Cultural dimensions explain why militant Muslim fundamentalists feel threatened by the West.

Evidence

For the last two generations one group, militant Muslim fundamentalists, has been responsible for more international terrorism than any other. There are many reasons for this, including historical, geo-political, and economic issues, but one basic reason is that they feel threatened by Western culture. Intergroup threat theory can shed some light on why they feel so threatened. Muslim culture is collectivistic, high in power distance, high on cultural tightness and uncertainty avoidance, emphasizes high context communication, and is characterized by mistrust of other groups. These aspects of Muslim culture may make fundamentalist Muslims particularly prone to feeling threatened by other cultures, especially Western culture because it is so dramatically different. — Walter G. Stephan, Oscar Ybarra, Kimberly Rios Morrison, Intergroup Threat Theory, 12

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interests in cultural signaling and identity politics; a culturally-determinist causal account of terrorism is provocative.
• SEED: Potential essay: how the same cultural-dimension framework Huntington’s clash-of-civilizations used can cut against or for that thesis.

Related

• Civilizational confidence asymmetry drives Muslim-Western conflict (similarity 0.82)
• Muslims were disproportionately involved in intergroup violence relative to their share of world population. (similarity 0.81)
• Anti-Muslim sentiment is shifting from terror fear to cultural-threat framing (similarity 0.81)
• Muslims across political divides share a belief they are culturally distinct from the West (similarity 0.81)
• The clash of civilizations thesis persists because it justifies advancing Western interests. (similarity 0.79)
• Culture talk explains terrorism as flowing from cultural essence rather than economics or politics. (similarity 0.79)
• Emphasizing essential cultural difference feeds the clash-of-civilizations frame (similarity 0.79)
• Huntington attributes complex world conflicts to unchanging civilizational essences (similarity 0.79)
• Violent extremism signals cultural collapse, not traditional cultural resurgence (similarity 0.79)
• War on Terror racism treats Muslim culture as an immutable natural cause of violence (similarity 0.78)
• Critical multiculturalism links culture to power and antiracism (similarity 0.78)
• Anti-Muslim prejudice now frames Muslims as cultural rather than security threats. (similarity 0.78)