Islamist movements recruit modernized youth, not traditional rural populations

Evidence

By and large those movements do not get much support from rural elites, peasants, and the elderly. Like fundamentalists in other religions, Islamists are overwhelmingly participants in and products of the processes of modernization. They are mobile and modern-oriented younger people drawn in large part from three groups. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 306

Categorization

• CANDY: A compact, counterintuitive fact for conversation: political Islam is a movement of the modern, educated young — not the rural poor or elderly.