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The radical philosopher: being a suicide bomber is a career choice most of us reject. The fact that several thousand young men and women do chose this occupation can be credited to a man who wrote the book on extremism.

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Jessica Stern is the author of the 2003 book Terror in the Name of God (ISBN: 006050338). She has spoken to hundreds of young Muslims in various parts of the world and writes that: "Jihad has become a global fad, rather like gangsta rap. Among many Muslim youth, it is a cool way of expressing dissatisfaction with a power elite ... Of course, while many youth will go along with the fad, the violence it promotes is carried out by only a few.

"The jihadi fad is spreading like a virus on an Internet vector. It is a product of globalization, but also, in part, a reaction to it. And, it will take a global effort to contain its spread."

A commonly held view is that suicide bombers come from backgrounds of poverty and neglect and that they are not very bright. But, that doesn't explain Asif Hanif and Omar Sharif, two Britons who carried out a suicide-bombing mission in Israel in 2003. Both came from middle-class backgrounds and had postsecondary educations.

According to Kenan Malik, writing in The Times (U.K.) in 2005, this is not unusual. He states that "The most detailed study yet of al-Qaeda supporters shows that the majority are middie-class with good jobs. Most are college-educated, usually in the West."

Walter Laqueur is co-chair of the International Research Council at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He also demolishes the theory that extremists are thick and poor. In a recent article in Polly Review magazine he points out that in the world's 50 most impoverished countries terrorism is almost unknown. He cites a study in India showing that terrorism happens most often in the country's richest states and almost never in its poorest regions. "In the Arab countries," he writes "... the terrorists originated not in the poorest and most neglected districts but hailed from places with concentrations of radical preachers. The backwardness, if any, was intellectual and cultural--not economic and social."

And, that leads us to a place where a major stimulus for Islamic extremism can be found; the village of Musha in Egypt.

In October 1906, a...

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