Affluent jihad update: yet another story refuting the common notion that jihadist fervor is born of poverty, and money will solve it. From the Times Online, with thanks to Scaramouche:
THE typical recruit to Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organisation, is upper middle class, has been educated in the West and is from a professional background, according to a new study. An analysis of 500 members of Osama Bin Laden's organisation has revealed that the majority had been in further education and were from relatively affluent families. The recruits also tended to come from the wealthier Arab countries. Dr Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist who conducted the study, said he assumed it would find that most Al-Qaeda recruits were poor and ill-educated. "The common stereotype is that terrorism is a product of poor, desperate, naive, single young men from Third World countries, vulnerable to brainwashing and recruitment into terror," he said.However, his study showed that three-quarters of the Al-Qaeda members were from upper middle-class homes and many were married with children; 60% were college educated, often in Europe or the United States.
Some, like Omar Sheikh, the British-born terrorist, were educated at fee-paying schools before heading for Afghanistan, Bosnia or Chechnya. Sheikh, who has been sentenced to death in Pakistan for his role in the murder of Daniel Pearl, the reporter on The Wall Street Journal, attended Aitchison College in Lahore, Pakistan, and the fee-paying Forest school in east London.
Sageman said most of the terrorists come from a small number of wealthy Arab countries, from immigrant communities in the West or from southeast Asia. Few are from poor Islamic countries such as Afghanistan.
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"...most of the terrorists come from a small number of wealthy Arab countries, from immigrant communities in the West or from southeast Asia. Few are from poor Islamic countries such as Afghanistan."
When you are poor, and illiterate, two things happen:
1) you have a hardscrabble existence, and have to spend your time earning your daily bread. The Arabs with time on their hands, because of the unearned OPEC wealth, are the most dangerous --- for it is they who can ponder Islam, can nurse their grievances. Why aren't we on top of the world? we have all this money -- shouldn't we use it to promote Islam to its rightful place which is everywhere "to dominate and not to be dominated"?
2) while calling yourself a Muslim, you may have remained largely ignorant of the specifics of Qur'an and Sunnah though, of course, you are aware that you must abhor Infidels and all their ways, because.....well, because they are Infidels, and you are a Muslim, and the world is divided into Two Teams, and you are on the Muslim Team, and must at the very least dislike those on the Infidel Team, and never be grateful to them no matter what they do.
But until the full force of modern technology explodes in his society -- he may remain, for a while, immune to the full virulence of Islam. A virus which can remain dormant when its carrier has to spend his waking minutes farming, or fighting with other tribes, or smuggling, or chewing khat, or dozing over a hubble-bubble pipe, or playing games in a coffeehouse, is less likely to be a threat.
That dormant virus may not remain permantly dormant, however, for Infidel inventions (audiocassettes, videocassettes, satellite television, the Internet) can be exploited to emphasise the teachings of Islam beyond what a tiny village mosque might offer.
And from now on, that djinn or genie can't be put back in any bottle, not even in a bottle labelled with the name of a nostrum offered by mountebanks who not only try to hornswoggle the crowds, but themselves apparently believe in their own diluted placebo:
"Step Right Up, Absolutely Free, For a Decade or Two Only -- Get Your Democracy Here -- Good For What Ails You. Cures Everything Under the Sun. Satisfaction Guaranteed, Or You Get to Keep Even More of Our Money. Don't Hesitate. Step Right Up."