2-3-4 Challenge Book Discussions #1 discussion

Youssef Khan, the Taliban sympathizer, developed stricter interpretations of Islam while at university where he believed women appeared to be given equal opportunities to engineering programs. Do you think those attitudes were already there?

Yes, I think Youssef would have been exposed to those beliefs when he was younger. Seeing young women given opportunities that many males would think should be reserved for them would fan even a tiny spark into a flame, should he have been in a condition to favor that spark.

Yes I do think so.

They were already there, only exacerbated by his university experience. He never even considered whether those women were more qualified than the men who weren’t selected. And you can bet his hostility showed to his boss.

I think he had those male superiority beliefs before he got to University. I don't think he got them from his family. At University he found a group of disenfranchised males who held the same beliefs and they reinforced him.

I agree, Anita.

I agree too, Anita. He may have had the seed planted in him before University but it definitely grew while he was there.

In many cases it does start from childhood. He had the utmost respect for his mother but she didn't appear to be a career woman either. If he had a strong forward thinking woman as a mother, bucking the system, his attitude probably would have been completely different. Instead he got stuck in the old ways and gravitated towards young men who couldn't make it on their own merit at University and blamed it on women who outshone them, driving home his radical religious beliefs.