Islamist militants were educated urban professionals from modest provincial origins

Evidence

One study of the militant leaders of Egyptian Islamist groups found they had five major characteristics, which appear to be typical of Islamists in other countries. They were young, overwhelmingly in their twenties and thirties. Eighty percent were university students or university graduates. Over half came from elite colleges or from the intellectually most demanding fields of technical specialization such as medicine and engineering. Over 70 percent were from lower middle-class, “modest, but not poor backgrounds,” and were the first generation in their family to get higher education. They spent their childhoods in small towns or rural areas but had become residents of large cities. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 307

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the profile of revolutionary cadres in other contexts — urban, educated, first-generation mobile youth — echoing patterns described across revolutionary movements from France to Russia and Iran.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that radicalization runs through technical elites (engineering, medicine) rather than the marginal or dispossessed overturns a core liberal assumption connecting education with moderation and poverty with extremism.