ABHA, 12 March 2006 — Fifteen-year-old Husam lives in a small town in Saudi Arabia. While on his midterm vacation in Jeddah he visited a relative who is deeply involved in extremism.
While surfing the Internet during his stay, Husam asked his relative to help him find websites on the war in Iraq that showed extremists torturing and assassinating foreigners in horrific ways.
Instead of suggesting a website, Husam’s relative gave him a CD which the young lad watched with great enthusiasm and absorption. When he returned home, he was full of enthusiasm for what he had seen and spoke constantly about his desire to join a jihadi group in Iraq.
What happened to Husam is happening to thousands of young males, and the problem is hidden from the view of society.
Since the early 1970s, it has been common for young men to watch and collect jihad videos. When the Soviet Union initiated the war on Afghanistan, technology was at the stage of used videotapes and brochures instead. Now compact discs and the Internet are the tools to watch and download video clips for distribution through wireless communications.
The technology has changed right along with political circumstances, and both have had an effect on the way people learn about terrorism, suicide and extremism.
They believe that what is happening in the world today for the young generation is just an extension of the 1980s. However, they also believe that it is possible to change some young people’s obsession with terror groups and the ideas of jihad, Islam and the rewards of heaven.
The Interior Ministry released a list of 36 most-wanted men under the age of 25, suspected terrorists of the so-called global jihad against the West; maybe this is the evidence of how easily young males get affected with such thoughts.
Turki Al-Hamad, a doctor in political science and a Saudi writer, objects to associating terror groups with jihad. He said that this term gave them the legal right to practice their ideas when everything they are doing is against law and religion. He suggests a better term: Criminals.
The problem, he said, was not with the young but in those encouraging them to embrace murderous ideologies. He said that there were certain extremists and terrorists leading this young generation who are playing with the lives of every individual.
“You know that young people, especially teenagers, tend to be enthusiastic searching for ideas. Their hollow minds and lack of religion push them toward terrorism,” said Al-Hamad.
Where, he asked, did this hollowness come from? “During the 1970s and up until now,” he said, “the idea of focusing on Islam, Islamic speeches and rejecting contradictory beliefs left the young generation closed-minded with no inclination to accept and understand.”
Al-Hamad recalled his youth in the late 1960s and early 1970s saying that he was zealous himself and entertained many beliefs. He said that young men were hasty by nature. Zeal is good as long as it was associated with optimism and the realistic facts of life. He compared how things used to be in the 1970s and in the 1980s when what was known as the “Islamic Awakening” started.
Al-Hamad said he felt that it should have been called the “heedless era” because we could see clearly the awful results now. What, he asked, came after destruction? “Nothing because they are brainwashed and they don’t know any better,” he said.
Al-Hamad felt we should start by giving the young a variety of options, which would eventually give them hope.
“I noticed that many young Saudis have lost their hope in the future,” he said.
He thought this could be changed by helping them develop a sense of belief that the future is going to be better once they dedicated themselves to making a good living and freeing their minds from negative attitudes.
The Saudi writer, Muhammad Zaed Al-Almaay, believes that new generations with this mentality is not a transient phenomenon.
“The disease might be contagious to our children and relatives so we must find a solution,” said Al-Almaay. Finding it would not be easy and would take many years of struggle.
“We created a miserable and depressed generation and they need to reform themselves,” he said.
Ibrahim Mubarak, a sociology professor at Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University in Riyadh, said that not everything the media shows is appropriate for family viewing. Television and satellites show many scenes, news items and movies that children must never see at a tender age. When they do accidentally see something, parents must intervene and explain what is true and what is false. They must clarify the real picture behind the square screen and the real motives that drove others to produce them.
Ibrahim Al-Juwair, a sociologist, noted that mass media competes in selling news in different ways to the audience neglecting the impact it might have on different individuals. He felt that there should be a message contained in the broadcasts and that they should not be driven to publish anything without any consideration. When the audience gets the wrong message, it harms them as well as their society.
Sociologists conducted a study on the hours children spent watching television compared with the number of hours they spent in school. The time a child spent in front of the TV screen is double the hours spent in school during his school years. Al-Juwair said he considered this to be a dangerous phenomenon that must be drawn to the attention of educators and media people to prevent worse disasters from happening. He emphasized the importance of instruction in schools to enlighten children and parents about the huge influence of TV on children and adults.
