FIVE MYTHS ABOUT JIHADI RADICALIZATION

 

Five Myths about Jihadi Radicalization

“You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth,” Winston Churchill famously stated.  The Islamist tiger in the United States is ready to pounce, and until Americans understand this enemy, we cannot even begin to fight back.  Dispelling myths about jihadist radicalization is only the beginning.

Myth #1: Poor, uneducated, downtrodden youths are more likely to become jihadists.

Many school administrators, local politicians, and community members believe that young adults have a greater chance of becoming jihadists if they hail from an underprivileged, deprived neighborhood.  Their solution is to fundraise for after-school programs and free lunches, believing that this will keep the youth “out of trouble.”  This 1960s thinking will not solve the jihadist problem because it is not about money or more programs.  It is about an extreme ideology and belief system.

According to a 2016 World Bank study, most jihadists grew up in a middle-class family and earned at least a college degree.  “There is no link between poverty or educational levels and radicalization.”

According to the Gatestone Institute, “Britain’s MI5 revealed that ‘two-thirds of the British suspects have a middle-class profile and those who want to be suicide bombers are often the most educated.”

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Jihadi leaders who used their fortunes and education for jihad include:

  • Osama bin Laden: estimated net worth $300 million, studied at King Abdulaziz University and summer at Oxford.
  • Ayman al-Zawahiri: head of al-Qaeda, was a medical doctor.
  • Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: the “underwear bomber,” had a degree from University College in London.
  • Omar Saeed Sheik: terrorist who was convicted of murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl, attended the London School of Economics.

Fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-old girls, all honor students from middle-class families, left London to join ISIS in Syria, where one of them, Kadiza Sultana, was killed in an airstrike.

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