Christians Under Attack

A new Gallup poll finds that richer, better-educated Muslims are more likely to be radicalized. This explodes the myth of the poor, dumb terrorist.

Since 9/11, the politically correct elite have mau-maued Americans into thinking the terrorists have hijacked a peaceful religion out of ignorance and poverty. Or that they've been brainwashed by Osama bin Laden.

But Gallup found the opposite to hold true: The most radical among Muslims — those who support jihad — earn more and stay in school longer. These are the smart ones, not the rubes.

Surely there must be some mistake. Perhaps Gallup's sample was too small. Actually, its surveys represent more than 90% of Muslims. They were carried out in 2006 and 2005 in 10 predominantly Muslim countries. About 10,000 Muslims were polled.

Statistics aside, there's plenty of anecdotal evidence to support the findings. Look at the backgrounds of some of the world's most notorious Muslim terrorists:

• Bin Laden, the son of a Saudi billionaire, studied engineering.

• His deputy Ayman al-Zawahri is an eye surgeon.

• Mohamed Atta, the son of a lawyer, earned a master's degree in urban planning.

• 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed graduated from an American college with an engineering degree.

• Flight 93 pilot Ziad Jarrah's father is a Beirut bureaucrat who drove a Mercedes and put his son through prep school.

Some of the London bombers had college degrees. One was a schoolteacher. Another's father owned a store.

Many of the Saudi hijackers were the best and brightest in their towns. Hani Hanjour, who crashed the plane into the Pentagon, studied English at the University of Arizona. Family members were wealthy merchants from Taif, a resort city in Saudi Arabia.

Most Palestinian suicide bombers have come from middle-class homes. They didn't do what they did to escape poverty.

And some of the most radical imams in America have doctorates.

Gallup merely backs with statistics what we already knew. Contrary to liberal dogma, education makes Muslims only more extreme, not more moderate. Education doesn't stop terrorism.

Inviting more Muslims to our shores in the hopes they'll embrace our culture and adopt our values also seems misguided.

Yet this is the logic behind the White House's deal to grant 21,000 student visas to young Saudi men over the next four years. It's been sold as a cultural exchange program.

But do we really want to educate thousands of Saudis on our campuses if education helps only to radicalize Muslims?

Gallup's survey of Muslims, the largest conducted, puts to rest theories that radicals attack us because they're poor and alienated from society. Or because they're dim and easily misled.

Radical Muslims have an education and an economic future, yet they still hate. They're literate enough to interpret their holy books, yet they still embrace jihad against infidels.

Perhaps the only sane course in this war is to separate the West from Islam.