Poverty a breeding ground for radicalization

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Oct 6, 2014 at 14:20

Dear Dr. Pipes:

The sad part of your blog about Egypt is that the story of Egypt is not unique to Egypt; it could be true of any, so called, poor third world country.

But I agree with you that the recent crises worsen the situation in Egypt. What makes this situation even more worrisome is that poverty makes a perfect breeding ground for terrorism. That ISIS could so shamelessly include the Indian subcontinent in their evil map and, just a few days later, Zawahiri, could declare the formation of a Qaeda franchise in India, is solely due to the fact that these evil outfits know that there are enough Muslims in India and enough number of them are poor. That provides a perfect breeding ground for conversion of some poor and disenfranchised to Islam and radicalization of Muslims. First things a poor person thinks of is injustice and discrimination. With the demise of communism and socialism, fundamentalist Islam is the only platform that provides radicalization services to all humans. In today's world poverty reduction while protecting freedom becomes the noblest goal for all free people of the world. If our task was difficult in the last century it is tenfold more so now. Communists, at least, had a good goal and probably had a heart. ISIS has no decent goal and no heart.

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