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

That's a bit generalizing. This paper[1] talks about the over-representation of engineers in violent Islamic organizations. Specifically talks about how there are fewer engineers in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia versus Palestine and other countries in the same type of groups. There seems to be /some/ correlation between economic opportunity and sub-segments of the population joining these types of groups.

[1] http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/2007-10.pdf

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

Accepting it doesn't really answer much.

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

Yes, and if we accept this, we are faced with the question of what makes particular people in particular times and places likely to accept and act on messages like this, and what circumstances enable them to be successful when they do. Daesh isn't the only group to promote an ideology like this based on interpretation of some ancient religious text (nor is the phenomenon of groups trying, or even succeeding, in doing that limited to the Middle East, or the Islamic world, nor are the Quran the only text which has been used in this role.)

Nor, for that matter, was Daesh (though it had a different name!) new to this when they first started achieving real success -- they had similar goals and interpretation of Islam before they became known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, when they were known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, and when they rejected their affiliation with al-Qaeda to style themselves first as "the Islamic State in Iraq", then "the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant", and finally "the Islamic State".

> 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.

Women's health clinic attacks by violent religious extremists with an overt religious motivation are a recurring pattern in the US; assuming that another such attack is part of that pattern rather than breaking with it is not exactly a giant leap. In any case, the ideology behind the attack and the conditions which made the attacker susceptible to adopting that ideology are distinct issues.

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

Actually, lots of people on the left -- the only people who generally acknowledge the overt ideological motivation of violence of Christian religious extremists -- point to social factors like income inequality and persistent poverty as among the factors that make people susceptible to that extremism (as well as pointing to deliberate acts by certain political elites to fan that extremism and channel it for political ends as contributing to the uptake of the extremism.) These positions are complementary, rather than incompatible.

Just read the article - the Washington post did quite a bit of editorializing.

> Le tout-sécuritaire ne suffira pas

Translated roughly as "Total security will not suffice" (or the "state security apparatus" will not suffice). His argument isn't that inequality created ISIS. But rather that:

> C’est une évidence   : le terrorisme se nourrit de la poudrière inégalitaire moyen-orientale, que nous avons largement contribuée à créer. Daech, «  Etat islamique en Irak et au Levant  », est directement issu de la décomposition du régime irakien, et plus généralement de l’effondrement du système de frontières établi dans la région en 1920.

He says the evidence shows that terrorism preys on the "powder keg" of middle-eastern inequality, and that the invasion of Iraq (and destruction of the previous regime) lead to the creation of ISIS. Not exactly ground breaking.

Anyhow, I'm not going to translate the whole thing, but near the end this:

> Rien ne peut excuser cette dérive sanguinaire, machiste et pathétique.

"Nothing can excuse this bloodthirsty, masochist and pathetic act"

> Tout juste peut-on noter que le chômage et la discrimination professionnelle à l’embauche (particulièrement massive pour les personnes qui ont coché toutes les bonnes cases en termes de diplôme, expérience, etc., comme l’ont montré des travaux récents; voir également ici) ne doivent pas aider.

"We can only note that unemployment and discrimination don't help"

> C’est par le développement social et équitable que la haine sera vaincue.

"It's through social development and equality that hate will be defeated"

Again, not ground breaking. It took the west several reformations of our culture/religion, and 2 world wars to finally get our heads out of our proverbial asses. Also, social welfare has played a huge part in the rise of a real 'middle class'. We aren't as capitalist as we think, and 'socialism' is part of the reason inequality isn't as bad today as in 1900. But, as the data shows, inequality is on the rise yet again (as conservative politics are also on the rise).

You seem to think everyone's decency has a price, especially poor people. Pretty depressing thought but thankfully not true. Otherwise people would be blowing themselves up all over the world, including the US. Instead it is almost entirely the members of one death cult.

I am not disagreeing with you here, but what you are saying doesn't discount that income inequality could still lead desperate people into Islamic (or more generally religious, or even more generally, ideological) extremism. Blind faith thrives among the poor and uneducated.