[nasional_list] [ppiindia] Think Again: Islamist Terrorism
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Think Again: Islamist Terrorism
By C. Christine Fair, Husain Haqqani
Posted January 2006
Pundits and politicians of all stripes are quick to offer their wisdom on
what fuels Islamist terrorism. It just so happens that much of what they say is
wrong. Poverty doesn't produce terrorists, a solution to the Israel-Palestine
problem isn't a cure-all, and young Muslim men aren't the most likely to turn
to terror. If we are going to fight a war on terror, the least we can do is
understand who we are fighting.
Future terrorists? Most madrasas do not provide the
skills that international terrorist groups look for in recruits.
Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
"Fixing the Israel-Palestinian Problem Will Make Terrorism Go Away"
Hardly. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is important, but it is by no
means the only issue inspiring the ideology of global jihad. There are several
pivotal conflicts around the world that animate militant Islamist ideology,
from the Caucasus and the Balkans to the Southern Philippines and the
intractable Kashmir conflict. Militant Islamists also see a connection between
their local issues and global politics. To them, Muslims are victims in every
conflict and the West is responsible for Muslim suffering and powerlessness.
That is to say nothing of the fact that the significance of each regional
conflict varies from one jihadi group to the next. For Algerian jihadists,
their war, provoked by the refusal of the pro-Western Algerian military to
accept the results of elections won by Islamists in 1991, is as significant as
Palestinian resistance to Israel. Pakistani and Kashmiri jihadists spew the
greatest amount of venom in their publications against "Hindu India," not
Jewish Israel. Russia also sits high on a jihadist's hit list, when the
jihadist in question is Chechen.
Radical Islamists want nothing less than the restoration of Islamic
sovereignty to all lands where Muslims were once ascendant, including Bulgaria,
Cyprus, Ethiopia, Hungary, Sicily, Spain, and even parts of France. Yes, a
resolution of the Palestinian issue would remove a key irritant in Western
relations with the Muslim world. But these ambitions are unlikely to be
satisfied by an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.
"Poverty, Unemployment, and Lack of Education Make Terrorists"
Prove it. Poverty, unemployment, and lack of education are serious
problems in some of the world's most populous Muslim countries. There is,
however, no evidence of a correlation between these social and economic ills
and terrorism. Terrorists are not always poor and prosperity does not end
terrorism. In fact, in the world's 50 poorest countries, there is little
terrorism. It is too soon to dismiss socio-economic conditions completely, but
studies have generally found that terrorists tend not to be from societies'
most deprived groups. Instead, terrorists are generally well educated and
unlikely to be poor. In India, for example, terrorism has occurred in one of
the country's most prosperous regions, Punjab, and its most egalitarian,
Kashmir (where the poverty rate is less than 4 percent, compared with a
national average of 26 percent). The sub-continent's poorest regions, such as
North Bihar, have not produced any terrorist activity. In Arab countries such
as Egypt and
Saudi Arabia, as well as in North Africa, terrorists do not originate in the
poorest and most neglected areas, but in some of the wealthiest regions and
neighborhoods.
Terrorist groups, like other employers, impose standards of quality in
their recruitment efforts. Research shows that terrorists tend to be of "higher
quality"-more educated or accomplished in other jobs and pursuits. These
individuals are more likely to turn to terrorism when the economy is weak and
jobs are in short supply. When the economy is good, "high-quality" persons
generally have access to lucrative jobs relative to their "low-quality"
counterparts, and the cost of leaving a good job in order to participate in a
terrorist movement is relatively high. That helps explain why engineers and
other technical persons with a history of underemployment get involved in
terrorism. They are both available and desired by terrorist organizations,
particularly during periods of economic stagnation and downturn.
"Young, Unmarried Muslim Males Are the Most Likely to Become Terrorists"
No. It is de rigueur to suggest that young, unmarried, Muslim males are
the most likely population to become terrorists or to support terrorism. But
from the perspective of the global supply of terrorists, this claim is false.
Consider the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. They are the
world's single largest group of suicide bombers. Their cadres are not Muslim,
but Hindu by religion and nearly 40 percent are female.
Even on the issue of support for terrorism, there is reason to be
skeptical about the popular convention that young males are leading the pack.
In a recent survey of 6,000 Muslims in 14 countries published in Studies in
Conflict & Terrorism, females were more likely to support terrorism than were
males. What's more, married and unmarried persons are equally likely to support
terrorism. Age matters less than one may think at first blush. In the same
survey, some 47 percent of 62-year-olds surveyed were inclined to support
terrorism. That percentage was only 10 points higher for 18-year-olds.
Other factors, such as perception of a threat to Islam and opinions about
the role of religion in government, have a significantly greater impact on
support for terrorism than age or gender. The bottom line? Ideology and beliefs
matter more than social or economic status, age or gender. Focusing outreach
and counterterrorism efforts on young, unmarried Muslim males will only
overlook enormous sections of Muslim populations who support terrorists.
"Madrasas Are Terrorist Factories"
That's an exaggeration. Do madrasas (ultra-conservative religious
schools) produce students who are less tolerant towards other religions,
opposed to the rights of women, and more likely to support militant means for
resolving disputes between Muslims and non-Muslims? Definitely. But this is not
tantamount to training for terrorism. None of the 9/11 hijackers attended a
madrasa. And there is no evidence that any of the terrorists involved in major
international terror attacks during the last four years ever enrolled as
regular students in a madrasa, though they may have passed through madrasas on
the way to terrorist training camps.
Given their total lack of Western education, madrasa students are not
particularly useful to any modern day employer, including terrorist groups.
They cannot blend into a Western nation or mount sophisticated operations
requiring technical expertise. They lack linguistic ability and competence in
even basic forms of technology because such skills are not generally taught at
madrasas. Some madrasa students do not even have basic mathematical skills,
necessary for mounting even moderately sophisticated terrorist operations.
The media and policy community's obsession with madrasas began with the
Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan. Their rise and fall may have drawn
international attention to the culture and curriculum of madrasas, but such
schools are nothing new. Madrasas have existed throughout the Muslim world
since the 12th century. Their core curriculum in South Asia, to take one
example, has not changed since the 19th century. Nor are they widely popular.
In Pakistan, for instance, less than 1 percent of all students enrolled in
schools attend madrasas. Some suggest the number could be as low as 0.7 percent
of all school going children.
Officials in the Arab world exaggerate the significance of madrasas
possibly to deflect attention from the real problem: public school curriculums
that inspire young men to jihad and focus on Muslim victimhood. Studies of
public school curricula in Saudi Arabia, for example, confirm that incitement
of hatred against the West, Jews, and non-Muslims is hardly limited to madrasas.
"People Support Terrorism Because They Are Poor and Lack Opportunity"
Doubtful. Little work thus far has been done on the effect of
socio-economic factors upon the demand for terrorism-the support that it enjoys
among the people on whose behalf terrorists claim to operate. In other words,
no one knows why some people support terrorism and others do not.
The survey of 14 Muslim countries found that respondents who reported
having inadequate money for food were the least likely to support terrorism. By
contrast, the study found that individuals with cell phones or computers (who
are presumably more affluent) are more likely to support terrorism than those
who do not own these items.
It is possible, of course, that addressing socio-economic concerns such
as poverty and education in Muslim countries would decrease the support that
terrorists enjoy there. It is also possible that support for terrorism might
hinge more upon differences in economic status across time than upon the level
of poverty at any given moment. Either way, it is too early to draw
conclusions. Development agencies and advocates should collect more data on the
support for terrorism among the poor.
"Perceived Threats to Islam Create Support for Terrorism"
Absolutely. There is tremendous hesitance to admit that Muslim
populations, on whose behalf terrorists claim to operate, have grievances or
concerns that need to be addressed as a means to minimizing public support for
terrorism. For some, this is the moral equivalent of negotiating with
terrorism. This is unfortunate, because these grievances matter.
In some countries, including Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Nigeria,
Pakistan, and more than 70 percent of the population believes that Islam is
under threat. Support for terrorism feeds on the belief that large segments of
the Muslim world are victims of ongoing injustice. Some experts argue, with
justification, that the perception of threats to Islam is deliberately
cultivated by Islamist political groups and authoritarian Muslim governments to
generate support for their agenda. But support for terrorism is unlikely to
decline without addressing that perception, whether the perception is the
product of propaganda or the result of legitimate political grievance.
"Disenchanted, Angry Muslims in Europe and North America Are Potential
Terrorist Recruits"
Increasingly. Muslims living in North America and Europe are attractive
to international terrorist organizations because they already possess language
skills, Western passports, and are at ease working and interacting in these
countries. And terrorism is attractive to some within these diasporas.
The reasons for this phenomenon are numerous and varied. Many North
American and European Muslims found Islam while spending time in prison. The
"prislam" (prison Islam) phenomenon disquiets analysts on both sides of the
Atlantic. Although there are just 2 million Muslims living in Britain-2.5
percent of the total population-more than 8 percent of Britain's prisoners are
Muslim. Prisons have proven to be a recruiting and training ground for a
variety of criminal activities, including organized crime and terrorism.
Moreover, radical Islamist teachers have long had access to Britain's
incarcerated Muslims.
Diasporas have long been a source of ethnonationalist extremism and
activities. Something about the state of diasporas motivates people to
understand their identities in new and sometimes disturbing ways. Examples of
that abound: Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, India's Mohandas
Gandhi, and Pakistan's Mohammad Ali Jinnah all began to reformulate national
identities when they were abroad.
The freedom of speech and association allowed in Europe and North America
enables radical Islamists to publish and organize without government
intervention, a right they are denied in most Muslim countries. Western
countries are going to have to try harder to understand why it is that some
populations do not integrate into society and why it is that some engage in
violence. Increasingly, people who are born and raised in one country, seek
militant training in another, and carry out terrorist attacks in a third
country on behalf of people they have likely never met.
C. Christine Fair is a senior research associate at the United States
Institute of Peace. Husain Haqqani is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace and teaches international relations at Boston
University.
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