Publication:
Urban poverty and support for Islamist terror: survey results of Muslims in fourteen countries

dc.contributor.coauthorN/A
dc.contributor.departmentDepartment of International Relations
dc.contributor.kuauthorMousseau, Michael
dc.contributor.schoolcollegeinstituteCollege of Administrative Sciences and Economics
dc.date.accessioned2024-11-09T23:06:53Z
dc.date.issued2011
dc.description.abstractSurvey respondents in 14 countries representing 62% of the world's Muslim population indicate that approval of Islamist terror is not associated with religiosity, lack of education, poverty, or income dissatisfaction. Instead, it is associated with urban poverty. These results are consistent with the thesis that Islamist terrorists obtain support and recruits from the urban poor, who pursue their economic interests off the market in politics in collective groups. These groups compete over state rents, so a gain for one group is a loss for another, making terrorism of members of out-groups rational. The rise of militant Islam can be attributed to high rates of urbanization in many Muslim countries in recent decades, which fosters violence as rising groups seek to dislodge prior groups entrenched in power. Rising group leaders also compete over new urban followers, so they promote fears of out-groups and package in-group identities in ways that ring true for the urban poor. Because many of the urban poor are migrants from the countryside, popular packages are those which identify with traditional rural values and distinguish enemies as those associated with urban modernity and the secular groups already in power. Imams have an incentive to preach what audiences want to hear, so a mutated in-group version of Islam - Islamism - struck a chord in several large cities around the globe at the same time. With globalization of the media, in many developing countries the West is widely (albeit wrongly) perceived as an inimical out-group associated with urban modernity. The best political strategy to limit support and recruits for Islamist terrorist groups is to enhance the economic opportunities available for the urban poor and to provide them the needed services, such as access to health care and education, that many currently obtain from Islamist groups.
dc.description.indexedbyWOS
dc.description.indexedbyScopus
dc.description.issue1
dc.description.openaccessNO
dc.description.publisherscopeInternational
dc.description.sponsoredbyTubitakEuN/A
dc.description.volume48
dc.identifier.doi10.1177/0022343310391724
dc.identifier.eissn1460-3578
dc.identifier.issn0022-3433
dc.identifier.quartileQ1
dc.identifier.scopus2-s2.0-82455228627
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1177/0022343310391724
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14288/9052
dc.identifier.wos287355800003
dc.keywordsGlobalization
dc.keywordsPolitical islam
dc.keywordsPolitical violence
dc.keywordsPoverty
dc.keywordsTerrorism
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherSage
dc.relation.ispartofJournal of Peace Research
dc.subjectInternational relations
dc.subjectPolitical science
dc.titleUrban poverty and support for Islamist terror: survey results of Muslims in fourteen countries
dc.typeJournal Article
dspace.entity.typePublication
local.contributor.kuauthorMousseau, Michael
local.publication.orgunit1College of Administrative Sciences and Economics
local.publication.orgunit2Department of International Relations
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relation.isParentOrgUnitOfPublication.latestForDiscovery972aa199-81e2-499f-908e-6fa3deca434a

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