Education and Terrorism

It is sometimes thought that Islamic terrorism is fueled by the poverty, lack of education, and lack of opportunities that afflict so many Muslims in the Arab world. Wealthier Muslim nations don't have the same problems, after all, but the truth is that most terrorists are well-educated men with good prospects for their futures.

The Spring 2004 Wilson Quarterly discusses the article “Education, Poverty, and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection?” by Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Malecková, in Journal of Economic Perspectives (Fall 2003):

    [B]etter-off and better-educated people are more likely to support and participate in terrorist or militant acts than their less fortunate peers. In a December 2001 opinion survey of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, for example, 86 percent of adults who had attended high school supported armed attacks against Israeli targets, compared with 72 percent of their illiterate peers. And outright opposition to such attacks was much higher in the ranks of the illiterate: 26 percent voiced opposition, compared with only 12 percent of better-educated Palestinians.

    Many studies of those who actually commit terrorist attacks follow the same general pattern. Of 129 Lebanese Hezbollah militants who became Shahids (martyrs) between 1982 and 1994, only 28 percent came from impoverished families (while 33 percent of all Lebanese were living in poverty). Thirty-three percent of the killers had been to high school, compared with only 23 percent of the general population. A study of 285 Palestinian terrorists who carried out suicide bomb attacks for other groups between 1987 and 2002 found that they were nearly twice as likely to have finished high school and attended college as other Palestinians. Two of the bombers were the sons of millionaires.

It’s not just Palestinians who are like this — Israel’s “Bloc of the Faithful,” one of their most militant groups of Jews, is filled with “teachers, writers, entrepreneurs, engineers,” and other highly educated people. It’s not ignorance that breeds terrorism, but knowledge. The more educated a person is, the more they know about politics, economics, and world issues — and, therefore, the more likely they may become so outraged over injustices around them that they are willing to resort to violence in order to rectify them.

Another important factor is the lack of civil liberties: the more civil liberties a nation has, the less likely people are to engage in terrorism. It’s not hard to understand why this might be so. When a person is able to participate in society openly and to promote their ideas to others, there won’t be as much of a temptation to “participate” by resorting to violence. When they have a chance to make their ideas count through the ballot box, they are less likely to make their ideas count with a gun.

Politics is not far off from violence because even in a democracy, the will of some is imposed on everyone else. Excluding some from participating in what happens in society is a sure way to push them to find other means — and very often, the only “other means” available to them is violence of some sort.