Quote Originally Posted by spmetla View Post
How people are raised of course matters, terrorism and crime are certainly not exclusive to any status group or job type. That being said someone that feels like they are getting something from the surrounding society be it self respect or financial success will be far less likely to commit crime or terrorism. For recent immigrants to the US or Europe their parents probably expected and still strive for a certain level of success, when the children or grandchildren of those first newcomers still don't have success they will probably see no point in even trying to push upward within the system. That's when people start to see the rise of 'ghetto pride' which in itself is a rejection of the rest of society. How does one win those people over? They are the ones that will commit crime and feel justified in doing so, this for both muslim groups and poor communities in the US.

Like you said we need to win over the disenfranchised community as a whole which will win over those young men that would otherwise do crime or violence, the start to that would be making them not disenfranchised but see a path upward in wealth and status. The conversation with them is important too. Being a thug or gangster is a point of pride for some people when it should be something their families should be ashamed of. They won't how ever see themselves as terrorists but as warriors, martyrs, freedom fighters etc.. instead.

It's very easy for young people to latch onto a 'cause' of any sort. For young muslim men being a member of ISIS may be just the sort of self respect and fulfillment they wanted. It gives them a sense of purpose, not different really than young people that join the FARC rebels in Columbia in order to fight capitalism/imperialism or go on mission to preach Christianity or protest whatever injustice the government is doing at the moment. Youth need a sense of purpose too. Like you said, jobs and standard of living don't provide that. A young man with few marketable skills isn't going to get the job or the standard of living though which leaves very few legitimate ways for a sense of purpose in anything he does.
The thing is, in the UK at least, practically no other ethnic group has that kind of problem nowadays. Blacks, even where they are poor trash unable to raise themselves from the social underclass, at least mix easily with white trash, to produce a kind of urban multicultural underclass. And there is cachet even for rich kids to identify with this underclass, as seen in private school educated upper class kids speaking in broad estuary. But it's the Muslim community that has produced such a high proportion of second gens who isolate themselves from any kind of British identity whatsoever. How is it a general problem when every other community has integrated in their own way, except for this one community?

Living in eastern London, probably the epitome of the despised underclass is the chav: poor, antisocial, generally undesirable. But one thing that I've noticed about this underclass is that it's colour blind. White, black, brown, they make no distinctions between colour. And I've also noticed that they slip easily between what in previous generations may have been termed PWT, Afro-Caribbean, Indian, etc. lingo. While they may be separated from the rest of society by wealth and class, they mix among each other.