And of course there are terrorists from generally well-off nations, too, such as the IRA. And as people in this thread have said, school shootings in the U.S. are not (unfortunetly) unheard of.
I don’t just mean “having what you want” as in material goods, though. Luxury doesn’t just mean actually doing whatever you want, it means being able to do whatever you want. If what you want is something extreme enough that you believe it’ll never occur through normal behaviour, then it just makes sense you’re more likely to turn to violence than in a situation where you do think you have a chance to change things.
Well, for one thing, there are a lot less South Asians and Middle Easterners here, at least percentage-wise.
For another, there simply aren’t any enclaves of, say, Pakistanis (as three of the four London bombers were) as there are in Britain. You just don’t see anywhere in America what you might in Brixton or Bradford or Leicester.
Most Muslims are relatively isolated from other Muslims, and that (this part is something of an assumption, though a reasonable one) means they’re more integrated and more likely to see themselves as American.
Anything I say here would be pure conjecture (be warned), but that never stopped me before. One of the real differences between the US and Canada, and I firmly believe this is to the US’s credit, is that Canada calls itself a mosaic, not a melting pot. All four of my grandparents were immigrants from eastern Europe and Russia during the period 1985-1905 and what they wanted above all was to be Americans, leave the old country behind. A prominent member of the Montreal Greek community told me that the problem with the Greek community was that they worked in Canada, but ate in Greece (his words). But it was clear in the context that what he meant was that they were not assimilating. And Canada seems to go out of its way to discourage assimilation. “We are a mosaic, not a melting pot”, they will say with pride. Well, I think it a serious mistake.
To get back to the OP, I suspect that nearly all Moslems born in the US think of themselves as Americans first. In Canada (and, presumably, Britain, France, Spain,…) they are Moslems first. (Obviously, Spain is rather different since Spanish/Arab history is, shall we say, a bit strained; so is Spanish/Jewish history, but the Jews have more modern concerms.)
That is a difference I can see. The suicide bombings in the Mid-East are typically done by martyrs for a religious cause. USA shootings, if they end in suicide at all, seem devoid of religion and more the work of deranged kids.
I’m not even going to argue that both are deranged, but the driving force seems different. Maybe each group is just following the crowd, keeping up with the Joneses? Copycats need something to copy.
Yeah. Like any ethnic group ever in America they tend to congregate together in larger communities. I think its much rarer for there to be lone muslins in the hinter lands than large groups of them living together.
These groups tend to be supportive of each other which means they tend to be more economically viable and stable. Low unemployment because if Siddig down the street needs a new night shift guy at the car wash he’s not going to put up an add in the paper, he’s going to go the Mosque and see who needs a job.
This isn’t an Islam-specific difference, but an American-specific one. I see myself as Irish first and British second, although I find it hard to explain why, or even what it means.