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Comment by kobayashi | Hacker News Reader

There is absolutely no credible, facts-driven research to suggest that lack of wealth, access to health care, access to mental health care, or access to education have a direct correlation to individuals joining terrorist groups or the rise of such groups. It's just a common trope repeated because it fits with people's existing ideologies. Terrorism is much more complicated than that.

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That's a bit generalizing. This paper[1] talks about the over-representation of engineers in violent Islamic organizations. Specifically talks about how there are fewer engineers in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia versus Palestine and other countries in the same type of groups. There seems to be /some/ correlation between economic opportunity and sub-segments of the population joining these types of groups.

[1] http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/2007-10.pdf

I can't read the paper now but I've read on that specific topic before. The assertions were usually that people drawn to the clear-cut answers of engineering also wanted to organize the world with definitive rights and wrongs, and those 'black or white, no shades of grey' people are more likely to agree with the zealotry of terrorist groups.

Same paper - while monoism/simplism/preservatism argument is one of the three major points the full paper. The rest is worth the time to read.

I'll agree with you there. Among impoverished and religious, they're still a tiny percentage. It's definitely complex what causes the individuals to convert. However, the factors that promote it seem pretty consistent. ;)

I'd say that the factors are anything but consistent. The closest thing to consistency is the personal desire for an all-encompassing identity, being a part of something bigger than one's self, and being raised in a society or culture that reveres illiberalism and the combination of religion and state.

You don't think infusion of cash, weapons, and power vacuums into such areas by world's power players are a consistent factor?

The occurrence or absence of cash is too broad to draw a correlation to terrorism. Same goes for weapons. Power vacuums enable organized actors but those same actors (in this case Islamists) can also gain a foothold by coopting the democratic process of a powerful state. None of those things address the mentality of terrorists or the ideology of groups that give rise to organized terrorism.

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