They are taught, in their ubiquitous madrassas, that it's 72 virgins. According to Islamic scholars, (and/or authorities on the Koran), the virgin notion derives from a faulty interpretation (or copy/transcript) of the Koran, quite a long time ago. The original (it is claimed) says 72 raisins, although I've never heard just what's so special about white raisins.........and for sure, the radical recruiters of suicide bomb volunteers realized that fact also. As you rightly point out, no young male is going to blow himself up for raisins!
Therefore, if the correct "word of Allah" was "raisins," then the error in transcribing that changed the passage to "virgins" was in the interests of terror recruiters. So they left it that way. Makes sense........but only from the perspective of people with a mentality similar to those who believe in tooth fairies and Santa Claus.
Soak em in gin and they cure arthritis according to Tuh-ray-zuh Heinz (Kerry)! ;o)
Hmm, wasn't it Mrs. Kerry-Heinz who just LOVED those white raisins????
It wasn't a transcription error. The section of the Koran in question is very obscure in Arabic, and makes much better sense if read as East Syriac. It apparently is an East Syriac Christian text that got stuck in when the Koran was being 'dictated by the Archangel Gabriel'.
In East Syriac 'hur' is white raisin. It isn't anything in Arabic, and got interpreted by the Muslims (maybe even Mohammed himself) as the magically renewing 'chastely amorous' 'virgins'.
(Incidentally, my Metropolitan is an native speaker of Arabic, and says the Koran is lousy Arabic, not poetic, awkward, hardly the qualities you'd expect from an angelically dictated divinely authored work.)