Mick Hartley

So what's the appeal of radical Islam to these young relatively wealthy Western recruits? Why does the Yemeni-American jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki attract so many disciples?  According to Theo Padnos, in an excerpt from  new book Undercover Muslim: A Journey into Yemen in the Sunday Times (£), a major factor is….women:

Many of the young westerners who’ve been turning up in Yemen to study the Koran over the past 10 years have left behind a history of troubled, in some cases anguished, relations with women. Many have visions of a local bride — the deep, submissive eyes, the black clothing — dancing in their heads.

Islam in Yemen makes a promise to these — and to all — young male believers. The ummah, the global family of believers, will smooth away problems concerning the female sex, it says. We will bring you your helpmeet. She will have been raised on the Koran. She will love you for your Islamic learning, and for your dedication to the deen, or religion.

Westerners who come to Yemen in search of brides believe this — and with good reason. Many of their older friends have asked the local imam for a wife, have paid the bride price, have gone through an Islamically proper engagement, and have married. The bride is now the property of the bridegroom. It has always been thus in Yemen.

Now the young men can stop worrying about how to get along with women. What do females really want? No one in Yemen asks this question. The sheikhs and the students already know: they want to become mothers in pious, Koran-reading families. To have reached this level of certainty is in itself a major victory for many young men. With proper prayer, say the mosque authorities, there will be other, greater victories to come.

An important sub-theme in Awlaki’s blog and lectures is the slightly unbelievable piety and near-silence with which he discusses women. As an American imam before moving to Yemen, he was arrested for soliciting prostitutes, twice in California and once in Virginia. He doesn’t allow a trace of his former ambivalence to enter his blog. Where women are mentioned, a spirit of paternal protectiveness hovers over the writing. The women are grateful and dignified but much too modest to speak….

When the Yemeni men in our mosque spoke of the wives they would marry next, they conjured a picture that was both other-worldly and believable. The next bride would be a religious girl, one who didn’t come and go as she pleased but preferred staying in the house, preferred the Koran over TV, family over career and Yemen over anywhere else on earth. Such women kept their eyes on the ground and spoke in tiny voices about their faith in God.