Eboo Patel on Religious Extremists and Their Appeal to Young People

In Acts of Faith, Eboo Patel writes about how the post-9/11 world became more aware of the growing link between religion and violence. But people seemed to be missing another link, one brought home in April by the Boston Marathon bombings: “The shock troops of religious extremism were young people.” As he would learn, this was no accident. Following are two excerpts from the book.

“I believe that religious violence is the product of careful design, manipulated by human hands. It is more about sociology than scripture, more about institutions than inevitability. The theology of the world’s bin Ladens is influential because they have built powerful institutions that recruit, inspire, and train people to act in hateful and murderous ways. When people respond to oppression by killing their enemies while whispering the name of God, it is because an organization convinced them that doing so is a sacred duty and then gave them everything they needed to carry it out. And so often, their primary targets are young people. As [Terror in the Name of God author Jessica] Stern writes, ‘Holy wars take off only when there is a large supply of young men who feel humiliated and deprived; when leaders emerge who know how to capitalize on those feelings; and when a segment of society—for whatever reason—is willing to fund them. ...

Every time we read about a young person who kills in the name of God, we should recognize that an institution painstakingly recruited and trained that young person. And that institution is doing the same for thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of others like him. In other words, those religious extremists have invested in their youth programs.

If we had invested in our youth programs, could we have gotten to those young people first?”