“There is a stereotype that young people from Europe who leave for Syria are victims of a society that does not accept them and does not offer them sufficient opportunities… Another common stereotype in the debate in Belgium is that, despite research which refutes this, radicalization is still far too often misunderstood as a process resulting from failed integration… I therefore dare say that the better young people are integrated, the greater the chance is that they radicalize. This hypothesis is supported by a lot of evidence.”
That was the result of extremely important
Dutch research, led by a group of academics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Terrorists seem to be models of successful integration: for instance, Mohammed Bouyeri, the Moroccan-Dutch terrorist who shot the filmmaker
Theo van Gogh to death, then stabbed him and slit his throat in 2004. “He [Bouyeri] was a well-educated guy with good prospects,” said
Job Cohen, the Labor Party mayor of Amsterdam.
The Dutch research was followed by research from France, adding more evidence to the thesis that goes against the liberal belief that to defeat terrorism, Europe must invest in economic opportunities and social integration.
Dounia Bouzar, director of the Center for Prevention, Deradicalization and Individual Monitoring (CPDSI), a French organization dealing with Islamic radicalism, studied the cases of 160 families whose children had left France to fight in Syria. Two-thirds were members of the middle class.
These findings dismantle the myth of the proletariat of terror. According to a new
World Bank report, “Islamic State’s recruits are better educated than their fellow countrymen”.
Poverty and deprivation are not, as
John Kerry said, “the root cause of terrorism.” Studying the profiles of 331 recruits from an Islamic State database, the World Bank found that 69% have at least a high school education, while a quarter of them graduated from college. The vast majority of these terrorists had a job or profession before joining the Islamist organization. “The proportions of administrators but also of suicide fighters increase with education,” according to the World Bank report. “Moreover, those offering to become suicide bombers ranked on average in the more educated group.”
Less than 2% of the terrorists are illiterate. The study also points to the countries that supply ISIS with more recruits: Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey and Egypt. Examining the economic situation of these countries, researchers have discovered that “the richer the countries are the more likely will provide foreign recruits to the terrorist group.”
Another
report explained that “the poorest countries in the world don’t have exceptional levels of terrorism”.