No Common Link?

This is an interesting read- and one that should be essential for all those who claim that terrorism is caused by poverty, colonialism, etc, etc, etc.

With new plots surfacing every month, police across Europe are arresting significant numbers of women, teenagers, white-skinned suspects and people baptized as Christians -- groups that in the past were considered among the least likely to embrace Islamic radicalism.

The demographics of those being arrested are so diverse that many European counterterrorism officials and analysts say they have given up trying to predict what sorts of people are most likely to become terrorists. Age, sex, ethnicity, education and economic status have become more and more irrelevant.

Note that there's no actual mention of the one thing that links all of the suspects and which they themselves would readily admit is the cause of their actions- the teachings of Islam.

The author of the study, Edwin Bakker, a researcher at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, tried to examine almost 20 variables concerning the suspects' social and economic backgrounds. In general, he determined that no reliable profile existed -- their traits were merely an accurate reflection of the overall Muslim immigrant population in Europe. "There is no standard jihadi terrorist in Europe," the study concluded....

Talk about not seeing the wood for the trees- there's no standard jihadi in the Muslim population? Um, let me think about what a common denominator might be there... Does it not occur to them that the reason there are no social indicators is that it has nothing to do with them?

Of interest too are the examples of the "aberrant" cases-

A woman in Brussels reads news of Muriel Degauque, 38, a Catholic from the southern Belgian city of Charleroi who converted to Islam, traveled to Iraq and blew herself up in November 2005.

And-

On the surface, the young Dutch Moroccan mother looked like an immigrant success story: She studied business in college, hung out at the pub with her friends and was known for her fashionable taste in clothes.

So residents of this 900-year-old river town were thrown for a loop last year when Bouchra El-Hor, now 24, appeared in a British courtroom wearing handcuffs under an all-encompassing black veil. Prosecutors said she had covered up plans for a terrorist attack and wrote a letter offering to sacrifice herself and her infant son as martyrs.

I just don't get it- killing yourself in order to commit murder is one thing, but to also willingly kill your child in the process; that's simply obscene. It's beyond my comprehension.