Photo by Scott Atran
On Being – Scott Atran — Hopes and Dreams in a World of Fear
This is a 51 minute audio interview from Krista Tippett’s radio show on Public Radio. It was recorded before the rise of ISIS. I woke up to hearing this interview this morning while still in bed. It was on my radio alarm.
Scott Atran is an anthropologist who gives context to the motivation of living one’s dream based on fear or hope.
I found this interview very provocative and it got me thinking about what is offered to young people the world over.
Categories: Anthropology, Political economy, Science, Sociology, Terrorism
World News Forum 
This is an outstanding post. I’ve only had time to listen to the first half of this program, but I was immediately impressed by Professor Atran’s analysis. I’ve understood that it is not about religion. I’ve understood that it’s about economics. And I’ve understood that it’s about cultural identity and a sense of self worth and importance. But what I hadn’t fully appreciated before is the relative significance of these factors.
Consider these things. Consider the similarities between the Islamist extremists and the Mexican drug cartels in terms of organization and methods. Hezbollah has been heavily involved in the international drug trade and money laundering, as has the Taliban, for a very long time. The Italian Mafia has always been nominally Catholic. Are these groups about religion? About money? Or about cultural identity?
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This good interveiw casts a light on the social and cultural factors that creates the ground for breeding of terrorism,.
The analysis might the concern of Western people but it is too late to the people of the Middle East to be concerned at how and why some people want to be terrorists
People of the Middle East ‘and not of the West’ are suffering the severe consequences of terrorism, so they moved on to ask other vital questions like: How those terrorist groups sustain for long time ?
who supplies their huge needs of weapons and who pays for ltheir iving and for getting new recrautment?
Many of them are not even muslem and they don’t claim for particular demands after every indiscriminate killing of hundreds of innocents from all sects and ethnics in the middle east
Their conduct looks insane but it is not. They must be tools of other powerful entities beyond the scene
Taliban didn’t hear about Islam before 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan
Houthi movement in Yemen were not Shi”ites or even religous before the ninties.
A group of tribal youths founded Houthi movement in Sa’ada in 1991.
Gaddafi sent them millions to stirr riots on Saudian borders
Their founder ‘Badreddin al-Houthi’ fled to Iran and when he’s back he claimed that Houthis have become Shi’ites. Just like that
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