ManicDDaily

Yesterday’s Sunday New York Times Magazine featured a chilling article by the Pulitzer Prize winning Andrea Elliott about Omar Hammami, The Jihadist Next Door, a leader, or at least participant, in the Somali terrorism group, Shabab.   The article portrays Hammami as a gifted, loved child, born and raised in Alabama, the son of a Southern Baptist mother and Syrian, Muslim, father, the wisecracking, devoted brother of a loving, slightly hippiefied, sister.

The article traces Hammami’s life through childhood, high school, a couple of years of college,  through his increasing disaffection with the U.S., his move to Toronto, then to Egypt (which he found disappointingly secular), and finally to Somalia where he became aligned with the violently jihadist Shabab.   (He is now apparently the subject of a sealed federal indictment.)

Hammami was a charismatic youth, popular in school and high school, until an increasing devotion to Islam, and a somewhat rebellious nature, appears to have estranged him from local peers.   Increasingly discomfitted by the freedom of women in Western society, and desperate for marriage himself, he married an Islamic  Somali woman (in Canada).  Though they had a child, he seems to have spent remarkably little time or energy on his marriage.  (His wife eventually filed for divorce.)

The online version of the article shows an illustrated timeline of Hammami’s life, including a propaganda/”promotional”  video in which he is pictured.  Most of the video shows soldiers in training, loading and reloading assault weapons first in a leafy courtyard, then grouped in a congenial circle (all the guys together) over a pleasantly lilting soundtrack of (presumably) Islamic music.

Of course, the big question the article poses is “why?” “How did this happen?”  “What can be said to have radicalized a small-town boy from Alabama?”

Hammami’s family seems both mystified and grief-stricken by his transformation.  The article, to its credit, doesn’t openly draw conclusions.   But certain factors do pop into one’s mind.  The biggest one, perhaps, is a grandiose determination to be special, celebrated, heroic, combined with a need for excitement, drama;  the desire for the life of a movie character.

The urge for specialness marks Hammami’s words (as recorded in the article);  they are combined with a sense of duty  (a kind of altruism gone off) as well as a craving for adventure.  In a December email, Hammami writes his sister, Dana, “I hear bullets, I dodge mortars, I hear nasheeds” — Islamic songs — “and play soccer. Sometimes I live in the bush with camels, sometimes I live the five-star life. Sometimes I walk for miles in the terrible heat with no water, sometimes I ride in extremely slick cars. Sometimes I’m chased by the enemy, sometimes I chase him!…. I have hatred, I have love….  It’s the best life on earth!”

It sounds a bit like a desert version of James Bond, only with Boy Scout (non-babe) elements.

Certainly, the feeling that validation only comes with specialness, celebrity, fifteen minutes of fame, is a big issue in our current culture.  So is the belief, exemplified by multiple movies and TV shows, that only one, or perhaps just a small band, of very determined special people(a la Jack Bauer) are needed for earth-shaking, earth-saving, or earth-destroying feats.

The appeal to young men of adventure, danger, heroics (especially when dressed up with the bunting of sacrifice and societal purpose) is age-old.  It’s used in U.S. military recruiting materials;  it’s part of the appeal of video games and fantasy novels.   (It’s even sited in recent child-rearing books– see, e.g., The Dangerous Book For Boys.)

The need for brotherhood is as old as Robert Bly.  (That’s a joke; sorry, fans of Robert Bly and Iron John, sorry,Robert.)

Which raises another element that comes subtly through the article–Hammami’s homophobia; a desperation for a normality hoped to be found in marriage, followed by a distancing from the”wifey”.

Who knows what all this means?  Certainly,  not this amateur psychologist.  Whatever the reasons for Hammami’s development, the story is a sad and scary one,  worth reading well.