September 5, 2002

The world can be scary sometimes, especially in young people's eyes. What's right; why should I do that? What's cool; how can I be like that? What's evil; why does it exist? Where am I supposed to go in life? Am I on the right course right now? Teenagers and young adults spend a lot of time wondering about such things, whether they merely turn them over in their subconscious or actively ponder them. And young people are alert: we notice things, and we file away what we see to help build answers to the questions we have about the world.

I noticed something in particular that made me wonder about the world while I was at the mall the other day: at a trendy new clothing store, where customers walked in step with the beat of the music that blasted from every corner, I saw a huge picture above a rack of back-to-school sweaters. The sepia-toned picture showed, naturally, some models. One was a guy who looked about seventeen or eighteen, bare chested; leaning against him was a girl who couldn't have been more than twelve wearing a baby tee with nothing but some skimpy panties.

Now there's an image for kids to notice. This in a store where even elementary school age girls were shopping with their mothers, trying to be just like the teenagers who made up most of the crowd at the store. If that image wasn't enough, maybe the Maxim magazine on display at the cashier's desk will make the impression that marketers seem to want implanted into their young, observant minds.

After returning home that evening, I saw a piece on 60 Minutes talking to some young American Muslims. Asked about dating, they just shook their heads and explained that in their circle, dating makes you the weird one. No, they don't mind it at all; actually, they like their lives. Asked whether they feel oppressed beneath their hijab veils, they said, no, don't you see? People don't look at us and see a body -- they speak to us and hear our minds. We aren't looked at as objects. We don't feel oppressed covering up; rather, we'd feel oppressed taking it off.

Hmm. This certainly got me thinking, as I have always tended to think of those girls as prisoners of an outdated system that treated them simply as sexual objects. But when I listen to the voices beneath those veils, and when I see pictures twelve-year-old girls wearing nothing on their bottoms except a pair of underwear hanging on to much-older bare-skinned guys, I can't help but come up with more questions about the world.

I wonder about that kid—or is he an adult? In any case, he's a young person—John Walker Lindh, the one they call the American Taliban. Do you remember what they said he was like? He was a suburban white kid from California who used to like listening to hip-hop and rap, until one day when he decided, as far as the media reports it, that he needed something else in life. He found that something else in Islam. Reports have said that he posted, for example, to on-line Islam discussion groups asking whether his music violated Islamic law.

Now, I have obviously never asked John Walker Lindh about this, but judging from the many reports such as that one, it sounds like he was looking for an answer to questions about some of the more extreme parts of our culture, from hateful music to scantily-clad celebrities. Inside this accused traitor must be a sensitive kid who saw the images that are becoming more and more a part of our culture—a popular culture that likes to shock and rely on extremes—and wondered what to do about them.

It should come as no surprise that someone has reacted by going to the opposite extreme. As the things American young people see become more and more explicit and shocking, the more some of them—probably the sensitive ones who have always questioned such images—are going to be driven in the opposite extreme as they try to run away, in search of answers they can't find here. Suddenly, they might think, those girls under veils of modesty are making a lot more sense.

It works in society like it works in physics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Extremes in one direction trigger in extremes the other. While America tries to figure out what's creating fundamentalists on the other side of the globe, perhaps we ought to be asking the same questions here, particularly of our youth. Because it's not just John Walker Lindh who's questioning our country from within. Fortunately, he's the only one we know of who has run off to join an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist camp. But there are many, many others who are wondering where to turn for answers in this age of extremes.

The answer to finding peace across and within cultures must lie in escaping from these ruling extremes. Extremes are not only what held the Afghan women oppressed under their burqhas: they are also, on the other side of the coin, what make our twelve-year-old girls want to be just like the woman they saw on the cover of Maxim magazine at the checkout counter while their moms paid for their new school clothes.