Why Young Men

WHY YOUNG MEN is a book of ideas that offers a counterintuitive, often provocative argument for a sea change in the way we look at young men, and for how they see themselves. The day after the 2015 Paris terror attacks, Jamil Jivani opened the newspaper to find that the men responsible were familiar to him. He didn't know them, but the communities they grew up in and the challenges they faced mirrored his own life. So why are young men vulnerable to falling outside the reach of...
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WHY YOUNG MEN is a book of ideas that offers a counterintuitive, often provocative argument for a sea change in the way we look at young men, and for how they see themselves. The day after the 2015 Paris terror attacks, Jamil Jivani opened the newspaper to find that the men responsible were familiar to him. He didn't know them, but the communities they grew up in and the challenges they faced mirrored his own life. So why are young men vulnerable to falling outside the reach of mainstream morals? Jivani has discovered remarkable similarities between young men who turn to violence in serach of belonging and brotherhood. Men who join violent groups-gangs, terror cells, extremist networks-as well as isolated and self-destructive young men coping with addiction or contemplating suicide. Jivani's activism is rooted in his own journey from teenager considering a life of crime to lawyer and powerful speaker for the disenfranchised. Having grown up with a largely absent father in a mostly immigrant neighbourhood, he knows what it is to watch a man's future influenced by gangster culture or radical ideologies associated with Islam. One thing is certain: violent ideologies thrive when enough people believe that differences of race, religion, class or neighbourhood are irreconcilable.