Turn to Religion Split Suspects' Home.
After last week's Boston Marathon bombings, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva phoned her son Tamerlan in Massachusetts to make sure he was safe.
"Mama, why are you worrying?" Tamerlan replied from Boston, laughing. . .
A close examination of the Tsarnaev family shows that, over the past five years or so, the personal lives of the family members slipped into turmoil, according to interviews with the parents, relatives and friends. The upheaval in the household was driven, at least in part, by a growing interest in religion by both Tamerlan and his mother. . .
The challenges in the U.S. were hard on the family, which comes from a centuries-old, patriarchal Caucasian tradition of mountain warriors that has often been at odds with Slavic Russian society. "It was hard because you realize that you used to be somebody there, but here, you're a nobody," said Maret Tsarnaeva, the brothers' aunt. "As Chechens, we always had to work hard to prove ourselves, no matter where we were."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324235304578437131250259170.html?mod=e2tw