The Jihad culture: not that poor

It is a major prejudice to say that Jihad fighters are from poor backgrounds, and were underprivileged and so on.
A lot of basic research has shown that instead, the average Jihad Moe is not really poor. If he’s a Saudi man especially, chances are he is merely bored, and unemployed. He is not a stupid man at all, but having nothing better to do, he exposes himself to truly extreme and sinister individuals and their organizations.
Why do they do this? Well say they’re 25 and have been sitting at home for pretty much most of their life, and suddenly discover that others just like them are doing so much with their lives, they’re interested. Now maybe at first, when they hear that they are doing something with guns and killing, they’ll want to step back. But it will be stepping back to boredom, and uselessness.

In the book “My Jihad”, by Aukie Collins, the American ex-con, son of US army soldiers, is converted to Islam while in jail and decides to join the Jihad, in Chechnya. It is there that he sees men doing what anyone, with the least bit of greed in them, would like to do: boss other men around, and through the means of violence and weapons, lead a life seemingly totally dependent on one’s own will.

So these are not poor and desperate Saudis and others. Most of them were bored, and if desperate at all, they were just desperate for some excitement. Easily accepting the extremist rhetoric around why Muslims should help their brothers [by blowing them up?], and then by more evolved and consequently more lunatic logic, they rapidly give in. They arrange quite a bit if not most of the funding themselves, because they are not poor. Perhaps their family members approve, or respect, or simply ignore the fact that the money will go into killing people.

While I felt “My Jihad” was a decent book, the author did at times get carried away and he certainly got carried away with the whole Jihad thing. He does however, have interesting detail of fighting the Russians, and more interestingly, how the whole wheel of Jihad is completely corrupt with “Jihadists” and their targets [eg the Russians] extorting money out of each other.

This also explains why the most extreme of all Jihadists often grew up in the West or were educated in the West, or even had an opportunity to fit in and start a new life. In fact, one of the 911 hijackers did almost slip out of it, having a European girlfriend. They were neither poor nor desperate. Simply bored, a head with a vacuum, easily filled by twisted logic explaining why it’s ok to blow up mosques.