What drives someone to become a religious extremist, even to the point of becoming a suicide bomber? There are two general answers: poverty and ignorance. The poverty line goes like this, grinding poverty for what there appears to be no escape foster seeding resentment against those who have more. If your choice is to die a martyr or die a beggar, martyrdom is the clear winner. The ignorance line goes like this, the poor has no chance of getting a decent education, they are susceptible to easy manipulation.
Clever people play on their prejudices and superstitions. Once this clever person gets the poor person in his grasp indoctrination is easy. Since there is plenty of poverty and plenty of ignorance around the world, there is a lot of people to draw from. This is how the source of terrorism is explained.
Then i went to Pakistan and lived in the world where extremists recruit. I found something much different than i expected. Poverty had little to do in who became an extremist, lack of education even less, many that i met subscribed to religious extremism and prepared to murder and die for their cause are from the middle class and many had university education. These are not poor or uneducated people. They are well-read, well-fed. So if poverty and ignorance don’t drive people to extremism, what does? One is a desire for meaning and order, places like Pakistan are submerged in chaos and corruption. Islamists promise clear cut solutions to these problems. They say if you follow these rules and only these rules, things will change.
Another desire is change, the old corrupt order must be overthrown and that can happen through violation. Again, extremists step in with a new kind of government and a strong sense of victimhood. They create a toxic syrup and many willingly consume. These are the same easy answers, utterance and demagogues from Lenin to Hitler to Bin Laden have always said to their followers.
This was played out in Pakistan, after many assassinations of a major figure there, I was sitting with a middle class pair, the father had a small business and the mother was a nurse.
Their son had no want for anything but one day at dinner table he stated that a person who was murdered deserved to die. He said because he had spoken on behalf of religious minorities. They were shocked.
So how to get out this extremism? The first thing to do is to get over this false narrative that this happens because of poverty or education issue. The second is to take on the narrative of the extremist groups. They promise a better way but what in fact do they deliver? The answer is always more death, more suffering and more poverty. Young people need to see this groups for what they are; only then the recruiting numbers will begin to go down. The media has to stop portraying terrorists as freedom fighters. Middle class parents and teachers have to be vigilant in instilling moderate, pluralist values in their children. Polititians have to stop blaming their problems on the West and confront the endemic corruption. Most importantly Islamic religious figures have to stop looking the other way, they must promise these murderers eternal damnation and not call them ‘martyrs’.
Trascripted by Benazir Elahee Munni