Where Boys Grow Up to Be Jihadis
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
New York Times Magazine
No one thought it was strange when Muncif Ben Aboud disappeared from his crowded, unkempt neighborhood in the Moroccan city of Tetouan. Men are always leaving Jamaa Mezuak, as the quarter is known. And Muncif, who was 21, had ventured off before, roaming the worn medinas of Casablanca and Marrakesh, posing stiffly for snapshots to take home. His curiosity pulled him in many directions. He was brilliant with numbers but would lose himself in novels. He began training to be a military pilot but then changed his mind and settled on engineering. A year later, in 2006, he switched to mathematics.
That summer, Muncif told his mother he was going to Mauritania, the parched Muslim country south of Morocco. He wanted to study Islam. She saw no reason to worry. He was a good boy; this seemed just another fit of wanderlust. But three days after he left, he called home.
“Forgive me if I have done wrong,” Muncif said. It was a phrase Moroccans use to bid farewell. He was going to Iraq, he said. He wanted to do jihad.
The family was shocked. Muncif had always been strong-willed. He was stubborn in his religious convictions. But the war in Iraq seemed a world away.
Three months later, Muncif’s brother Bilal disappeared. His mother told herself that Bilal, who was 26, must have found a way to Spain, where so many men from the neighborhood went looking for work. It was unthinkable that he would have followed his brother. Bilal’s passions were soccer and hip-hop. He loved to dance. He hardly seemed poised to blow himself up. But one afternoon in October, the telephone rang again.
(Continued here.)
New York Times Magazine
No one thought it was strange when Muncif Ben Aboud disappeared from his crowded, unkempt neighborhood in the Moroccan city of Tetouan. Men are always leaving Jamaa Mezuak, as the quarter is known. And Muncif, who was 21, had ventured off before, roaming the worn medinas of Casablanca and Marrakesh, posing stiffly for snapshots to take home. His curiosity pulled him in many directions. He was brilliant with numbers but would lose himself in novels. He began training to be a military pilot but then changed his mind and settled on engineering. A year later, in 2006, he switched to mathematics.
That summer, Muncif told his mother he was going to Mauritania, the parched Muslim country south of Morocco. He wanted to study Islam. She saw no reason to worry. He was a good boy; this seemed just another fit of wanderlust. But three days after he left, he called home.
“Forgive me if I have done wrong,” Muncif said. It was a phrase Moroccans use to bid farewell. He was going to Iraq, he said. He wanted to do jihad.
The family was shocked. Muncif had always been strong-willed. He was stubborn in his religious convictions. But the war in Iraq seemed a world away.
Three months later, Muncif’s brother Bilal disappeared. His mother told herself that Bilal, who was 26, must have found a way to Spain, where so many men from the neighborhood went looking for work. It was unthinkable that he would have followed his brother. Bilal’s passions were soccer and hip-hop. He loved to dance. He hardly seemed poised to blow himself up. But one afternoon in October, the telephone rang again.
(Continued here.)
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1 Comments:
Elliot writes that Moroccans have a passion for soccer.
If there is one outlet for the neighborhood’s wellspring of male energy, it is soccer. In the summer, hundreds of boys gather on bleachers to watch as players glide across a worn, concrete pitch, some of them barefoot. Sitting around the bleachers one afternoon in July, a group of teenagers talked to me about their heroes. They said they worshipped Zinédine Zidane, the Muslim of Algerian descent who conquered the soccer world from France.
Despite that passion, they are willing to go to Iraq to become suicide bombers.
Iraqis love soccer also … but their National Team do not train in Iraq … and now Three members of Iraq's Olympic soccer team and one of the team's assistant coaches have deserted their side to seek asylum in Australia.
The Iraq national team's successes in the past three years have provided a welcome distraction from the troubles of everyday life in the country.
But athletes and sports officials have been frequent targets of violence and some have been subjected to threats, kidnappings and even assassination attempts.
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