Thomas Piketty: Clamping down with law and order will not be enough

"I don't understand why we shouldn't believe what's coming straight out of ISIS' mouth."

Because they're proven masters at propaganda and messaging. To take prop at face value is the definition of naive.

"ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia."

That's their justification for their actions, not the reason. Come on.

Recruiting for ISIS pays $5000 - $10000 per successful recruit.

If their true motivation is purely religious, if religion is the INCENTIVE, then why incentivize people with lump sumps larger than yearly income from honest work?

ISIS represents a way out of poverty, at least, that's how they sell it in recruiting.

"When someone shoots up a Planned Parenthood, however, he doesn't even have to make a public statement and the same people are quick to blame Christian beliefs or rhetoric and immediately accept the ideological reason for the violence."

We call that quid pro quo, and yes, it's intentional. If Islam itself is responsible for the actions of a minority of a minority, then it stands to reason that Christianity itself is responsible for the actions of a minority of a minority. So long as conservatives blame Islam in general for ISIS, we will blame Christianity in general for Westboro Baptist, for Clinic Terrorists, for Jehovah Witness child negligence murder, etc.

"Why don't we say that gunmen attack Planned Parenthoods because of income inequality in the United States?"

We do, often, we bemoan the war against education (ignorance as pride) and growing wealth inequality for social tension and violence both here in America and worldwide.

> Why don't we say that gunmen attack Planned Parenthoods because of income inequality in the United States?

I do. I think the Planned Parenthood shooting is due to a combination of mental illness and lack of education. I don't think it really matters which crazy ideology you pick, you can use it to justify your actions. And if the crazy, uneducated, people weren't shooting up a Planned Parenthood, they would be shooting up a theater, or a school, or any number of other places. The solution is to educate kids and to treat the mentally ill.

Why does this tiny group of Muslims commit hate crimes, while the vast majority do not? Piketty thinks it's income inequality, what's your explanation?

He's sort of right, but not in the way this article is going to be interpreted domestically (see comments in this thread for an example). Oil revenue in the Gulf countries has enabled wealthy elites to sponsor madrassas around the world, which are pivotal to the spread of Wahhabism, an arch-conservative branch of Islam. The Gulf elites are not the cause of Wahhabism (its roots go further back and it was more of a grassroots movement in the 1970s), but they are its most important promoters.

Another contributing factor is high birthrate in poor Muslim countries which has caused a bit of a demographic shock (the low-birthrate Europe has simultaneously benefitted and suffered from it, first importing immigrants from MENA as a source of cheap labor, and them having to deal with the disaffected and radicalized 2nd generation of the original immigrants, after failing to integrate them successfully into the mainstream society). It is no secret to anyone that poor uneducated people who are also highly religious tend to have more kids on average. This is one of the primary causes behind Islamisation of Turkey, formerly a staunchly secular country. Turkey is now, together with the Gulf countries, one of the major "sticks in the wheel" behind eradicating ISIS in Syria.