Muslim Clerics Turn Jihad Supporters For Job Security
From The Economist, a study by Harvard's Rich Nielsen found, by studying the output and biographies of 91 Salafi clerics and almost 400 of their students, that the main factors behind radicalism in Muslim clerics are not poverty or their teachers' ideology but the poor quality of their academic and educational networks:

Such contacts determined the clerics' ability to get a good job as imam or teacher in state institutions. In Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where most of the 91 came from, the government has long co-opted religious institutions. Those who failed to land a job were more likely to avow violence as a tool for political change.

The figures are startling. Clerics with the best academic connections had a 2-3% chance of becoming jihadist. This rose to 50% for the badly networked.

Mr Nielsen reckons he has proved causation by controlling for other factors--eliminating the chance that those more inclined to extremism shun state jobs, for example. "It's about a glass ceiling," he says. "Clerics who don't get positions must compete to appeal to an audience. Jihadist views are a way of making themselves appear credible, since there is often a high cost associated with it, such as prison time."