How Terrorism Works: An insightful analyst of modern terrorism is Scott Atran [...] Here are ten conclusions I've selected from it:
* Global Al-Qaeda is now a viral, social movement and political ideology, not a well organized operation with command and control. [...]
* The new wave of terrorism is about "youth culture", not the Koran.[...]
* Prison radicalization in the USA vs. Europe differs significantly: Foreign-born Muslims, like Jews, are underrepresented in US prisons. [...]
* Social welfare is not a solution, adding only to alienation and boredom and to a hole in one's life more readily filled by radicalized dreams of justice and glory. [...]
* Publicity is the oxygen of terrorism. [...]
* Non-Muslims should never preach to Muslims about what is true Islam. [...]
* Stop trying to impose ethnocentric values of Freedom and Democracy on people. [...]
* PEW surveys show that in the Muslim world support of "Freedom and Democracy" has declined since the onset of the Iraq War. Both radical and traditional Islam value Justice and Fairness, not Freedom and Democracy. [...]
* Stop wasting millions of dollars studying the Koran and trying to figure out what terrorists think from studies of Islam. [...]
* Stop trying to generate a catch-all approach to terrorist profiling, radicalization processes, etc. [...]
