There is an article in the current edition of Newsweek concerning young Libyan men who travel to Iraq as mujahideen.  The article notes that Libya has a significantly higher than average percentage of these men who volunteer to become suicide bombers - 85 percent, in fact.  The author of the article then goes on to recount his visit to an impoverished small city which has contributed an outsized percentage of Libyan volunteers for jihad.  This city is in the least affluent area of Libya and has - as is often true of poorer areas anywhere - a highly conservative, highly religious culture. One might say that they are bitter and cling to religion and guns, or rather, dynamite belts, as a consequence.  In his research, the author met with families of these young men, in an effort to discover what factors led to the men's decision to go to Iraq to die.  The usual suspects - poverty, lack of opportunity and so forth received their due as causes for the decision.   A common thread, although the author does not emphasize this, is that these young men are unmarried.

I read an article once about the Black September group, the terrorist faction once sponsored by Arafat's al-Fatah which famously murdered a number of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics.  According to this article, there came a time when Arafat found this group to be more of a drawback than an asset, when he began to seek world support, instead of merely world attention for his cause.  He knew, as does nearly everyone except for the United States, whose idea of the long view is "by next Tuesday at the latest", that trained terrorists are a double-edged sword.  Unlike those shown in the films who lie quietly in wait until summoned, and who then carry out their mission, and go home to rest quietly on their laurels and raise chickens, a trained terrorist, or supermilitary adept, is highly likely to keep on doing what he does best.   For this reason, both the Saudi government and the Qaddafi government in Libya discourage - indeed, forbid - their young men to go off to Iraq.  Saudis learned their lesson during the Russo-Afghan War, when the young men they at first encourage - or at least allowed - to fight the Russians in Afghanistan came home expert in guerilla fighting and fired with a purifying fervor that looked upon the Saudi royal family with its luxury and, in many cases, moral turpitude, as yet another boil on the ass of Islamic purity.  Soon the Saudis were denying exit visas to anyone they suspected of wishing to travel to Afghanistan and later, to Bosnia, to fight for fellow muslims.  So what was Arafat to do with these explosive young men who were now such a liability?

The solution was relatively inexpensive, brilliant and highly successful.  Young marriageable women were recruited to attend a staid version of social mixers, which were given to 'reward' the loyal young men.  The supposedly grateful al-Fatah organization further provided any bride-price as well as a grant of sufficient money for any of these men who married to set themselves up in an apartment and to get a start on a life in civilian society.  The vast majority of young men accepted these terms and married.  Some time later, to test the efficacy of this solution, al-Fatah contacted each of these young men and informed him that there was a mission in Europe he was requested to carry out.  These young men were safe from arrest in their own land, but each was subject to arrest in European countries for their past activities.  To a man they refused these missions, which formerly they would have accepted with alacrity.  They were married, they had begun families, they had a life which they had no intention of jeopardizing.

Most of the Arab cultures place heavy emphasis on marriage and the production of children.  The mere fact of marriage confers a sort of status, and the fathering of children, especially sons, confers vastly greater status.  Islam differs greatly from Christianity in a couple of ways, both based on the differences in the circumstances of their inventors.  Whereas Jesus was poor and single, Muhammed was a well-off merchant and married to 9 different women (although never more than 4 at one time; hence, the current muslim limit in orthodox Islam of four wives).  Christianity, therefore has, to some degree, a greater respect for the abstinent and the unwed.  Indeed, Catholics have the interesting phenomenon that whereas homosexuals are about as low as one can get, the highest honor is reserved for men who occupy positions which require celibacy.   One would think that someone somewhere would, as they say, 'do the math'.   Muslims have no similar ideas about sexual abstinence.  It is unthinkable for a muslim man to choose to remain unmarried, particularly in the poorer, more conservative segments of society.  A man who does not marry is a loser, pure and simple.  This of course gives rise to the subjection of women in a male dominated society, since no man is so horrid or so unattractive that some poor woman cannot be forced into marriage with him.  Single men were considered to be like jackals when I was in Saudi, predatory and a danger to families.  As a single man (and ‘single’ included married men who were working in the Kingdom on single status - their wives left behind in their home countries), I could only swim at 'bachelor' beaches, could only live in bachelor housing.  I could not go amusement parks, nor enter larger toy stores where families were likely to shop (we could go to the small hole-in-the-wall shops which had no hidden aisles for dalliance).  I could not sit in the family sections of restaurants which were entirely walled off from my view - even if a family wanted to invite me there.  These prohibitions applied equally to young Saudi men who were not in company with their families, or who might wish to go to the parks or beaches or restaurants or toy shops alone.  There is no place for the single man in Arab society - it would be unimaginable for a clergyman to be unwed.

At the same time sex is not 'dirty' or salacious as it is in varying degrees in most Western culture; unmarried sex is a danger to society, but the act itself is seen as natural and inevitable.  Even those modern folks in the West who make a show of accepting sex for the 'beautiful natural thing it is' (oh, barf - if it isn't dirty, it isn't fun) seem to have an air of bravado and a consciousness of standing outside past tradition in these parts.  Sex in Islam between anyone but husband and wife is forbidden, but the desire for it is not a source of shame or conflict.  Indeed, I found the desire for sex to be constantly exacerbated by everyone most of the time.  Young men are almost frenzied, to a degree that would make the average horny high-school adolescent in America blink and purse his lips.  It is for this reason that Muslim men in the Middle East sequester their women, to keep them free from predation.  Moreover this fascination with sex is not limited to men.  Families keep a close eye on women because, unlike in the West where men pursue and 'decent' women make at least a show of resistance, it is assumed that any normal women is every bit as horny as the men.  Obscene phone calls in Saudi are common, and they are made by women, not men.  I have gotten a couple, although as soon as they realized I wasn't understanding them well, they rang off.  One guy at work received regular calls from a woman who spoke English.

I don't know Libyan customs, but I suspect they resemble those in the conservative areas of Saudi.  One great difficulty for poorer young men in Saudi is that a man wishing to marry must offer a significant bride-price.  This is beyond the reach of many young men; it is not at all uncommon for lower-income men to remain single into their thirties.   There is a charity in Saudi whose aim is to assist men to marry by providing the necessary cash.  So difficult is this sum to attain, that many Saudi men who had enough money to travel, though not enough to marry, were going to other parts of the world and bringing back brides.  When I was in Saudi during the early '90's, the government - and religious authorities - became concerned at the frequency of this and began barring entry to the kingdom to these foreign brides.  A number of men at my company were commuting to Bahrain to visit their non-Saudi wives.  I remember reading an editorial touting the desirability and beauty of Saudi women which attempted to discourage this practice, and which seemed to miss the point entirely.  Saudi women actually had the reputation of being very beautiful.  Upper class Saudi women, when on vacation in Egypt and so forth, if not carefully watched, also had the reputation of being aggressively promiscuous - and of course Saudi men were off the charts in that area.

So prevalent is the pressure on Saudi boys to be horndogs, and so limited the opportunity to gratify this urge, that despite the penalty for rape being death and despite the low incidence of nearly all other crime in the Kingdom (I never felt so safe anywhere else in the world as I did in the Kingdom), the incidence of rape is relatively high.  Men would sometimes commit the most desperate, and sure to be caught out, acts.  The religious authorities constantly were uncovering new ingenious strategems.  Saudi men would go to the airports to watch foreign women disembark, and openly fondle themselves.  In fact, so common was the Saudi practice of 'adjusting themselves' (exacerbated by the itchiness from the custom of shaving the pubic area) that I would not be surprised were I to find that the first area of a Saudi robe to wear out was front and center.   A very common outlet, as I have said before is the old jailhouse solution - other men.  The brazenness and openness with which I and other foreign men were approached when we were alone was remarkable.  Pairs and trios of young men would drive through the single housing areas near the airport when I worked near Riyadh and ask to visit one at one's house, and they were not set upon polishing their English  Once I became aware of the more subtle come-ons, I began to wonder if there was anyone (at least anyone who was single - or in one case, whose wife was away visiting family)  who would not  indulge in a little walk on the other side of the street.

However there was a vast gulf between the men who were taking a little stroll on the wild side, or who were using men to scratch an itch but who preferred women (or convinced themselves that they did), and those who saw themselves as gay.  The former were relatively open, and often sought dalliance in company with their friends hoping for a piece of the action (sequentially, never en masse),  They would discuss 'liking Filipinos' openly in groups sometimes when I was present and not expected to be, or seen to be, available.   There was a strict limit on the activities in which they would participate, or at least admit.  They did not consider themselves gay - and I suspect they would not even accept the term 'bisexual' if they knew it.  On the other hand, those men who felt themselves to be gay, either because they were incapable of performing with women, or because they were drawn to the passive role in sex, were as fearful, furtive, and as filled with self-loathing as might some lad be in small-town America.  And well they might be, because were it to become known that they were gay, they'd be killed by their own family (or anyone else) as quickly as possible.  An American guy I worked with had a Saudi boyfriend who was terrified of his family finding out.  I also had a fling of my own with a member of one of Saudi's national teams in an Olympic sport who was similarly terrified.  The first 'gay' Saudi I met lived near me in the single men's housing near the Riyadh airport.  He would visit me and, upon leaving, would act so furtive that I was afraid I was going to get in trouble.  He'd open the door, peer this way and that, then hasten out slamming the door and scuttling off - his whole demeanor said 'guilty'.  At the time, I had no Arabic, so finally, one day, I mimed his mode of departure, followed by a mimed show of a swaggering, cool show of unconcern (I went in and out of my bathroom to show him - he was terrified to have the door to the outside open while he was visiting) - and he understood me.  After that he left acting so much like the Fonz on crack that I laughed myself silly.  I pity him sincerely, he was a lovely, decent guy, and I cannot imagine how his life has gone since.

When I was young and similarly terrified, as well as being appalled at the feelings I was having, I funnelled much of my energy into becoming extremely religious.  I avoided anything I associated (rightly or wrongly) with gay people, and I sought out the least gay-seeming friends and activities.  I actually felt red gusts of rage when people tried to interest me in classical music, for instance.  (Oddly, I felt no similar concern about liking poetry - go figure).  I think, with just one or two slight differences in my personality, I could have wound up as a monk, or a clergyman of some sort; the main reason I didn't was the finality of such a choice.  I bring all this up because in the Newsweek article, I was struck by the author's account of one of the young men.  This young man was in a poor city, but he was not poor, and did not lack either opportunity for employment or funds for marrying (if they have a bride-price in Libya, about which I don't know).  His family owned a string of shops and the boy even owned a car and had his own apartment.  In the article the boy's brother is quoted as joking that "he had everything [required for marriage] except the girl".   The boy, shown in a photograph was - except for a noticeable difference between a blind eye and a working one - an attractive man who should have had no trouble in rousing female interest (or that of their families) as an eligible suitor.  The family said that he had become increasingly religious before his departure, spending ever more time at the masjid (mosque).  Reading this, I thought, "Hmm."  And, "Hunh."  And "I wonder...".  Because he sounded an awful like the guy I knew best, i. e. me - once upon a time.

When one desperately wants to be accepted – and knows oneself to be utterly unacceptable; when one wants to be truly good in the sight of the god one believes in, and the avenues to goodness are sharply limited because of that which can not be changed; when one wants a group that seems ‘cool’ and really ‘in’ and exciting, and one is not fit to join the jocks – or in this lad’s case, the married guys; when all of this is true, then one has to cast his net wide and think outside the immediate box.  It becomes thrilling to do something one can do.  There are things that others may find dangerous or frightening, but indisputably admirable.  If you just figure that tomorrow’s consequences can be considered tomorrow, and kind of mentally gloss over the ‘what if’s, then you just may come up with something.  You could – oh, say, hitch hike across the country.  Or climb something extremely dangerous.  Or maybe one could take himself to a war zone.  Suddenly you find a landscape of opportunities for a life, however brief, where no questions will be asked.  People might gather around in admiration, at last.  Somehow it may seem that this idea is so wild and so far out, that at last results will not be sullied by the feeling of fraudulence and sham that have dogged one until now.  Add to this that adolescent feeling that tomorrow is so very far away, but ‘never’ is staring you right in the face.  You will be thrown in with the very folks you want so much to be, and they will see you as one of them.  And the one worst thing that can ever happen, humiliation and exposure, just isn’t in the scenario; no one is expected to be getting laid while hitching or climbing or under fire. 

The one worst thing you can ever give an opponent, or potential opponent, is ‘nothing to lose’.  Kristofferson had it exactly right when he wrote “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’.  An odd version of this idea is the monastic – or ascetic – idea of giving up everything to achieve oneness with god or whatever seems to be interested in having you join it unencumbered by self; an idea that is, as far as I know, non-existent in Islam.  Death seems quite romantic to those who have no reason to expect it as a natural event anytime soon.  Think James Dean, and the cult his early demise engendered.  Think of those suicide clubs in Japan, where total strangers locate each other to take the big jump together – an in-group that accepts you wholly, at last.  Suicide is the one sure exit from a situation that has no solution: terminal illness, poverty without opportunity, a threat of exposure that cannot be lived down, homosexuality.  In the case of poverty, some escape by means of alcohol or drugs or sex, among other things, is available but if one is determined to be good, the first two are out, and the third available only through marriage and that with a member of the opposite sex.  If marriage is not available, one is well and truly screwed – or permanently unscrewed, one might say.  I believe that the Black September solution would go far to mitigate the numbers willing to blow themselves up; and the key is not just marriage but a start in life as well.  But what to do about the unmarrriageable, in a society where there is no wealth or opportunity that can serve to lessen the onus of being permanently single? 

I don’t have a clue what motivated the boy in the article to blow himself up, nor any of the other suicides.  But I just was struck by the description of this boy’s circumstances.  People who are utterly suppressed and see no eventual satisfaction of what they most deeply desire are capable of immense evil.  Think of the vile J. Edgar Hoover.  Love, in its most carnal sense, in concert with opportunity or honor, can cure a lot of society’s ills, when allowed to do so.  But despite the documented success of the Black September solution, of the constantly rediscovered fact that violence goes up when the economy goes down, and that there must be a link between lack of opportunity and evil-doing, there will always be those who have something or who are in the majority or the class in control, who are dead set against any solution that involves accepting difference, or extending equality to those who do not behave (or think) as they do.  What possible solution is there for a kid from a society where even his most loving relatives believe utterly that, if he were to follow his nature, those desires were a matter of choice?  In one of my favorite books ever, Billy and Betty, Brother Oscar says to Betty, “Every age gets the gods it deserves; this is the age of the electric cattle prod!”

Perhaps he could have said, “dynamite vest.”