Why Young Men
The Dangerous Allure of Violent Movements and What We Can Do About It
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Across the world, we see an explosion of unpredictable violence committed by alienated young men.
Jamil Jivani recounts his experiences working as a youth activist throughout North America and the Middle East, drawing striking parallels between ISIS recruits, gangbangers, and Neo-Nazis in the West.
Having narrowly escaped a descent into crime and gang violence in his native Toronto, Jivani has devoted his life to helping other at-risk youths avoid this fate in cities across North America. After the Paris terrorist attacks of 2016, he traveled to Europe and the Middle East to assist Muslim community outreach groups focused on deterring ISIS recruitment.
Why Young Men is the story of Jivani’s education as an activist on the front lines of one of today’s most dangerous and intractable problems: the explosion of violence among angry young men throughout the world. Jivani relates his personal story and describes his entrance into the community outreach movement, his work with disenfranchised people of color in North America and at-risk youth in the Middle East and Africa, and his experiences with the white working class. The reader learns along with him as he profiles a diverse array of young men and interviews those who are trying to help them, drawing parallels between these groups, refuting the popular belief that they are radically different from each other, and offering concrete steps toward countering this global trend.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this passionate account, lawyer and activist Jivani lays out a vision for keeping young black and Muslim men from becoming radicalized by violent movements such as the Nation of Islam, ISIS, and the alt-right. For young men's vulnerability to radicalization, Jivani blames a multigenerational cycle of fatherlessness, the sense of belonging offered by conflict-centered organizations that "focus on fear and vengeance," the daily realities of systemic racism, and distrust of the police. He sees the antidote in local community groups aligned with social ideals, sharing lessons he learned while working with Newark's Fathers Now, Brussels youth organizations JES and Association de Jeunes Morocains, and Ohio's Community Action Agencies. He also recounts his own success story of growing up in a troubled home in an immigrant neighborhood in Ontario and experimenting with hip-hop culture and the Nation of Islam spin-off the Five Percenters, before eventually finding the "capacity to aspire" and becoming a Yale-educated lawyer. He argues for building allyship with the police, criticizes Black Lives Matter for ideological railroading, and sympathizes with those who feel implicated in the "whitelash" of anti-Trump narratives. Younger and more left-leaning readers won't find Jivani's outlook palatable, but it will resonate for readers with more traditional, centrist views.