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Comment by carlob | Hacker News Reader

My girlfriend taught in the Parisian banlieue for a year. In her experience most of what is said in this article is very much true. In this areas (which would correspond pretty much to inner cities in the US) the draw of radical Islam is very strong, starting with high school kids. After all what else is there to do? Deal drugs?

On the other hand I would like to see this study that shows that increase in the level of education and occupation doesn't do much. I suspect the issue is more subtle: in that many immigrants coming from the former colonies of France don't really identify as French (even after a couple generations) and don't fully accept the so-called 'republican values'.

The fact that many of Portuguese origin are converting to radical Islam seems to me as a further symptom that the power of Jihadism actually stems from socio-economical marginalization.

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> After all what else is there to do? Deal drugs?

Jihadism provides these youth a sense of purpose. We failed at this. Now they fight for what is sold to them as (and they firmly believe to be) a high spiritual purpose instead of doing the jobs nobody wants to do and living a dull life in poor suburbs being treated like shit while watching rich white people enjoy loads of money on TV. In essence.

Many of the extremists have come from affluent homes, e.g. second generation Pakistanis with secular, professional parents living in comfortable London suburbs. Converts come from across the socio-economic spectrum.

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So are you saying that because some have made it marginalization is not a thing? Of course its causes are also cultural, that is exactly my point: we need to find cultural answers to this.

Your argument smells a lot like the self-made-man American myth. Just because some have made it out of poverty, often in different conditions than these, doesn't mean we don't have to fight poverty because everyone who is smart enough will pull herself out of it by her bootstraps (and I'm not talking just about material poverty).

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I think you are assuming consciousness (of the group) where can be none.

Shouldn't be in the interest of the majority to make sure that minorities are not marginalized?

Well… I don't know how to say this: but if at first it sounded hollow, this talk of ethnic subgroups and culture makes it sound rather racist.

What numbers are we talking about here? It seems that an extremely tiny percentage are radicalized, and they don't seem to come from a specific social class. In other words, is it not a gathering of nutjobs?

Read the article, up to 25% of the youth in these areas show some form of support for ISIS.

Showing "Some support" is very very very far from being part of such an extreme organization. Or else we would all be dead .

But that's the problem: yes there are a few really crazy ones that are ready to kill, but there are a lot of kids that are fascinated by the killers, that say they understand them, that won't do a minute of silence for the Charlie Hébdo victims, because "they were looking for it".

Imagine if 25% of American kids said they could relate to the Sandy Hook shooter, wouldn't that be worrying? Regardless of whether they'd be out to kill as well.

i'm strongly agree with your girlfriend. there were many upsets in many Muslims countries i thinks since 4 years ago. among others it was a sign of "yeah, we surly don't care about stuff was done 50 years ago" and importer a sign about change in the demographic "balance". in some places it was used to overthrow a dictator, in some places it was already done.

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