Prosperous, educated Muslims joining the jihad? How could this be? Everyone knows that poverty causes ignorant Muslims to join terror groups — right?
Wrong.
The New York Times reported last year that “not long after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001…Alan B. Krueger, the Princeton economist, tested the widespread assumption that poverty was a key factor in the making of a terrorist. Mr. Krueger’s analysis of economic figures, polls, and data on suicide bombers and hate groups found no link between economic distress and terrorism.”
CNS News noted in September 2013 that “according to a Rand Corporation report on counterterrorism, prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2009, ‘Terrorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated, or afflicted by mental disease. Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds.’ One of the authors of the RAND report, Darcy Noricks, also found that according to a number of academic studies, ‘Terrorists turn out to be more rather than less educated than the general population.’”
Yet the analysis that poverty causes terrorism has been applied and reapplied and reapplied again.
“As Kashmiri youth assaulted at Sharda University joins militancy, his family struggles for answers,” by Safwat Zargar, Scroll.in, November 3, 2018 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Ahtisham Bilal Sofi, who was injured when a mob assaulted Afghani students at his campus last month, said he has joined an affiliate of the Islamic State.
On October 4, Ahtisham Bilal Sofi, 19, was injured when a mob assaulted Afghani students at Sharda University in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh. On October 28, the Kashmiri student disappeared after leaving the campus for Delhi. On November 2, he appeared online, a militant.
“By the grace of Allah, I, Ahtisham Bilal, have joined the ranks of Jundul Khilafah Kashmir and pledged my allegiance to Amiral-Mu’minin Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Husseini al-Quraishi,” he declared in an audio message that has since gone viral on social media.
A picture of Ahtisham Sofi, dressed in black and a grenade vest strapped around his chest, holds the screen while his voice plays in the background. The Islamic State’s black banner forms the backdrop of the picture.
Ahtisham Sofi’s seemingly sudden transformation from a “sober boy who loved cricket” to a guerrilla fighter threatening to “spill the blood of infidels from Delhi to Kerala” has left his family and relatives reeling. They cannot fathom why he took “such a step”, his father said. “I was planning to visit him during the Diwali holidays,” Bilal Sofi added. “Only last week, he was pestering me and his mother to visit him in Greater Noida. I have no idea what happened during the last one week. God only knows.”
The family has now appealed to militant groups to help their son return home. “Whichever group my son is with, I beg them to allow him to return home,” his sobbing mother Irfana said in a video released on Saturday. “For God’s sake, please return my Ahtisham to me. We don’t have any other son in our family. I appeal to every militant group to help me in getting my son back.”…
Ahtisham Sofi is the latest in an expanding list of educated, prosperous youth joining the militancy in Kashmir. Just last month, security forces killed Hizbul Mujahideen’s Mannan Wani, who had abandoned his PhD studies at Aligarh Muslim University, to take up the gun.
In his message, which runs to about six minutes, Ahtisham Sofi maintains that the assault on Afghani students at his university made him realise he could no longer “avoid jihad in Allah’s way.”
“I was already a soldier of Jundul Khilafah when I fought against more than 100 infidels for Afghani Muslims,” he says, referring to the campus violence. “The only difference was that I wasn’t aware of it. In my heart, I had already pledged allegiance to Jundul Khilafah but when infidel dogs came in hordes to attack me, I understood that I have avoided Jihad in Allah’s way for long enough. Not any more.”
AdvertisementYet, his father said, Ahtisham Sofi had refused to seek punishment for the local students who had hurt him. “Even when the university’s officials and the police assured him of action against the students who had assaulted him, he refused,” Bilal Sofi said. “He only asked for his hostel to be changed.” He had enrolled in the university in September and was studying for a Bachelor’s in radiography.
After learning of his son’s injury, Bilal Sofi went to stay with him for a few days. “During my stay on the campus, all those students who had assaulted Ahtisham except two came to me and apologised,” he said. “They were afraid of being suspended. Ahtisham even accompanied them to the administration. I didn’t notice any change in his behaviour.”
On October 28, Ahtisham Sofi left his hostel, saying he was going to Delhi for sightseeing. “Every Friday and Sunday, we would go out and visit places,” said Mubashir Nazir Sofi, 19, his cousin and roommate. “I did not join him since I had exams the next day.”…
Bilal Sofi said his son never showed any inclination towards militancy. “He was fed up of the daily violence and strikes because they were affecting his studies,” he said. “It was Ahtisham who expressed his wish to study outside the state. I spent nearly six lakh rupees on his and his cousin’s admission in Sharda University.”
His aunt Shabnam said Ahtisham Sofi was a “sober boy” who loved cricket. Pointing to a portion of his house’s compound wall with chipped paint, she said, “Ahtisham didn’t go out much. He and Mubashir grew up together and they would often play indoors. When he was alone, he would bowl a plastic ball against this wall. It was his companion.”
In the days before he disappeared, Bial Sofi said his son had been constantly asking his mother to visit him. “He really wanted to see her,” the father said. “Ahtisham wanted me to hire or buy a flat in Delhi on my next visit so all of us could stay together there. Save for that incident of violence, he was really enjoying his stay at the university.”
Bilal Sofi runs a sanitaryware store in Khanyar and the family also owns a shopping complex. “Ahtisham is the lone heir to this property,” Shabnam said. “Who else is it for?”
But Ahtisham has entered a different life. “Do you think this world won’t end?” he asks in his message, addressing his family. “Do we have to stay in the world all our life? I have taken my decision so that I could pray before Allah in the afterlife to seek paradise for you.”