What is driving young Malay men to jihad?
Zurairi AR, The Malay Mail
Some of you might have seen the video on YouTube: around ten young men at the back of a lorry, dressed in camouflage uniforms with beards, assault rifles slung over their shoulders.
They were gawking at a rumbling tank, and were hyped that they were finally being shipped to the front-lines, like giddy kids on a school trip… glad to be out of class even if only for a day.
They also spoke Malay.
“All of us will be martyrs … Our friends are already heading to fight. They are not afraid and will not quiver,” said the one holding the camera, in northern Malaysian accent. His other friends cheered as he spoke, proclaiming themselves “Malayan heroes” and “handsome jihadists.”
Fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) celebrate on a vehicle in the city of Mosul. — Picture by AFP
Hauntingly, just the day before, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement that they were informed 15 Malaysians had been allegedly killed after participating in terrorist and jihadist activities in Syria.
Together with Shiah-majority Iraq, Syria is being torn apart by strife thanks to the occupation of Sunni militant group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and other similar militant groups carving out the territory.
Did the 15, if the news is indeed true, include the men seen in the video? We may never know.
Malays and religious terrorism are not exactly strange bedfellows.
Azahari Husin, the technical mastermind behind the 2002 Bali bombing which killed over 200 people, was a Malay.
So was Noordin Mohammad Top, the explosive expert believed to be responsible for at least four bombings in Indonesia, including the 2005 Bali bombings which killed over 20 people.
In the Global Peace Index 2014 released last week, increased terrorist activities caused Malaysia to drop four places in the ranking to 33rd spot from 29th last year and 20th in 2012.
We are also ostensibly supportive of Muslim separatist movements in southern Thailand and southern Philippines.
When I try to understand what could have driven these men to willingly volunteer their lives in the service of God, I am almost always reminded of the book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, co-written by the controversial evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa.
The book itself has since received bad reviews for its political incorrectness, and Kanazawa himself has been branded a racist for several of his ideas, some published in the book.
It was nonetheless an amusing read, and in it Kanazawa blamed the involvement of Muslims in suicide bombings to polygamy.
According to Kanazawa, in a Muslim society where polygamy is allowed, mathematically the men will have a lesser chance to mate.
Subsequently, young single Muslim men get involved with violent causes because they have little to lose and much to gain by doing so, compared to men who already have wives.
“For young, low-status Muslim men who are excluded from any mating opportunities because of polygyny among older, higher-status men, even such a vague promise in the afterlife begins to be appealing in light of their bleak reproductive prospect on earth,” wrote Kanazawa.
Admittedly, this was slightly prejudicial, as polygamists themselves are not that common among Muslim communities.
Despite that, we cannot discount the fact that martyrdom has been very romanticised, and this is particularly unique to Islam.
