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Empowering
Jihad: The Deadly Myth of a 'Root Cause'
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Reports that "Jihadi John," the British-accented narrator of
ISIS snuff videos, is Mohammed
Emwazi — an educated young man from a
middle-class background — ought to put the final stake in the pretense
that poverty and a lack of education and opportunity fuel Islamist hate.
This mistaken idea seems to be Obama administration policy.
Marie Harf, the US Department of State deputy spokesperson, recently said:
We cannot win this war by killing
[jihadists]. We need to go after the root causes that lead people to join
these groups, whether it is lack of opportunity for jobs. . . 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.
Of course, the news about "Jihadi John" is only the latest
evidence to the contrary. These terrorists are often well educated and even
wealthy. Osama bin Laden certainly was.
Many Islamist terrorists are physicians: Maj. Nidal Hasan (the Fort Hood
shooter) and al Qaeda's current leader, Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
"Lady Al Qaeda" Aafia Siddiqui (the terrorist whom ISIS wanted
to trade for James Foley, then for Steven Sotloff) was a scientist.
Terrorists are often well educated
and well-to-do.
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Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 crew, was an engineer and the son
of a solidly middle class family. Another engineer: Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab, the Underwear Bomber, who is the son of a
wealthy Nigerian businessman.
William
A. Wulf, former president of the National Academy of Engineering, has
noted, "In the ranks of the captured and confessed terrorists,
engineers and engineering students are significantly
overrepresented."
Dr. Marc Sageman,
a former CIA officer with a PhD from NYU as well as his MD, is the author of the
landmark 2003 study "Understanding Terror Networks."
This found that "two-thirds of al Qaeda's members had a university
education" and that "the vast
majority of terrorists came from solid, middle-class backgrounds; their
leadership hailed from the upper middle class. They came from caring,
intact families."
Blaming Islamist horrors on poverty only obscures the true problem:
Jihadists are driven by an ideology — one that yearns to
"restore" a mythical caliphate, one governed by the most austere
version of Sharia law.
In a 2002 working
paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Alan Kreuger and
Jitka Maleckova found that "poverty and low education don't cause
terrorism." Indeed,
[A]ny connection between poverty,
education and terrorism is indirect, complicated and probably quite weak. .
. Instead of viewing terrorism as a direct response to low market
opportunities or ignorance, we suggest it is more accurately viewed as a
response to political conditions and long-standing feelings (either
perceived or real) of indignity and frustration that have little to do with
economics.
Which brings us to the way that President Obama and others are part of
the problem. The Western liberal elites who reinforce the belief that
Muslims and Arabs have been persecuted, profiled, spied upon, discriminated
against, etc. are enhancing the ressentiment at the root of radical jihad.
This is just a new version of a long-standing problem on the left.
In "The
Tears of the White Man: Compassion as Contempt" and "The
Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism," Pascal Bruckner
observed that Western left-wingers turned their romance with totalitarian
communism into a dangerous flirtation with Third World struggles. Delusions
of solidarity with and compassion for "the wretched of the
earth," he notes, empowered anti-Western, anti-Semitic and
anti-colonial hatreds.
Safely situated leftists engaged in "pseudo-revolutionary
posturing" and "political playacting," which sacrificed
women, infidels, dissidents and apostates.
Western elites view themselves as anti-racists ushering in a better
world. Too bad they never think it through: Down with the Evil Western
Empire, up with the . . . Even More Evil Islamist Empire?
Phyllis Chesler is a CUNY emerita
professor of psychology and a fellow at the Middle East Forum. Her books
include "Women and Madness" and "The New Anti-Semitism."
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