&gt; The elephant in the room that many refuse to address is that terrorism exists anywhere Islam does, there are insurgencies in nearly every country where Muslims are a sizeable minority.<p>I think there&#x27;s a significant danger of seeing correlation and assuming causation, groups like FARC, the IRA, or the Tamil Tigers (inventors of the suicide bomber vest) are terrorist groups that existed in places that Islam didn&#x27;t.<p>If we take the longer view many (most?) terrorist organizations have been based around nationalism often coupled with anti-colonialism, or on a marginalised group taking up arms against their (perceived) oppressors often coupled with some strain of communist ideology.  Its only recently terrorism based on Islam has become a thing.<p>I agree that its not poverty which leads people to commit terrorism though. At least not just poverty. Its a complicated mixture of feeling marginalised from a society (which can be poverty or can be a bunch of other things), believing they have a grievance against it, plus an ideology that focuses that into violence.