Expensive
Bride Price May Offer Another Lure to Jihad
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
August 25, 2017
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 Some men join dating
sites when looking for a wife.
Some other men join terror groups.
In many North African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries, bride price –
a kind of reverse dowry in which men must pay to acquire a bride from her
family, is skyrocketing. And that may be motivating some men to join
terrorist organizations in exchange for the high fees that will make
marriage possible.
This was the finding of groundbreaking research published this month in MIT's International
Security journal by Valerie Hudson, George H.W. Bush Chair in the Bush
School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, and
Yale University political science doctoral candidate Hilary Matfess.
According to a statement from Texas A&M, "the inability to
'afford' a wife in a society where marriage is the maker of full adult
manhood can be a significant factor in the decision to join in rebellion or
terrorism."
Hudson and Matfess break a lot of new ground. But because little other
research is being done, it is unclear how often bride price is a factor for
young men lured into jihad. Consequently, effective counter strategies are
also unclear.
Bride price, also known as "bridewealth," is a form of
reimbursement to the bride's family for the cost of raising her. And such
prices are rising exorbitantly, Hudson wrote in a New York Times op-ed last December. Where a bride in the South Sudan
cost 12 cows 10 years ago, "the going rate in recent years has been
over 50 cows, 50 goats, and $12,000."
Hudson and Matfess estimate that more than 75 percent of the world's
population lives in areas where bride price is practiced, including Thailand,
China, Afghanistan, and the sub-Sahara – not all of them Islamic countries.
And as the price of brides increases, men in those societies are placed
under growing pressure.
Though it is only by taking a wife that they gain respect as "real
men" in the community, most cannot afford the price of marriage.
Consequently, for many of them, joining terror and rebel groups can be less
a matter of religious or political belief than it is about the money they
can earn, or promises of a bride-to-be given as a reward for service. In one case cited by the study's authors, for instance,
the sole surviving terrorist of the 2008 Mumbai attacks told his
interviewers it was not jihadism that led him to join Lashkar e-Taiba.
Rather, he said, "My father wanted me to join so my brothers could get
married."
He was hardly alone. "Virtually all societies that produce
terrorists are societies that pay bride price," according to Hudson –
including immigrant communities.
And yet, she warned in a recent interview with Public Radio International, "no one is looking at
this stuff." (Both Hudson and Matfess declined to be interviewed for
this article.)
We should be. As the study's authors note, "In the 1970s, Black
September – a terrorist offshoot of the Palestine Liberation Organization,
offered its members brides, cash, apartments in Beirut, and even a baby
bonus of $5000 if they had a baby within a year of marriage." These
days, Hamas suicide bombers know that "when a terrorist blows himself up, the
financial payoff can buy enough brides for his brothers to make his
sacrifice worthwhile."
ISIS employs slightly different strategies: recruiters often promise
brides to foreign fighters who join the group, along with honeymoon
bonuses. Citing earlier research by Ariel Ahram, Hudson and Matfess note
that foreign fighters have on occasion paid $10,000 dowries to brides'
families, "suggesting that the group was attracting foreign fighters
by promising resources (and available women) to marry."
And, observe Hudson and Matfess, "Those familiar with Boko Haram's
practices state that women are given to fighters to reward them for their
service and to cultivate loyalty.... The women are often groomed before
becoming wives, a process that can involve days of 'Quranic education,' in
which they are subjected to lectures on Boko Haram's ideology." That
learning, of course, is then transmitted to their sons and daughters, who
are therefore raised with terrorist ideology as the norm.
Yet the cultures in which bride price exists have largely resisted
change. Reporters for Rwanda's New
Times interviewed men and women from three generations about the
practice. All agreed that it was a valuable addition to their culture, even
as some admitted that it can lead to domestic abuse, particularly among men
who view their wives as property they have paid for and therefore own. Some
even describe bride price as a gift of gratitude, a "token of
appreciation to the bride's parents," as one man expressed it. "A
girl whose bride price has been paid commands respect in society, and her
parents revel in pride because of it," Margaret Mukarugamba, an
elderly woman in Eastern Province, told New Times. "With the
payment of bride price, the man shows that he is really into having the
girl as his wife." And former beauty queen Fiona Ntaringwa went so far
as to call it "necessary."
"It shows the value a man is giving to a woman and his appreciation
to her parents for grooming her," she said. "In my opinion, it's
one way of being grateful."
Now many governments are beginning to intervene, Hudson and Matfess
report, though not always for reasons relating to violence. Governments in
rural Afghanistan have worked to reduce bride price by as much as 40
percent. In Saudi Arabia, dowries (which operate essentially as bride price
does) have been capped at 50,000 riyals – or just over
$13,000. Dowries had risen to as high as $1 million, creating concern about
a spinster glut.
On the other hand, those cultures where bride price continues also
continue to experience violence against, and oppression of women –
tendencies that, in turn, tend to advance militarism and violence. As Valerie
Hudson has written elsewhere, "the larger the gender gap
between the treatment of men and women in a society, the more likely a
country is to be involved in intra- and interstate conflict, to be the
first to resort to force in such conflicts, and to resort to higher levels
of violence."
The correlation between cultural trends of bride price and the rise of
terrorist groups makes this particularly clear. In the battle against
Islamist terror, pressuring more governments to end the practice – along
with honor killings, child marriage, and other misogynistic customs – may
be crucial to our victory.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates
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