A PR Victory in the War on Terror

A new article published by the Associated Press suggests that the tide has turned against extremist groups among Muslims worldwide. The piece, published today, is based on a survey taken by the Pew Research Center, which was taken in nearly 50 countries around the globe. The survey's findings are heartening, indicating a dive in public support for Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and terrorism in general. 7 of 8 majority-Muslim states registered a decline in support for such extremists.

Some highlights: Bin Laden's popularity fell from 56 to 20% in the past four years amongst Muslims in Jordan, while the number of Pakistanis supportive of suicide bombings fell from 41 to 9% in the same period. One notable exception was the mere 6% of Palestinians who say that suicide bombings can never be justified.

The article seems to indicate that the main source of this positive trend is the increased prosperity of many majority-Muslim nations. According to this explanation, increasing GDP in oil-rich Middle Eastern states has caused the countries' populations to reject religious extremism. I don't buy this as the sole reason for this trend. It is logical that economic development leads people out of the desperation that causes terrorism. However, development in the Middle East has been steadily occurring over the past few decades, not just within the past four years. These same decades that have brought economic reform have seen a dramatic renaissance in Islamic extremism. The recent attempted terror attacks in the UK were carried out by upper-middle class physicians, not by the desperately poor and uneducated. The Saudi regime, one of the richest in the region, continues to perpetuate its version of Wahhabism, an extremist Islamic movement. The linkage between poverty and terrorism, while logical, is not absolute by any means. And even if we are to accept this link at face value, certainly the economic development over 4 short years does not go the whole way toward explaining a precipitous drop in support for extremists in the region. In this case, it seems, it's not just the economy stupid.