The U.S. has spent and will continue to spend billions on the assumption that poverty causes jihad terrorism, but again and again over the years we have posted studies that show that jihadis are generally better educated and wealthier than their peers. Here is yet more evidence. The Economist, of course, doesn't dare consider how Islamic texts and teachings justify and encourage violence and terrorism, but this piece is nonetheless useful as yet another exploding of the poverty-causes-terrorism myth.
"Exploding misconceptions," from The Economist, December 16:
"EXTREMELY poor societies...provide optimal breeding grounds for disease, terrorism and conflict." So said Barack Obama, arguing in favour of more development aid to poor countries. Mr Obama is not alone in regarding economic development as a weapon against terrorism. Hillary Clinton, America's secretary of state, has called development "an integral part of America's national security policy". The idea that poverty could be associated with terrorism is not implausible. If acts of terror are committed by people with little to lose, then it is reasonable to expect them to be carried out disproportionately by poor, ill-educated people with dismal economic prospects.Some terrorists certainly fit this profile. Yet the ranks of high-profile terrorism suspects also boast plenty of middle-class, well-educated people. The would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shehzad, boasts an MBA and is the son of a senior Pakistani air-force officer. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who stands accused of lighting a makeshift bomb on a transatlantic flight in the so-called "underwear plot", had a degree from University College, London, and is the son of a rich Nigerian banker. The suspected suicide-bomber in this week's attacks in Stockholm had a degree from a British university. Are well-heeled terrorists representative or are they exceptions to the rule?
Social scientists have collected a large amount of data on the socioeconomic background of terrorists. According to a 2008 survey of such studies by Alan Krueger of Princeton University, they have found little evidence that the typical terrorist is unusually poor or badly schooled. Claude Berrebi of the RAND Corporation compared the characteristics of suicide-bombers recruited by Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the West Bank and Gaza with those of the general adult male Palestinian population. Nearly 60% of suicide-bombers had more than a high-school education, compared with less than 15% of the general population. They were less than half as likely to come from an impoverished family as an average adult man from the general population. Mr Krueger carried out a similar exercise in Lebanon by collecting biographical information for Hizbullah militants. They too proved to be better educated and less likely to be from poor families than the general population of the Shia-dominated southern areas of Lebanon from which most came.
There is also no evidence that sympathy for terrorism is greater among deprived people. In a series of surveys carried out as part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2004, adults in Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey were asked whether they believed that suicide-bombing aimed at American or other Western targets in Iraq was justified. Their answers could be broken down by the respondents' level of education. Although the proportions varied greatly between countries (with support lowest in Turkey), more schooling usually correlated with more agreement.
Some argue that poverty could be at the root of terror even if terrorists are not themselves poor. Anger about poverty in the countries they are from could cause richer citizens of poor countries to join terrorist organisations. This idea can be tested by looking across countries to see if there is a link between a country's GDP per head and its propensity to produce terrorists. Mr Krueger did precisely this by looking at data on 956 terrorist events between 1997 and 2003. He found that the poorest countries, those with low literacy, or those whose economies were relatively stagnant did not produce more terrorists. When the analysis was restricted to suicide-attacks, there was a statistically significant pattern--but in the opposite direction. Citizens of the poorest countries were the least likely to commit a suicide-attack. The nationalities of all foreign insurgents captured in Iraq between April and October 2005 also produced no evidence that poorer countries produced more insurgents. If anything, there was weak evidence the other way....
You think they're maybe getting it that it's the Qur'an, with it's Jihad doctrine, that causes Jihad Terrorism?
Could that simple understanding really happen in 2011? Oh, please!!! Because if it does, on a large scale, then we've won the war against Islam/Muslims. No more "misconceptions/misunderstanding" bovine fertilizer. Instead, they will be dealt with as followers' of an ideology that rewards mass-murder of people not like them. Due to their ideology, potential Terrorists all.
Interesting to note that the well educated terrorists cited as examples are failures. Thank God they failed! But they're still failures.
It's Islam, the religion of peace(TM), stupid Economist.
A "Social Scientific" analysis of "terrorist activities" or "modern militant traditions" in Islam needs begin with a study of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab (1740) who was motivated by incredible passion to uplift and purify Islam? He was incenced by the incursion of European cultural influence and the drift away from focused traditional beliefs (orthodoxy?). His vision would ultimately devastate Mecca, Medina, Najaf and Karbila. It is evidence of the power of a set of ideas to propel and motivate people.
Qutb also follows in this line and is the inspiration of the Muslim Brotherhood and quite likely Osama Bin Laden.
It is this ability to define and inspire a new vision of reality that has been the attraction to the militant causes? Thus it would seem that most of those rising to the flag of OBL have been the most self motivated and dedicated "true believers". Admittedly those drawn to this tradition have been more inspired by Muhammad's experience at the Battle of Badar than his Truce of Hudaybiyya. With no final spiritual authority in Islam (or Christianity as well) what can reverse such a militaristic trend?
As attractive as this intellectual line of thinking is, in Islam, or any other cause, what is the true percentage of "true believers"?
An excellent article. It not only shows that terrorists themselves are not poor or uneducated. It even answers a question I've wondered about for a long time:
And I just renewed my subscription. Sigh... Disappointed indeed.
This is old news, with a Harvard University study refuting terrorism and poverty years earlier.
It's still good that additional research verifies again what's already been known.
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/11.04/05-terror.html
" A John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation’s level of political freedom."
Now, let's get some research that shows profiling WORKS.
Common sense says it does.
Why would police stop blacks, Jews, Catholics, Asians, Buddhists, etc. when looking to thwart an attack from the KKK?
Profile Muslims or Die
" A John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation’s level of political freedom."
That's also interesting. Note that the Arabs in Judea & Samaria and in Gaza started committing numerous terrorist attacks inside Israel only after the PLO took over in 1993 following the Oslo accords and the beginning of the "peace" process. But I suspect it has more to do with the PA "education" system, media and "security" apparatuses, and the freedom of the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad to operate than with the lack of political freedom in the PLO dictatorship, though no doubt it is oppressive.
I gave up on The Economist years ago. They are a dhimmi-witted publication.
I agree with you about the Economist.. Always too late, well behind the curve.
Did they not do a study looking at the religious beliefs of the terrorists and countries and produce them?
I thought not. They are probably afraid they'd be the subject of a fatwa should they do such a study.
""EXTREMELY poor societies...provide optimal breeding grounds for disease, terrorism and conflict." So said Barack Obama, arguing in favour of more development aid to poor countries. "
Can he really be THAT stupid?
Around me here in Australia I see most of the apologists for jihadists and anti-Semitism coming from the ranks of academics, educators, left and mainstream media, especially the tax-payer funded Australian
Broadcasting Commission (ABC). They are the affluent city dwellers whose pin-ups would be people tending towards hypocrisy like Al-Gore. Party-politically, they vote for Labor (Aussie equivalent of your Democrats) and increasingly for the Greens - a party which will have the balance of power here come July - a very frightening prospect since the leaders and members of this party hide their militant anti-semitism and pro-islamism behind the "environment" and "safe the trees" romance; real pied pipers for naive young voters and menopausal females.
Socio-economically those that favor and propagate the islamist narrative here are among those with the greatest disposable income.
Rita
why such a sweeping expression of contempt for 'menopausal females'.
Since you have a female nom de plume, why do you write as if 'the change' deprived all women or most women of rationality and common sense?
How old are *you*?
I, nota bene, am *47*. In a few years I, too, will undergo that purely natural process that all human females, if they live long enough, must undergo. I do not expect that it will destroy my self-control, intelligence and reason; after all, I know a great many women who have passed through it quite successfully and do not seem to be in any way impaired as to their intellect and virtue.
There are other women posting at this forum, staunch anti-jihadists, who could also be described as 'menopausal females', being in their late forties / early fifties.
Do you really want to insult your fellow freedom-fighters by implying that 'menopausal females' are peculiarly gullible and stupid?
If you had read my entire post you would have seen that I included quite a large demographic in what you call my "sweeping expression of contempt". In an essay of 3000+ words I could have been more accurate and/or specific. In a short post, however, I did not feel that I had to labour the point and specify that "menopausal" implied also "peri" and "post". And, although you might prefer it, I dont use euphemisms where they are not needed.
While some of my best female friends are between 40 and 60, the simple truth is that here, many of the most strident and public apologists for anti-Semitism and Islamic Jihad have, of late, been women of that age group.
An interesting article, even though The Economist tip-toes ever so carefully around the subject of the ideational content of Islam. As a few readers here have remarked, The Economist was circumspect most likely because it didn’t want to risk having its offices bombed by outraged but peaceful Muslims. Contributing to the circumspection, I’m betting, was a reluctance to admit that perhaps its editorial policy has been flat wrong for a very long time. An encouraging sign. Perhaps someday it will openly repudiate AGW, central banking, and environmentalism.
It’s interesting also that it concludes that poverty isn’t the natural, irreducible cause of anyone becoming a suicide bomber or an active jihadist. It takes “community organizing” to get the poor to stream out into the streets to protest the West and their alleged “victimhood,” and it is organized by the educated Muslims. Else, where do all those preprinted protest signs and ready-to-burn Western flags come from? Someone is thinking ahead and probably maintains a warehouse of protest paraphernalia and plots protest strategy – aside from guiding the bomb-makers and developing recruitment arguments. These educated jihadists are in turn mentored and guided by the likes of CAIR, ISNA, MPAC, and their British and European counterpart organizations. The alleged “spontaneity” of these demonstrations and protests is about as genuine as mounting an opera at the Met.
And, on top of hiving to the irrational, malevolent creed that Islam is, such educated jihadists are also further lobotomized and burdened by the anti-reason, anti-individual, multiculturalist, moral equivalency, subjectivist atmosphere of most Western universities and secondary schools. In such a deuces-wild educational environment, they would naturally gravitate to an ethic that provides them a “moral” center of gravity, which happens to be the absolute touchstone of irrationality and hatred for the rational, Islam.
I’ve never been surprised by the phenomenon of leftists and tree-huggers allying themselves with Islamist supremacists. They are all manifestations of the same revolt against reason. Rita above makes a very good point. There is a commonality of interests in all those diverse groups, whether in Australia, Britain, Germany or the U.S.
"...The Economist was circumspect most likely because it didn’t want to risk having its offices bombed by outraged but peaceful Muslims..."
Hehehe :)
Families of jihad martyrs are well-revered and well-paid in the "Muslim world," but arrogant pride is not a vice restricted to the poor. And, the Muslim poor are exploited for the "cause" (global jihad) and used as an excuse to plunder non-Muslims and Western countries. Let the U.S. provide for the poor while Muslim-controlled oil revenues (and revenues from jihad-bought U.S. businesses and properties) are used to further the global jihad. When we have a Muslim Trojan horse in the White House, that is more easily accomplished.
Such a major transformation in thinking has historically come from one who demonstrates that they are a new Messenger of God? The power of such a change in thinking is demonstrated in the power of Christ's Message, particularly the parable of the "Good Samaritan", in ultimately transforming the hearts and minds of the Roman Empire. What else can achieve the results people are longing for, the statement that "the law of holy war has been blotted out from the Book of God"? Given people arise to make such a claim periodically it is not outside the realm of possibility?
Rita
I don't think it's hormonal.
I doubt that 'menopausal females' in the Western world in the 1930s, 1940s or 1950s or at earlier periods in Western history would have been enthusiasts for Islam.
I'd guess that it's the *age cohort* that the particular women you have encountered belong to (how many, precisely? names, please! and are you *sure* that they are a representative sample of all 'menopausal females'?) that is the decisive factor. The fact that they are a certain age today (which just *happens* to mean that they are also undergoing menopause) means that they were children and teenagers and university students at a particular time in our history, and therefore underwent a certain type of education and were immersed in a whole set of ideas. And it is those ideas that they soaked up in their youth and young adulthood, that are much more likely than their current hormonal state, to be the cause of the follies they are committing.
Someone who is 50 today would have been born in 1960, and therefore grew up during the 1960s and 1970s; and unless their parents and other significant adults were really remarkable, they would have soaked up the atmospherics of the age.