A Successful Way to Prevent Future Terrorist Attacks

"On paper, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — the twenty-three year-old who tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas day with 80g of PETN crystals in his trousers — had everything to live for. He was the son of a wealthy Nigerian financier, he had a good education, studying mechanical engineering at the University College London and living in a luxury apartment. His religious observance — he was the chairman of the university's Islamic Society — could also have been a source of inspiration and stability to him, as it is to so many of us. Instead it turned him into an attempted murderer.

One of the questions I have heard most often recently has been 'how could a young man in his position want to do it?' How, given all his chances in life, when he had every opportunity to make so much of himself? These are natural questions to ask. But they are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what drives young men to become radicals."

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