How does a young man transform from a
law-abiding middle-class citizen into a terrorist? Ken Ballen, a former
federal prosecutor, spent five years trying to find answers to that
question.
"Terrorists in Love" examines why young people got involved in
radicalism and then - for many of them - how they left.
The result is a book called, "Terrorists in Love: The Real Lives of
Islamic Radicals."
It started as a research project, says Ballen, founder and president of
Terror-Free Tomorrow. When his group conducted public opinion polls
across the Muslim world, Ballen traveled extensively and had a chance to
meet young radicals.
“What was remarkable was how many people did open up to me," Ballen
says. "They really shared their lives with me, how they got involved in
radicalism and then - for many of them - how they left, which I think is
almost as important as how they got first involved.”
Out of 100 or so radicals he interviewed, Ballen focused on six in his
book.
“You can’t pick six people and say that they represent all the motives
of all radicals everywhere," he says. "They do not. But I think they
were fairly representative of the different ways that people got
involved in this movement.”
What ties the stories together, Ballen says, is reflected in the book’s
title, "Terrorists in Love."
“It tells a story of people who can’t find love, largely, and this
feeling of frustration, not being able to connect with another human
being on earth - they can only find love with God - propels a lot of
them into radicalism.”
One of them is Abdullah Al Gilani. His story is subtitled 'Jihadi Romeo
and Juliet.' The young Saudi fell in love with a woman named Mariam, but
couldn’t marry her.
“Her father wanted to marry her off for a handsome dowry or bride price,
and he thought he could get $30,000," Ballen says. "This young man
didn’t have that kind of money. The most he had was $8,000. So the
father married her against her will to a man three times her age. She
was humiliated and, indeed, raped by this man because she had never
consented to the marriage. He was very distraught after this. He
thought, ‘Well, if I go on holy war and I die, and I’m fighting for God,
I can go to heaven and in heaven, I can marry my sweetheart, Mariam.’ So
he went off to Iraq.”
Ahmad Alshayea is another Saudi Jihadist who went to Iraq. The young
man’s troubled relationship with his father contributed to his decision
to leave his family and country, according to Ballen, who interviewed
Ahmed in Saudi Arabia at a facility where former jihadists are
rehabilitated.
Ahmad Alshayea says being nursed back to health by a female US Army
medic after surviving a suicide attack changed his radical views.
“This young man had never met a woman outside of his family until he
went to Abu Ghreib, of all places, and was nursed back to health by an
American army medic, the first woman he had ever met," Ballen says. "It
opened him up in a way to Americans, to women, that he had never
experienced before. It humanized him.”
Ahmad was captured and brought to Abu Ghreib after surviving a suicide
attack. He was never told he was going on a suicide mission. He and two
other jihadists were to drop off a booby-trapped tanker truck. But his
companions jumped out of the vehicle just before it reached a concrete
roadblock and exploded, killing eight people and severely injuring
Ahmed.
In the book, Ballen describes Ahmed’s inner thoughts after he's taken to
Abu Ghreib.
“The Holy Quran told Ahmad that a martyred fighter in the way of Jihad,
he would be eternally nourished in Paradise by ‘date palms.’ Yet,
instead of the sweetest 'Sukkary' ((a type of date palm)) that
Grandfather said would be the food of heaven, his veins were hooked to
salty water. Instead of wearing ‘robes of silk’ and reclining on
‘jeweled couches,’ as the Holy Book pledged, Ahmad lay on a stiff white
bed. Missing, too, were ‘the dark-eyed, full-breasted virgins, chaste as
pearls’ offered by Allah the Most High to any martyr. He hadn’t reunited
with his family as promised either - his younger brother, cheriched
grandfather, beloved mother. He was alone.”
That experience, Ballen says, gave Ahmad a new mission and he now warns
people his age against following the path he chose.
Other
young people profiled in Ballen’s book include Malik, a spiritual
adviser of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and Zeddy, the professional
Pakistani warrior who discovered that a religious Jihadi group could be
just as corrupt as any other organization.
The author says to fight terrorism, we have to understand who these
people are and how they think.
“I think the change has to come from within," Ballen says. "It has to
come from people who are willing to interpret their faith - whether it
is Islam, Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism - in an inclusive,
tolerant manner, and not as an exclusivist - kind of 'we’re right and
everybody else is wrong.' A lot of people can change and a lot of people
can change through dialogue. And we should expose any radical movement
for what it really is, because there is a tremendous amount of
corruption in it.”
That, Ballen says, is why he wrote "Terrorists in Love," to share with
his readers the stories they seldom hear about terrorism and those who
carry it out.
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