[Poverty Link To Terrorism] Saudi Prince: Terrorism Not Caused by Poverty

From Arutz Shava

"Osama Bin-Laden is one of the richest people [in the world]," said Prince Turki Bin Talal Bin Abdel Aziz, taking a maverick stance within the Muslim world.

In an interview with the London-based Arabic-language A-Sharq Al-Aussat newspaper, the Saudi prince said he does not accept the thesis that poverty is one of the causes of terror attacks.

Prince Turki is the personal representative of Prince Talal Bin Abdul Aziz, chairman of the AGFUND regional developmental institution.

The thesis that poverty breeds terrorism is a familiar claim, though not necessarily backed up by facts. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after his recent visit to the U.S. that "poverty is one of the major reasons for terrorism," while Hamas Gaza leader Mahmoud a-Zahar has said, "It is enough to see the poverty-stricken outskirts of Algiers or the refugee camps in Gaza to understand the factors that nurture the strength of the Islamic Resistance Movement."

The chief of Jordanian Army Intelligence, referring to problems such as militant Islam, said, "Economic development may solve almost all of our problems... The moment a person is in a good economic position, has a job, and can support his family, all other problems vanish." Even former U.S. President Bill Clinton has said that "forces of reaction feed on disillusionment, poverty and despair.

Research shows the opposite, however. A graduate student at Princeton found that among Palestinian terrorists, those who came from poor backgrounds were relatively fewer by far than the number of poor in the PA population as a whole, and were also significantly more educated.

Researchers Alan Krueger and Jitka Malechova examined the backgrounds of some 130 Hizbullah suicide bombers between 1982-1994, and found that these terrorists were more educated and better off economically than the general Lebanese population.

In what is possibly the most famous study on the topic, Harvard economist Alberto Abadie researched terrorism in almost 200 nations (NBER Working Paper No. 10859), and concluded, "In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but in fact when you look at the data, it's not there."

The Saudi prince who has now publicly adopted this approach also said in his interview that the solution does not lie in education. "Terrorism does not nourish its values from public education," he said, "but rather from a unique doctrine that it developed for itself. Terrorism has its own educational system, its own concepts, its own books and its own message."