CNS News noted in September 2013 that “according to a Rand Corporation report on counterterrorism, prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2009, ‘Terrorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated, or afflicted by mental disease. Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds.’ One of the authors of the RAND report, Darcy Noricks, also found that according to a number of academic studies, ‘Terrorists turn out to be more rather than less educated than the general population.'”
Nonetheless, in Germany, the establishment “Islam experts” are still peddling the lies:
“Recruiting for Jihad,” from DW, March 8 (thanks to all who sent this in):
More and more young Muslims are being radicalized and coaxed into fighting in Syria by Salafists. Both teachers and parents have reasons for concern, because there is currently a lack of strategies to protect teenagers.
Women with children, as well as strict Muslims and young teenagers are in the audience at the unusual performance taking place this afternoon: under the close watch of his bodyguards, the Salafist preacher Pierre Vogel has stepped up onto a small stage in Bonn and is making a speech. His aim, he says, is to clear up misunderstandings about Islam. Passers-by stop to listen and get involved, surprised by the preacher’s attempts to convert the audience. The ‘highlight’ of the afternoon comes after about twenty minutes: it is a public conversion to Islam.
Since then, a week has passed and many teachers and parents are extremely worried: Salafists have been advertising their events on schoolyards – and some of their recruiting is successful. “It’s not only one school where Salafists are trying to recruit teenagers,” said Saloua Mohammed, a 32-year-old social worker who has been working in Bonn for many years. She has a good idea of what is going on in the Salafist scene: Young Muslims as well as pupils from educationally disadvantaged background have been a particular focus in her work. Her explanation for that focus is that she is “afraid that disadvantaged teenagers in particular will fall into radicalism.”
The idea that poverty causes terrorism has been debunked again and again. That’s why we see so many Haitian suicide bombers. In reality, study after study has shown that jihadists are generally more affluent and better educated than their peers. Nonetheless, the “experts” keep peddling the nonsense:
Islam expert Michael Kiefer believes that around 250 young German Muslims have joined the fighting in Syria
Islam experts Rauf Ceylan and Michael Kiefer have written about Salafism in their newest book. “What we have seen is that a whole group of very, very young men left Frankfurt last summer. All of them could be seen as coming from an educationally disadvantaged background,” said Michael Kiefer. He thinks that they probably went to join Islamist forces Syria [sic], where around 250 Jihadists from Germany have so far joined the fighting. According to Kiefer, “people whose lives have hardly been a walk in the park, who have experienced discrimination” are particularly susceptible to radicalization. And they are the perfect targets for Salafist recruiters.
That this is utter fantasy is proven by the fact that Muslim doctors plotted jihad terror in Glasgow, and a Muslim PhD student plotted jihad terror in Canada, and so many Muslim clerics the world over have been involved in jihad terror plots. These people were not by any stretch of the imagination “educationally disadvantaged,” and had not faced discrimination serious enough to prevent them from getting advanced degrees in their fields.
The pernicious aspect of these fantasies is that they reinforce the idea — also debunked, by recent hard experience in Iraq and Afghanistan — that if we give Muslims money, education, and opportunities, the jihad will cease.
…Michael Kiefer explains that it becomes obvious why the Salafists get through to teenagers when you analyze their message. “They tell these young men: ‘If you join us, you will be on the right side. If you act according to the will of God, if you go to Syria and fight for Him, then you are sure to get into paradise. All the others will go to hell.”
At least he has that right.