As his dreams crashed into Egypt’s social and political turmoil, Islam Yaken left his friends, family and a life of guilty pleasures for religious extremism, jihad and the Islamic State.
CAIRO — He winced at the mere mention of his son’s name, visibly overcome by an unceasing thought that he struggled to articulate. He looked down to hide the tears in his eyes.
“You have to understand, I am in pain,” said Yaken Aly, choking on the words: “My son is gone.”
Mr. Aly raised his son, Islam Yaken, in Heliopolis, a middle-class Cairo neighborhood with tended gardens and trendy coffee shops, and sent him to a private school, where he studied in French. As a young man, Mr. Yaken wanted to be a fitness instructor. He trained relentlessly, hoping that his effort would bring him success, girlfriends and wealth. But his goals never materialized. He left that life and found religion, extremism and, ultimately, his way into a photograph where he knelt beside a decapitated corpse on the killing fields of Syria, smiling.
“Surely, the holiday won’t be complete without a picture with one of the dogs’ corpses,” Mr. Yaken, now 22 and fighting for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, wrote in a Twitter post in July, during Ramadan.
The West is struggling to confront the rise of Islamic extremism and the brutality committed in the name of religion. But it is not alone in trying to understand how this has happened — why young men raised in homes that would never condone violence, let alone coldblooded murder, are joining the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. It is a phenomenon that is as much a threat to Muslim nations as to the West, if not more so, as thousands of young men volunteer as foot soldiers, ready to kill and willing to die.
“I am living,” Mr. Aly said, “just to give his mother the strength to go on.”
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“People will never know what they don’t taste or experience,” said Mr. el-Ghandour, Mr. Yaken’s friend. They met on their first day at Ain Shams University in Cairo and grew increasingly close. Mr. el-Ghandour eventually followed Mr. Yaken to Syria, saying they “ate, lived and worked” as part of the same Islamic State unit.
Mr. el-Ghandour, 24, returned to Egypt for reasons he would not disclose and has since come under police surveillance. He follows Mr. Yaken’s updates on his Twitter account, which recently featured as its cover photo a picture of the Jordanian pilot whom Islamic State militants set ablaze last month.
“Islam found what he was looking for,” Mr. el-Ghandour said wistfully. “A life free of the sins he renounced, a greater cause, an Islamic state.”
Mr. Yaken also found an opportunity to distinguish himself as a fitness instructor — for militants.
Wearing a snug black Islamic State T-shirt, camouflage pants and a pair of cutoff gloves, he posted his latest public workout video last summer, demonstrating how to stay fit for battle.
“This video is dedicated to the mujahedeen in Syria, and to others who plan on coming here,” Mr. Yaken said, adding that he had been deployed in a region with no “weights or gyms.”
He lifted a log, placed it over his shoulders and counted eight squats.
