Terrorism and Poverty: Why Isn't There a Link?

The failed bombings in England highlighted something that terrorism experts have said for years, but the general public and the media seem to have missed: ordinary Muslims don't run around committing terrorist acts. It's primarily upper middle class, well-educated young Muslim men who are the ones killing people in the name of Allah.

This is surprising to many people. Media pundits and self-proclaimed experts keep blaming terrorism on the grinding poverty that exists throughout much of the Muslim world, without looking at the statistics; media consumers assume these people know what they're talking about and believe that poverty causes terrorism.

This is completely false, even in the Palestinian-Israel conflict. Despite attempts by Muslim leaders like Moamar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, both of whom tried financial rewards to encourage poor Muslims to volunteer as suicide bombers, most terrorists have been at least middle class.

The really bad part? We don't understand why. Some of the theories put forth by terrorism experts include:

1. If you're poor, you're too busy trying to survive to fool around with suicide bombing.

2. Wealthy, educated youth are more likely to be influenced by the educated imams who use rhetoric to change minds.

3. The poor are more likely to be collateral victims of terrorism, and are therefore more familiar with its terrible results. The poor are also often used as shields by terrorists, resulting in a certain hostility toward those who use terrorist methods.

4. The wealthy are more likely to benefit or suffer from a change in the power structure, therefore are more likely to work to encourage or discourage that change through terrorism.

5. Wealthier youth can afford to visit terrorism indoctrination centers, which are rarely found in poor Muslim villages. (one problem with this: recently, wealthier imams have been sending poorer, but promising, youth to indoctrination centers at their own expense.)

6. A wealthy child is more likely to go to a costly madrassas, and a poor child is more likely to work on his parents' farm and visit the village imam. Imams to the wealthy are much more likely to have been educated in the most current Islamic beliefs - which include some radically conservative ideas.

7. The imams of the wealthy are more likely to be involved in philosophy and theology; the imams of the poor are more likely to be involved in serving their flock and keeping them alive and healthy.

We can find a pretty good parallel to what's going on here in America's own history. I'm not talking about the idiots who were targeting abortion clinics; rather, I'm talking about a much more widespread movement that indoctrinated the children of the wealthy.

If you're too young to remember them, look up organizations like the Weather Underground, the AIM, and the original Black Panthers. The people running these groups were college-educated young people who had been radicalized. They were made up of two types: young radicalized members of historically socially-oppressed minority groups, or upper-middle-class students and young adults, mostly of WASP origin. Their tactics included terrorism and bombings. Their teachings were indoctrinatory, and sometimes outright brainwashing. And they had a tendency to believe that those they targeted - deserved everything they got because they were thinking the wrong way.

Seriously. Look it up.