Islamist movements drew their active membership from modern urban professionals, not peasants

Evidence

While students and intellectuals formed the militant cadres and shock troops of Islamist movements, urban middle-class people made up the bulk of the active membership. In some degree these came from what are often termed “traditional” middle-class groups: merchants, traders, small business proprietors, bazaaris. These played a crucial role in the Iranian Revolution and provided significant support to fundamentalist movements in Algeria, Turkey, and Indonesia. To an even greater extent, however, fundamentalists belonged to the more “modern” sectors of the middle class. Islamist activists “probably include a disproportionately large number of the best-educated and most intelligent young people in their respective populations,” including doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, teachers, civil servants. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 308

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the profile of Iranian Revolution supporters and connects to broader patterns of how modernization produces its own radical counter-elites, resonant with Milgrom’s work on how institutions form within communities.