Education, economy not tied to terrorism

WASHINGTON, June 5 (UPI) -- There's no strong correlation between the state of the local economy, marital status or education and support for terrorism.

Neither does support for terrorism correlate with attitudes toward democracy or attitudes toward the United States.

The new draft from the U.S. Institute for Peace takes a fresh look at survey data collected in 2002 measuring support for terrorism in 14 countries with large Islamic populations.

The study does find, however, a correlation among those who believe Islam should or does play a large role in politics, those who perceive they have freedom of expression and those who believe the United States threatens Islam.

The study warns that "correlation" is not the same thing as causation: Adopting policies to discourage or encourage certain attitudes may not directly translate to a change in support for terrorism.

"It may well be that people support terrorism because they perceive there to be a U.S. threat to Islam," states the report.

But the reverse may be true as well, it says: Terrorists regularly espouse anti-U.S. views as part of their propaganda.

"It may be that people who support terrorism (for whatever reason) end up having strongly anti-American sentiments because they are persuaded by the terrorism's messages," the report said.

Similarly, it may be that people adopt anti-Americanism to justify their support for terrorism after the fact.

"Under either of these alternative interpretations, anti-Americanism does not cause support for terror, support for terror causes anti-Americanism," the report states.