Education, Income and Support for Suicide Bombings: Evidence from Six Muslim Countries

We examine the effect of educational attainment and income on support for suicide bombing among Muslim publics in six predominantly Muslim countries that have experienced suicide bombings: Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey. We make two contributions. First, we present a conceptual model, which has been lacking in the literature. Second, we consider attitudes towards two different targets of suicide bombings: civilians within the respondent's country and Western military and political personnel in Iraq. We find that the effect of educational attainment and income on support for suicide bombings varies across countries and targets. Our findings therefore draw attention to the difficulties of making generalizations about Muslim countries, and the importance of distinguishing between targets of suicide bombings. (Contains 15 tables, 1 figure, and 13 notes.)