WITH his gelled hair, taste for coffee and keen interest in women, Muhammad Fawzy could be a university student anywhere. At the age of 21, and studying engineering at Cairo University, he should be looking to a bright future; after all, the world is crying out for technically minded graduates. But Mr Fawzy feels the outlook is bleak. He worries that no job he finds after graduation will pay enough to cover his costs, let alone allow him to support his widowed mother. Without a good salary, Mr Fawzy cannot buy a flat; without his own home he cannot marry; and without marriage, he cannot have sex.

“I cannot have a girlfriend for religious reasons, and because I wouldn’t like that for my sister,” explains Mr Fawzy. “I was in relationships [with women] previously but it never got physical. I never held their hands or kissed them.” He often talks to women, but on Facebook: it affords privacy and safe distance. As with much else, his predicament about women is more complex than just the pull of tradition.

His views of Islam are just as tangled. He regards himself as more devout than his parents, but does not pray regularly; he prefers the company of friends to listening to preachers, yet craves a purer version of Islam. Egyptian tradition, he thinks, is tainted by a culture of bribe-paying, nepotism and other behaviour banned by religion. “We need to enforce morals that the West has taken from us.” The spread of atheism, he thinks, is a menace.

Mr Fawzy is hardly unique. Arab countries are full of young people frustrated by a lack of jobs; questioning traditional authority; bittersweet about the West, its liberties and its power; and plugged-in enough to know that their lot is worse than that of many of their peers around the world. “Young people just want to live and not make trouble, but they are unable to break into the political, social, economic systems of their countries,” says Rami Khouri of the American University of Beirut. “They have to create parallel universes for themselves because they can’t do anything normal in normal settings.”

Many factors led to the Arab uprisings of 2011, which overthrew old rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and rattled many other regimes. But there is little doubt that the Arab world’s large youth bulge, and its rulers’ failure to harness it for economic development, was central.

Now that the uprisings have either been beaten down or degenerated into murderous civil war (except in Tunisia), the lot of young Arabs is even worse: they face more political repression and worse job prospects. Economic growth in the region has lagged behind other middle-income countries (see chart 1). The fall in the oil price is now hurting some countries even more, turmoil has spooked investors and terrorism has wrecked tourism. The self-defeating policies of governments clinging to power, such as in Egypt (see article), cause yet more harm.

Elsewhere, a large youthful population would be regarded as an economic blessing. But in the Arab world the young are treated, for the most part, as a curse, to be suppressed. These days life for young Arabs is often a miserable choice between a struggle against poverty at home, emigration or, in extreme cases, jihad. Indeed, in places such as Syria, the best-paid jobs involve picking up a gun. Young people in the Arab world, as elsewhere, come in endless varieties. But taken as a whole, several trends stand out. First is a demographic explosion. The Arab world is growing fast. The region’s population doubled in the three decades after 1980, to 357m in 2010. It is expected to add another 110m people by 2025—an average annual growth rate of 1.8%, compared with 1% globally. The demographic stress is compounded by rapid urbanisation. In 2010 the proportion of Arabs who are aged 15-24 peaked at 20% of the total population. But the absolute number of young will keep growing, from 46m in 2010 to 58m in 2025. A second striking aspect is the scale of youth unemployment (see chart 2). In 2010, on the eve of the Arab uprisings, total and youth unemployment rates in the Arab world were already the highest of any region, at 10% and 27% respectively. Since then these figures have risen further, to nearly 12% and 30%.

Amazingly, in some Arab countries, the more time you spend in school, the less chance you have of finding a job. In Egypt 34% of university graduates were unemployed in 2014, compared with 2% of those with less than a primary education (see chart 3 ). The inequality between the sexes also stands out: 68% of women aged 15-24 were jobless in Egypt compared with 33% of men.

A third trend is the high level of migration, especially to oil-rich Gulf states. Syria, the Palestinian territories and Egypt were among the 20 countries worldwide with the highest number of people living abroad in 2015, in part because of a surging volume of refugees. Little wonder, then, that young Arabs are unhappier than their elders and than their peers in countries at similar stages of development, according to Ishac Diwan of Harvard University. A survey by the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank in Washington, DC, likewise found that countries in the Middle East were an exception to its finding that people in poorer countries are generally more optimistic about their future than those in rich countries. Only 35% of those polled in the Middle East thought their children would be better off financially than them, compared with 51% in Africa and 58% in Asia.

Degrees of uncertainty

Young Arabs are most worried about their standard of living. All too often taxi drivers reveal that they possess engineering degrees; sometimes driving is a second job taken to make ends meet after a day at work elsewhere. Arab governments have long tried to absorb new workers by expanding the civil service; better to have the young do nothing on the public payroll than to go out on the streets and cause trouble. In the heyday of Arab nationalism under Gamal Abdel Nasser, who overthrew Egypt’s monarchy in 1952, every graduate was guaranteed a government job.

But neither he nor his successors knew how to make good use of the talents of a soaring number of graduates (their ranks more than tripled between 1970 and 1980). Over time they were made to wait ever longer, sometimes for up to a decade, for a job. With the balance-of-payments crisis of the 1990s, the public sector was slimmed down and new government jobs all but disappeared.

Cheap oil is forcing Gulf monarchs, who have hitherto bought their people’s acquiescence with cushy jobs and handouts, to trim the public payroll. And since Gulf monarchies cannot find enough jobs for their own people, the safety valve of emigration to work in the Gulf has closed to other Arabs. The largest Gulf state, Saudi Arabia, needs to create about 226,000 new jobs every year, according to Jadwa Investments, a Saudi research firm. But in 2015 employment rose only by 49,000.

Gulf states have set quotas for the employment of nationals, but many companies complain that local graduates lack the skills and work ethic required. “I know of firms that pay Saudis to satisfy the law, but tell them to stay at home,” says one businessman. Under its 30-year-old deputy crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia is planning an ambitious transformation, led by the private sector, to diversify away from oil. But it will be a tall order to train Saudi Arabia’s pampered young men to work for a living.

In several parts of the region, Arabs retain a strong sense of entitlement, says Nader Kabbani of Silatech, a Qatari body that connects young Arabs to jobs. Many would rather continue to live with their family than take a job they deem beneath their dignity. At the same time, young people’s aspirations are growing. They have higher rates of literacy than in the past and more access to information about the wider world. They are voracious users of mobile phones, the internet and social media. They get more of their news online, which is harder for governments to censor than TV and newspapers, according to the Arab Youth Survey, a poll conducted in 2016 of 3,500 young people in 16 countries by Asda’a Burson-Marsteller, a PR firm.

All this has started to chip away at a culture of obedience to family, religious leaders and governments. The tendency is perhaps most apparent in tension over the status of women who, for all their traditional subordination and the trend towards covering their heads in public, now make up the majority of university graduates in the Arab world.

For some, marriage is an escape from family strictures. But others choose not to get hitched. The Population Reference Bureau, a research body in Washington, DC, notes the growing number of Arab women who are not married by the time they are 39 years old. Khloud Faloudah, a 35-year-old unmarried Saudi woman who works in Riyadh in the IT department of Al Jomaih, which bottles Pepsi, says that a generation ago her ambition would have been to have a family, but “my main aim has been to get a management role at work.”

All too often, though, the cause of late marriage is not ambition but poverty. Men are expected to buy a home and furnish it before they can get hitched. The groom is required to provide a dowry. In Gaza City the ruling Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, decks the seaside with bunting to hold mass weddings for followers unable to afford their own ceremonies. Ismail Haniyeh, the enclave’s acting prime minister, sponsors a dating agency.

Independence for women, let alone sex outside marriage, is still strongly frowned upon. In Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to travel abroad without express permission from a male guardian (there is a mobile-phone app for the purpose). But even in countries, such as Egypt, where the law is supposedly more egalitarian social mores remain strict.

Riham, a 23-year-old freelance graphic designer from Tanta, a town north of Cairo, recounts how she moved to Egypt’s capital to study fine arts and escape male relatives who banned her from wearing skirts, staying out late and travelling alone. “Even there I was not allowed to return to the dorms after 9pm, while my male friends were allowed back at 11pm,” she says.

Islam is losing its stabilising role, too. Overall the Arab world is far more pious than countries at a similar stage of development, according to the World Values Survey, a research project based in Vienna. But young Arabs are exposed to a proliferation of Islamic beliefs on satellite-TV channels and the internet. Religious leaders once exercised a degree of authority over their flocks. But now young Arabs often cite Islamic texts when challenging their elders.

Some young Arabs are less devout than their parents; but others have become more so. Abdulaziz al-Ghanam, a Saudi studying in America, says that back home few people he knows still go to mosque for the five daily prayers even though all shops and restaurants are forced by law to shut during them. In Egypt, though, Ayman Nabil, a 29-year-old accountant, declares: “I am more conservative than my father because he is conservative based on traditions he inherited; but I am conservative based on things I read about.”

That said, young Arabs have become more sceptical about religion in public life. Enthusiasm for religious parties has plummeted since the Arab spring. The Muslim Brotherhood, which took power in Egypt after the ousting of Hosni Mubarak, was deemed dismal. (The backlash against the Brotherhood was exploited by the army to depose it in 2013.) Half of those responding to the Arab Youth Survey saw the Shia-Sunni divide as a source of conflict.

Mr Diwan notes that, on the whole, young Arabs are markedly more patriarchal and less tolerant towards people of different cultures or religion than young people in other middle-income countries. Worryingly, better education does not breed greater openness, as it usually does elsewhere. Mr Diwan thinks it is because schooling is used by governments and religious authorities as a form of indoctrination. Rather than teach critical thinking, textbooks perpetuate ideas of obedience (the region’s repressive governments like it that way) and, often, misunderstanding or even hatred of other faiths and sects. Textbooks in Saudi Arabia list Christmas among banned holidays.

A particular worry, held by young people themselves, is the prospect that disenchanted young Arabs will be pushed into the arms of jihadists. Much of the media coverage of Islamic State (IS) focuses on the radical ideology and extreme brutality of the group. But the Arab Youth Survey found that young people thought the lack of jobs and opportunities was the main reason why people joined up. IS offers salaries, an arranged marriage (sometimes to a slave-woman) and the opportunity to run amok and feel self-righteous about it.

It is difficult to gauge what, precisely, drives young people to violence. Most young Arabs shun IS. “Joining IS is the same as turning atheist or converting to Christianity,” says Mr Nabil in Cairo. Recruits to IS come from both middle-class and poor backgrounds, educated and uneducated. But the vast majority of those who join are young men.

The Arab Youth Survey found that 78% of young people said they would never support the group. Yet 13% of them said they might, if it were less violent—a number that rose to 19% in the Gulf countries, which adhere to a more austere form of Islam. That is a minority, but not a small one. It suggests that IS and whichever terrorist group comes next can draw on a large pool of potential recruits and sympathisers.

Young and dangerous

Arab governments may pay lip service to the concerns of young people—the United Arab Emirates this year appointed a 22-year-old woman as minister of youth (along with new ministers for tolerance and happiness) but most rulers view young people as a danger.

Gerontocrats and autocrats still hold power, and are giving little say to the next generation. The near-absent president in Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, is 79; the one in Sudan, Omar Bashir, is 72. In Egypt young people of all hues—Islamist, liberal and professional—are being locked up by the president, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi (61), with a zeal far outstripping that of the fallen Hosni Mubarak. Political parties attract few young members since they have little power. Parliament in Syria is a figleaf for dictatorship; Lebanese parties are sectarian; those of the Gulf are consultative only. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood, another party led by old men, has been banned.

Indeed, the wars and turmoil since the Arab spring have suppressed the hunger for democracy. In Tunisia, the supposed success story of the revolts, the hankering for stability overtook a want for democracy in mid-2012, according to Pew. Some 53% of respondents to the Arab Youth Survey said they put stability first.