I suspect that it&#x27;s (relatively) easy to take an adherent of <i>any</i> religion and radicalize them with a slight permutation of said religion, versus trying to radicalize somebody without that shared kernel of faith. I therefore assume that &quot;regular&quot; Islam is an &quot;in&quot; for extremists; they can build upon existing indoctrination and subvert it for their own purposes.<p>I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s anything particular to the Islamic faith that lends itself to this pattern, though. Charlatans and tyrants have effectively used religious beliefs for their own goals since the very beginnings of human civilization. I believe Islam faces a &quot;perfect storm&quot; now; it is immensely popular across the world, but a large number of its adherents are stuck in a region that has been dramatically destabilized by foreign influences. The Muslims there are able to use the shared elements of their religion as a way to reach out to Muslims outside of the region and incite them to revolution.<p>To paraphrase Dan Carlin of Hardcore History: it&#x27;s not religion that&#x27;s the problem, it&#x27;s the tyrants that are the problem.<p>Of course, even if you (and I) are right in assuming that a (relatively) large percentage of Muslims are currently radicalized in comparison to other religions, this doesn&#x27;t actually mean that there&#x27;s any practical way to <i>respond</i> to that. The lazy answer is &quot;stabilize the middle east at all costs&quot; but that never seems to actually align with Western political and economic realities, so here we are...