Alienation, Religion, Economics and Politics: Testing Theories of Radicalization in Polls of U.S. Muslims

Four national polls of Muslim-Americans conducted between 2001 and 2007 were examined to test possible predictors of sympathy and justification for jihadist violence: perception of anti-Muslim bias, religiosity, and economic and political grievance. These predictors were correlated with three elements of the global-jihad frame: seeing the war on terrorism as a war on Islam, justifying suicide attacks in defense of Islam, and favorable views of Al Qaeda. The three elements were no more than weakly related and had different correlates. Discussion suggests that the war of ideas may need to target separately the different elements of mass sympathy and support for terrorism.