Terror Trends Bulletin

Given that State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Monday night that the U.S. needs to focus on the “medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups,” such as “lack of opportunity for jobs” we feel compelled to comment. Harf went on to say:

“We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people.”

There is so much delusion in Harf’s statement that we could fill volumes analyzing her profound ignorance. The old yarn that poverty is the root cause of Jihad is a favorite of the Left in the West, and Secretary of State John Kerry in particular.

We were going to write up a post refuting the contention that the key to stopping Jihad is “jobs” but given that many others have covered this subject extensively, we figured that the best service we could provide would be to provide a digest of some of the best work on the subject over the years…

Kerry’s ‘Poor Jihadist’ Myth

It’s time to put to rest the canard that terrorism “grows out of a climate of poverty.”   

By Michelle Malkin

The chronic cluelessness of the root-cause apologists of jihad never ceases to amaze. Britain’s MI5 reported in 2011 that two-thirds of the U.K’s jihad suspects were from middle-class backgrounds, “showing there is no simplistic relationship between poverty and involvement in Islamist extremism.” Thorough reviews of the empirical evidence shows, as the RAND Corporation has reported, that “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.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/368706/kerrys-poor-jihadist-myth-michelle-malkin

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This just in: poverty doesn’t cause jihad terrorism

By Robert Spencer

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.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/01/this-just-in-poverty-doesnt-cause-jihad-terrorism

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Poverty-causes-jihad myth exposed by ‘Telegraph’

By Peter Cresswell of “Not PC”

http://www.pc.blogspot.com/2006/08/poverty-causes-jihad-myth-exposed-by.html

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John Kerry’s Jobs Program for Would-Be Jihadists

by Robert Spencer

This will be $200 million down the drain, for a lack of “economic opportunities for marginalized youth” doesn’t fuel Islamic jihad terrorism in the first place. Is it poverty and a lack of economic opportunities that leads the fantastically rich House of Saud to finance that jihad worldwide? If Kerry were correct and terrorism is simply a byproduct of poverty, why isn’t Haiti a terrorist state? Why isn’t the world plagued with Bolivian suicide bombers?

In reality, study after study has shown that jihadists are not poor and bereft of economic opportunities, but generally wealthier and better educated than their peers.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/john-kerrys-jobs-for-potential-jihadists-program/

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Islamic Terrorism Caused by Poverty?

By Fjordman

Serious studies have time and again documented that Islamic jihadist terrorists often have above average education and income. In 2011, a secret MI5 file was leaked which indicated that two-thirds of terror suspects in Britain are from middle-class backgrounds. Those who become suicide bombers are often highly educated. The security service stated that most Islamic terrorists and suicide bombers have a large number of friends.

Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist, had conducted an earlier analysis of 500 members of the Islamic terror organization al-Qaida which revealed that the majority of them were well-educated, upwardly mobile men in their twenties from a middle-class background. The recruits also tended to come from the wealthier Arab countries. The common stereotype of Islamic terrorism as a product of poor men is clearly wrong, Sageman indicated.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/fjordman/islamic-terrorism-caused-by-poverty/

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The poverty/terror myth

By Cait Murphy

The idea that poverty breeds terror appears obvious; how could it be otherwise? And people as different as the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Bush, Jacques Chirac and Pakistan’s leader, Pervez Musharraf, have also noted a link between poverty and terrorism.

In fact, there is now robust evidence that there is no such link.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/thepovertyterrormyth.html

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Poverty Creates Terrorists?

By Jamie Weinstein

“If there is a link between income level, education and participation in terrorist activities, it is either very weak or in the opposite direction of what one intuitively might have expected.”

http://docstalk.blogspot.com/2009/04/poverty-creates-terrorists.html

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