Radicalising Europe's young Muslims
By Peter Taylor
Reporter, BBC series Al Qaeda: Time To Talk?
Europe has become a hunting ground for al-Qaeda recruits. Largely disillusioned with US foreign policy, several young Muslims are making the journey east, some to become suicide bombers.
In his new television series, Peter Taylor talks to a woman in Paris whose life was turned upside-down when her boyfriend went to fight in Iraq.
Barbara had known Peter since their schooldays.
"He was the clown in the classroom, always making everyone laugh," she told me.
"He was very gentle and always had time for everybody. He was like a big brother and protected me at that time."
Peter was like any other French teenager.
He enjoyed sport, hanging out with his friends and listening to French and American rap music.
The fact that Peter was a North African Muslim and Barbara was a white French teenager, half Christian and half Jewish, was not an issue for either of them.
Buttes Chaumont, the area where both lived in Paris, was reasonably well integrated and not the powder keg that the notorious banlieues of Paris were later to become.
Pulling away
In time, Barbara and Peter started going out together.
Barbara always respected Peter's religion and it never got in the way of their relationship.
He used to pray at home, fasted at Ramadan, and behaved just like other Muslims.
Then gradually things began to change.
One day he told her he was going to catch up with his prayers at the mosque since he could not do them all while he was working.
The mosque in question was a makeshift adjunct to a hostel for North Africans in Buttes Chaumont.
The self-proclaimed imam there was a charismatic 22-year-old French Algerian called Farid Benyettou who, despite being barely out of his teens, exercised a powerful influence over many of the local young Muslims.
Three of his acolytes went to Iraq and died while carrying out suicide missions.
Changed personality
Barbara knew little about Benyettou except he was gradually taking Peter away from her.
Soon Peter swapped his cool street gear for Islamic dress.
Going to the cinema and restaurants, which they had always enjoyed doing, was out.
So was sex.
"What bothered him was that we had an intimate relationship out of wedlock," she said. "So I said if that's the only thing that's bothering you, we could stop."
But for Peter that was not enough.
Soon, touching each other, kissing and holding hands was ruled out.
Again, Barbara did not fight it as she loved him.
They spent hours talking on the phone until Peter told her that his "professor" had told him it was forbidden if Peter was alone.
They then carried on their relationship over the internet, until that too was vetoed.
Peter was told he could never be alone with Barbara.
"First we sat at the table next to each other, then he moved to the sofa, then a bit further away. He moved away from me progressively."
Barbara even offered to convert to Islam but Peter rejected the offer.
Abu Ghraib
In May 2004, Peter said he was going to Syria for a few months to have a holiday, learn Arabic and study Islam in greater depth.
His mother, to whom he was close, gave the trip her blessing on condition he kept in regular touch.
At first he was true to his word via an internet cafe in Damascus, until he said he was going to a village with no internet access.
There was silence for several months.
One day in November, the phone rang.
It was Peter, although he never said where he was calling from.
When he hung up, Barbara checked the country code on the internet and discovered he was in Iraq.
That was the last Barbara heard until the Ministry of Foreign Affairs telephoned and said they had been informed by the US authorities that Peter had been arrested on 2 December, 2004, in Falluja - around the time of the American onslaught.
The caller told Barbara that Peter had no ID. At first he had been held in a local detention camp and then transferred to Abu Ghraib prison in August 2005.
Last July, she learned that Peter had been sentenced by an Iraqi court to 15 years in gaol.
I asked how she felt about those who had led Peter down the road to Jihad.
"I'm furious. They took advantage of him. His youth was wasted, his life was wasted and my life and his mum's life were wasted.
"When he comes back, I don't know if I'll hug him or hit him." Barbara will have a long wait.
to somebody raised in christian and western orientation and moral system, islamism and particularly the jihadist's logic is utterly appalling if not incomprehensible. this story is only a tiny glimpse of the horror we face today in consequence to the rift between two cultures and their continued and progressing inability to reconcile each other.
between western state-entities and islamist state-networks, where do we ordinary citizens of the world stand? are we just going to sit down and watch the world get polarized into either camps and wait until the so-called 'war of cilivizations' explodes right before our doorsteps?... or is there really anything we can do at all?!
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