Well-Informed: Radicalization and Religion

In the United States, when we hear the term "radicalization", Islam is probably the next word that comes to mind. Radicalization also connotes terrorism, especially when used by the news media in the contemporary United States.

An essay that I found listed technology as a major source of enablement for radicalization. The internet provides a platform for like minded individuals to meet and connect. Before the internet and other modern forms of communication, someone with radical beliefs was much more likely to feel isolated and alone. This feeling of isolation prevented them, in many cases, from actually turning their radical ideas into radical actions. The internet makes it possible for radical individuals to find other radical individuals, and suddenly they are a radical group, rather than isolated radical individuals.

The concept of technology as an enabler brings me to an interesting article published by the Washington Post. The article asserts, with facts and studies as support, that engineers are unusually likely to become members of violent terrorist organizations. The study cited by the Post states that nearly twice as many members of violent terrorist organizations had degrees in engineering than did in Islamic studies. The study also shows that nine times as many terrorists were engineers as would be expected by chance. My point in bringing up this study wasn't to say that I think engineers are terrorists. The point was to show that not all terrorists are Muslim. I think that most intelligent people know that terrorism and Islam aren't synonymous, but Islam definitely has a negative connotation because of its connection to terrorism. In this post, I hope to shed light on the idea that someone can be Muslim and not be a terrorist (which should be obvious, but unfortunately there are people who actually believe the two are interchangeable terms).

A Huffington Post article outlines several key concepts to understand about Islam and terrorism. The article states that according to the FBI, 94% of terrorist attacks on the United States between the years of 1980 and 2005 were carried out by non-Muslims. This is an incredibly powerful statistic. Out of every ten terrorist attacks on the United States, nine of them would have been committed by individuals or groups who were not Muslim. The article goes on the explain that even if every single one of the terrorist attacks studied had been carried out by Muslims, those individuals would still only represent 0.00009% of all Muslims.

These statistics were eye opening for me. I don't think I am a prejudicial person, yet I was still under the impression that the vast majority of terrorist attacks were committed by people of Islamic faith. I am grateful to have read this article and done some research on this topic, because my findings put a lot of issues into perspective, and many of these issues are pivotal at this point in history.