What drives someone to become a religious extremist even to the point of becoming a suicide bomber?

Like most people, I assume that there were two overriding answers, poverty and ignorance.

The poverty line goes like this, grinding poverty from which there appears to be no escape,

foster seating resentment against those who have more.

If your choice is to die a martyr or die a beggar, martyrdom is the clear winner.

The ignorance lines goes like this.

The poor have no chance to get a decent education and thus are susceptible to easy manipulation.

Clever people play on their prejudices and superstitions.

Once extremists get this ignorant poor person in his grasp and indoctrination is easy.

Since there's plenty of poverty and plenty of ignorance around the world, that's a lot

of people to draw from.

This is how the source of terrorism is explained.

Then I went to Poxon and actually lived in the world from which extremists recruit.

And I found something much different than I expected.

Poverty had little to do with who became an extremist, lack of education even less.

Many of those that I met who subscribe to religious extremism and are prepared to murder and die for their cause

are from the middle class and many had a university education.

These are not poor people and these are not uneducated people.

They're well fed and well read.

So if poverty and ignorance don't drive people to extremism, what does?

One is a desire for meeting and for order.

Places like Poxon are submerged in chaos and corruption.

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