Re: Can someone exlpain this to me?

[Paul Schmehl <pauls () utdallas edu>]

--On February 18, 2006 12:15:24 PM -0500 Dude VanWinkle 
<dudevanwinkle () gmail com> wrote:

> On 2/18/06, Kevin McAleavey <kevinmca () nsclean com> wrote:
>
> I find its not really zealotry that causes these types of conflict,
> but rather poverty and unhappiness. Zealotry is just a convenient
> outlet.
I call bullshit. Osama bin Laden is a multi-millionaire from a wealthy 
family in Saudi Arabia.  Aywan al Zawahiri is a physician from Egypt. 
Studies have shown that *many* of the jihadis are from the upper middle 
class and wealthy parts of societies (like Saudi Arabia) that promote 
Wahabbism, the most virulent form of radical Islam

Poverty and unhappiness has nothing to do with it.  It's all about 
restoring the Caliphate and the glory of old Islam, when it ruled much of 
the known world.  Their rhetoric *exploits* poverty and unhappiness to 
encourage acquiescence to their bloody rampages, but those have nothing to 
do with the underlying causes or with the vast majority of their recruits.

> Solve those and you find people aren't willing to throw away their
> lives on a whim
Gee, you know, we've had poor and unhappy people in America for over 250 
years and none of them have blown people up and chopped off heads. 
(McVeigh wasn't poor, so don't even bother.)

People blow other people up because they've bought a line of bullshit that 
says suicide is glorious, not because they don't have money or are unhappy. 
Case in point - the Japanese kamakazi pilots.

Paul Schmehl (pauls () utdallas edu)
Adjunct Information Security Officer
University of Texas at Dallas
AVIEN Founding Member
http://www.utdallas.edu/
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