Why Do People Become Islamic Extremists? | 5 Minute Video
What makes someone become an Islamic extremist? Is it poverty? Lack of education? A search for meaning? Haroon Ullah, a senior State Department advisor and a foreign policy professor at Georgetown University, shares what he discovered while living in Pakistan.
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Script:
What drives someone to become a religious extremist, even to the point of becoming a suicide bomber? Like most people I assumed that there were two overriding answers: poverty and ignorance.
The poverty line goes like this: grinding poverty from which there appears to be no escape fosters seething resentment against who those have more. If your choice is to die a martyr or die a beggar, martyrdom is the clear winner.
The ignorance lines goes like this: the poor have no chance to get a decent education and thus are susceptible to easy manipulation. Clever people play on their prejudices and superstitions. Once the extremist gets this ignorant poor person in his grasp, indoctrination is easy.
Since there’s plenty of poverty and plenty of ignorance around the world, that’s a lot of people to draw from. This is how the source of terrorism is explained.
Then, I went to Pakistan and actually lived in the world from which extremists recruit. And I found something much different than I expected. Poverty had little to do with who became an extremist; lack of education even less.
Many of those that I met who subscribe to religious extremism — and are prepared to murder and die for their cause — are from the middle class; and many had a university education. These are not poor people and these are not uneducated people. They are well fed and well read.
So, if poverty and ignorance don’t drive people to extremism, what does?
One is a desire for meaning and for order. Places like Pakistan are submerged in chaos and corruption. Islamists promise clear cut solutions to every problem: here’s how things will change if you follow these rules. And only these rules.
Another is a desire for change. The old corrupt order, the narrative goes, must be overthrown and that can only happen through violent action. Again, it is Islamists that step in — with a promise to create a new form of government.
Then throw in a strong sense of victimhood — we are not responsible for the sorry state of our country; others have brought us down — and you have a toxic brew that many willingly imbibe. These, of course, are the same easy answers that tyrants and demagogues — from Lenin to Mussolini to Hitler to bin Laden — have always offered their followers.
I saw this played out one day while living in Pakistan. After one of the many assassinations of a major figure there, I was sitting with two middle class parents. The father owned a small business and the mother was a nurse. They had given their son a good life. He wanted for nothing.
They told me that during dinner with the family a few days earlier, their son noted how the person who was murdered “deserved to die.” Why? Because he had spoken out on behalf of religious minorities. They were shocked. How could their son, who had been educated and well raised, think that? This story is all too typical.
So what to do about this extremism?
The first step is to get off this false narrative that this is first and foremost a poverty or education issue.
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The root cause is the extremism in the Quran.
The concept of jihad must be unequivocally rejected and abandoned by muslims. Education does not make a difference in the jihadi mindset of the muslims nor does economic status..
These people are simply doing what their religion tells them to do, what their fellow believers have been doing since the founding of the religion, all the way back to the founder himself.
Indoctrinated rather than educated.
It can be poverty and ignorance or it might not be. It's not as simple as if it is or isn't. Each Islamist extremist has their own unique life stories. Bin Laden was indeed rich growing up.
What drives someone to become a religious extremist?
Islam… No other religion creates so many problems. Imams cannot condemn terrorists when their religious books endoser it.
Well said.
Because their “religion” tells them to.
Obama is an isis sleepercell domestic terrorist
9 years later and we have woke students at UCLA supporting terrorism.
This explanation can be used to on EVERY fanatic, not only islamic ones. Change the title of the video I would say 😉 Look at all the extremism everywhere, same story 🙂
While I’ve agreed with many PragerU posts … this is non-sense …
Islam orders terror. That's why there are islamic terrorists.
Simple is that.
It has nothing to do with poverty or anything else.
Good points. It still loops back around to ignorance though. A person who is considered "well educated" can still fall victim to the misinformation and false promises of bastards like Bin Laden.
Idk gays
This is an oversimplified answer. Extremists are an entity of their own. But Imperialism and Colonialism can only expect to be met with resistance and revolution as history has shown even in America and France.
his explanation will still go back to ignorance.
Now make one for the White extremists??
One specific word – Quran
Two – Quran, Hadith
Three – Quran, Hadith and Sunnah, the life of Mohammad
One General reason defined in two words – Islamic Scriptures!
One should not equate a college education with intelligence. Many people who go to college come out more ignorant than when they went in. The pro-Hamas and pro-terrorist protests on college campuses should show that. Ignorant college students and even professors are showing their anti-Israel and anti-semitic behaviors.
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Well… I feel like I don't need to watch the video on what Islamic extremists and progressive activists have in common, anymore.
a content individual is hard to manipulate
I’m an Arab muslim and I approve this message. Jihadism and Salafism is a danger to the islamic world more than to the west ! Muslim youth are being radicalized by many mosques and social media.
They are mad at your government because you use their land, and puppet thier countries for oil.
Poverty and ignorance definitely drive to extremism!
A well educated Sunni middle class Muslim will never blow himself up thinking it’s a form of jihad but he might recruit and indoctrinate poor and uneducated youths and make them believe blowing themselves up is the fastest path to heaven.
hahaha this video is hilarious…ALL RELIGIOUS PEOPLE ARE RADICALS…IT IS THE UN-ETHICAL RELIGIONS THAT CREATE THEM
As a ethiopian christan I think it's typical amerika pov. You go in these countries, give billions to extremist groups to overthrow the curring government, but if diffrent violant extremist groups rule there will no law order, and more deaths etc. If you would stop financing extremist this problem would not exist-
My personal experience: I am not a Muslim and I don't wear hijab or burqa. Sometimes when the weather is hot I put on sunscreen clothes to protect my skin from sunlight. And that's the problem: I have often been insulted and physically attacked by Islamophobes who mistaken my sunscreen clothes with actual hijabs, just because both clothes cover the entire body. I tried to explain to them I wasn't wearing a hijab but they never listened.
OsamaBinLaden was considered the biggest terrorist…. He was neither poor nor ignorant!…. Stop linking it with poverty and illetracy , the reason is the western extremism which has enslaved the humanity specially Muslims, since the 1750's….and shrinking all the resources of their lands and their continuous oppression makes people to react against them…. So they call them terrorists!…
Jimmy Swaggart wants too.much money
Koran 3:141 And may Allah test the true believers and DESTROY THE DISBELIEVERS
They become extremist because they are true Muslim wannabe's
As a Muslim I’d have to agree with almost everything this gentleman has stated. Only thing I’d like to say is that whenever the West interferes in the Middle East, recruitment into these groups increases tenfold because unsurprisingly, the leaders point to the American drones etc and say “look, I told you they’re the bad guys”. By interfering in their affairs we’re giving these extremists fuel to feed off’ and that’s precisely why I loved Trump! Not only did he manage to create peace between Israel and neighboring Gulf countries as well as Morocco, but he managed to keep his nose out of the Middle East during his reign. In fact, during Obamas
presidency, we see that in Pakistan (particularly the Tribal region) and Yemen there was a huge increase in recruitment into these extremist groups-coincidently the two regions where drone bombings had killed countless civilians. Then there’s the issue of supporting the “Arab Spring” which anyone who understands the region would know would lead to the instability it has lead to-again, lead by Obama and most European nations.
I’m an incredibly patriotic Muslim and I want to see my home prosper before my Tax dollars are spent in a far away country in the Middle East-it’s not my business unless it’s a direct threat and it only becomes a direct threat when I interfere in their internal affairs and send endless drones there.
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