioning and critical thought, and wherever possible putting pressure on governments across the islamic world to adhere to the declaration of human rights (especially allowing apostasy) - and introducing boycotts and sanctions on countries that don't. So, while the Algerian government encourages mixed schools, language, sport etc it should be encouraged and supported, if it moves away from that it should be punished.
From the article: “'He is not very strict,' she said of her father, with a touch of affection and disappointment in her voice."
I'm sure this young woman could find many Muslim fathers who are, to put it euphemistically, "very strict." (The father of poor Amina and Sarah Said, perhaps?) It's tragic and somewhat mind-boggling that she feels disappointment rather than gratitude toward her father for allowing her normal freedoms: for example, the article implies that her and her sisters' decisions to wear a veil were just ithat--their decisions, rather than something ther father imposed upon them.
No doubt many millions of Muslim young women would gladly trade family situations with her.
Veil416 makes a good point.
Meantime, from the article: “We would never have imagined Algeria could one day be faced with violence that would come from Islam,” said Fatiha Yomsi, an adviser to the minister of education.
"Violence that would come from Islam".... Hmmm....Should she be reported to OIC's "Islamophobia Observatory"? (reported by Robert, today)
Muslims who neglect Islam are my kind of Muslims.
"he [the "confused" and "torn-between-two identities" Algeian "youth"] asked: “Can you help me? I want to go to New York and rap.”
-- from the article above
Not on your life.
And not on ours either, if we know what's good for us.
“'The foundation of religion, I learned in school,' said Mr. Bou Bekeur’s son, Abdel Rahman, 25. 'We pray more than them and we know religion better than them,' he said of his father’s generation. 'We are more religious. My father used to drink. I never drank. My father asked me if it was O.K. to take a car loan. I told him, no, it is haram,' forbidden in Islam.
So his father did not take the loan. His father is a quiet man in a house of strong-willed people. He can barely help his children with their homework, because his Arabic is poor. And he worries about their future, and the future of his country."
-- from the article above
And the new generation in Algeria, raised in a society suffused with Islam, told that the highest aim, for a Believer, is to become a "slave of Allah" and to fulfill all of the duties of a "slave of Allah," will gradually unlearn to think, as the older generation, the one that had some exposure to French schools and French non-Muslim ways of thought (which also came, of course, from contact with the more than a million non-Muslims who once lived in Algeria, and gave it what civilizational advances it at one time enjoyed), managed, in some small degree, to do. The secular classes, those who studied in the French-language schools, or who travel back and forth to France, or the Berbers, a special case as they always have been in Algeria (that non-Arab identity offering a conceivable way out of Islam, and that resentment of Arab cultural and linguistic imperialism, that has been felt most strongly since the protecting French left, helps to make Berbers, in Algeria and in France, more accessible to the message of proselytizers, or of other forms of quiet apostasy.
Notice, in the excerpt from the article just above, how the father simply asks the son what the rule on loans is in Islam. He does not think for himself, he does not question the rule: "My father used to drink. I never drank. My father asked me if it was O.K. to take a car loan. I told him, no, it is haram,' forbidden in Islam.
So his father did not take the loan."
Emd of story. His not to reason why, his but to do and sigh. This is Prohibited, This is Commanded. That's Islam. A society suffused with that kind of attitude will end up as torment for those capable of thought, a society living on lies, conspiracy theories, inculcated and permanent hatred of Infidels, incuriosity about the world, limited means of artistic expression, no free and skeptical inquiry without which the enterprise of science, and indeed all progress, becomes impossible. In short, a nightmare that, if the secular class, to which the stratokleptocrats of the regime belong, properly apprehend and are, for all of their misdeeds, nonetheless willing to ruthlessly suppress the enemies of mental freedom (more dangerous to Algeria's future than is the thievery of the rulers), something might be salvaged from what Algeria, in the last forty-six years since the French left, steadily become.
What do all these people do for a living? One would think that a need for learning skills and knowledge which would make one employable would be a counter to the pull of the religious schools
What do all these people do for a living?"
Answer: not much. There's all that oil. There's all that natural gas. Some is stolen by the rulers, but a lot is left over to support the state. Then there is aid from France, a country that keeps thinking, keeps believing, that it "owes" Algeria and the rest of the Maghreb something, apparently because of all those hospitals, schools, and infrastructure put in, and some semblance of civilization too, during the brief periods -- about forty years apiece -- in Tunisia and Morocco, and the much longer period of 132 years in Algeria, which is still nothing compared to the long history of Islam's conquest of North Africa -- that was put in place by the French, not to mention the inestimable gift of the French language, which was once taught all over Algeria, but as soon as the Ben Bella junta came in, the first thing to go was the dominance of French schools, which is why, in the article, the father has imperfect Arabic but, no doubt, good French, while for the new generation, it is Arabic, the language of the Qur'an and of commentaries on the Qur'an and histories of the Arabs and of so very little else, that supplants the French language, the medium of one of the world's great cultures, Chamfort's "perfected civilization." Not a good trade.
You must see that enbracing Islam is protection for these young people. Would you want to be a 17 year old girl who without a vale in Algeria? Uncovered meat is not an option.
It is a system of fear and it unleashes the worst in human nature. Discusting way of life.
"“We would never have imagined Algeria could one day be faced with violence that would come from Islam,” said Fatiha Yomsi, an adviser to the minister of education."
Really, Fatiha? Then you are grossly and pathetically ignorant of your own culture and history.
Either that or in denial.
Islam's inability to even allow for other ways underscores its weakness.
While Mr. Bou Bekeur studied the Koran, Islam was not the cornerstone of his identity. He says he even drank alcohol — which is prohibited by Islam — until 1986. “I never knew that,” said Amal, his 17-year-old daughter, and then with a smile, she waved her fist at her father and said, “I will kill you.”
The scary thing is, despite her smile, it's not at all clear that this girl was kidding. Her father needs to watch himself around his own children. This is Islam's gift to the world.
“Muslim countries have been influenced by the Europeans. We have neglected our religion”
Civilized countries have been influenced by Muslims. We have neglected our culture.
"I never knew that,” said Amal, his 17-year-old daughter, and then with a smile, she waved her fist at her father and said, “I will kill you.”
I didn't think that was funny, either, PMK. Mohammedans kill each other, family members, quite easily, and with no consequences.
But, the NYT clueless Jewish Dhimmi author of the article, Michael Slackman, he thought it was funny.
When did they start hiring clueless imbeciles to write for the NYT?
Did the Jihadwatch reader notice that each time in the NYT article when some intra-generational clash was mentioned or some point of contention between the old, colonial Algeria and the new, independent Algeria that the young people cited 'our religion' as the solution or basis for correction in the disparity?
Religion -- not economic gaps or lack of education or 'prejudice' or 'the man' or 'white colonial exploiters with penises' or any other NYT-type of explanation came from the young people's mouths. Religion.
I think that Jihadwatch readers understand what this means, but the New York Times readers won't on the whole. A NYT reader probably equates 'religion' with Joel Osteen or some big-box preacher from a free-protestant church TV show... it's not the same thing that 'religion' is for da Utes of Algeria.
We accuse trolls that come on this site as 'projecting' bad motives and intent on us and the rest of the West in general. We need to understand that part of the biggest problem for us is indeed 'projection,' but not the thing we see on these pages. It's the projection of western concepts like 'religion'into the mouths of Algerian Utes that is part of why we can't name the enemy. Religion is the enemy.
al-Qaeda is translated 'the base' and many in Western countries have generalized the brand name for bin Laden's mafia into the catch-all for every group intent on using combat as the means of Jihad. Well, the more important 'base' of it all is Islam the belief system. As this article shows 'the base' for all problems and solutions these Algerian Utes cite is 'the religion'. The religion is 'the base'. In this way Islam is the al-Qaeda we must battle. Fighting all the mafias that legitimize themselves through theological argument will not get at the root cause, ever. The base must be damaged and discredited so that 'the Salafist Group for Combat and Preaching' and the thousand other groups like it have nothing to stand on.
It's not difficult to see if one allows himself to see. Removing the distoring lens of western concepts and sources like the NYT will go a long way to seeing what 'al-Qaeda' should really be defined as.
The Base is Islam.
"“We would never have imagined Algeria could one day be faced with violence that would come from Islam,” said Fatiha Yomsi, an adviser to the minister of education."
hmmmm an adviser to the minister of education who apparently has not studied Algerian history..
From the article:
Was there ever really a difference in the first place?
When did they start hiring clueless imbeciles to write for the NYT?
Posted by: darcy
bwahahahahaha
“Muslim countries have been influenced by the Europeans. We have neglected our religion”
No, your religion has neglected you. It has left you ignorant, violent, and bigoted.
HInt to the government of Algeria: if you are worried and frightened about where some of your young people are looking for meaning, do please turn a discreet blind eye to the activities of Christian evangelists, instead of arresting them. Or, if they are arrested, give them a token slap on the wrist and let them go. They have something that is capable, if allowed, of outcompeting the summons to violent jihad.
If, instead of embracing Traditional Islam, your young people convert to Christianity, the threat of armed insurrections will evaporate. They will plant trees and gardens, go to work, work hard, study, become doctors and nurses; they will teach, build, make stuff, plant, heal, and run successful small businesses; most importantly, THEY WILL NOT MAKE PLOTS TO KILL LOTS OF PEOPLE; you will not have to worry about assassins sneaking in through the windows to slit your throats; Christians DO NOT become suicide assassins and blow things up.
Life would become more orderly, predictable and pleasant; Algeria would become more prosperous; fewer Algerians would flee to foreign parts.
From the article:
"Hassinah Bou Bekeur, 26, enjoys watching the Saudi satellite channels and the news in Arabic. She watches with her mother and four younger sisters in one room. But her father, Nasreddin, 60, stays in another room so he can watch in French, the language of his education.
“He is not very strict,” she said of her father, with a touch of affection and disappointment in her voice. “We have more awareness of religion now.”
"She took the veil when she was 20; one sister did so at 17, and another sister at 15. The youngest, Zeinab, is only 12 and does not yet wear the veil. The veil is a symbol of the distance between father and children.
"While Mr. Bou Bekeur studied the Koran, Islam was not the cornerstone of his identity. He says he even drank alcohol — which is prohibited by Islam — until 1986.
“I never knew that,” said Amal, his 17-year-old daughter, and then with a smile, she waved her fist at her father and said, “I will kill you.”'
She means it. Mr Bou Bekeur had better be careful, if his daughter decides to obey the following Quranic text:
Sura (9:23) - "O ye who believe! Choose not your fathers nor your brethren for friends if they take pleasure in disbelief rather than faith. Whoso of you taketh them for friends, such are wrong-doers" .
And we all know what the rest of sura 9 tells Muslims to do to disbelievers, whoever they are.
I just followed yadayada's useful link to Anwar Shaikh's book on Islam as Arab Imperialism, in which we find the following paragraph which also highlights the danger that threatens people like Nasreddin Bou Bekeur, the 'slack Muslim' French-speaking wine-drinking parents of fervently Islamising children.
I quote [if you follow yadayada's link above and scroll down, you'll find this gem]:
"The fundamental principle of Islam is "divide and rule," which splits humanity socially and politically. It seeks to perpetuate itself through a permanent strife based on the distinction of Momin (the Muslim) and Kafir (the non- Muslim).
"The Koran in The Disputer, 58: 20 states this fact in undisputable terms: the non-Muslims have been labelled as the "Satan's Party" and the followers of Allah and Muhammad are designated as "God's Party."
" Further, the Koran calls members of the "Satan's Party" as 'despicable' and declares that 'they are surely the losers' but about 'God's Party' it adds [58: 22]
'They are the people who do not love anyone who opposes God and His Messenger, not even if they were their fathers, or their sons, or their brothers, or their clan....'".
If Nasreddin's children decide he is 'opposing allah' by his slack conformity with Muslim rules and regulations, he is in big, big trouble, for Islam trumps even filial piety. If they decide he is apostate, they may kill him.
Indeed, it is possible to read the story about the loan rather differently than the reporter means us to take it. This 'quiet man in a house of strong-willed people' is living with the threat of takfir, or a charge of blasphemy or apostasy, hanging over his head. Perhaps he already knows, at some level, that one day his children might decide to kill him. His paternal authority, theoretically almost unlimited, is trumped by Islam.
In that house, in Algeria, in that 'secularised' father living in suppressed terror of his 'religious' children, we see the predicament of the 'moderate', secularised or kafirized Muslim.
Boy, these people are stupid as (bleep).
When did they start hiring clueless imbeciles to write for the NYT?
Posted by: darcy
bwahahahahaha
Posted by: pulsar182 at June 23, 2008 6:11 PM
Glad you enjoyed, pulsar! Actually, it was a rhetorical question. They don't translate well on the 'net.