Contrary to the widely-held Western belief that terrorism arises when impressionable, impoverished teens look towards a future without hope, Islamic terrorists tend to come from the better-educated, wealthier segments of society. Investor’s Business Daily reports on a Gallup poll of some 10,000 members of the Muslim world, saying that “[t]he most radical among Muslims — those who support jihad — earn more and stay in school longer.”

IBD cites anecdotal evidence that bears this out:

• Bin Laden, the son of a Saudi billionaire, studied engineering.
• His deputy Ayman al-Zawahri is an eye surgeon.
• Mohamed Atta, the son of a lawyer, earned a master’s degree in urban planning.
• 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed graduated from an American college with an engineering degree.
• Flight 93 pilot Ziad Jarrah’s father is a Beirut bureaucrat who drove a Mercedes and put his son through prep school.

Some of the London bombers had college degrees. One was a schoolteacher. Another’s father owned a store.

Many of the Saudi hijackers were the best and brightest in their towns. Hani Hanjour, who crashed the plane into the Pentagon, studied English at the University of Arizona. Family members were wealthy merchants from Taif, a resort city in Saudi Arabia.

Marxism made popular the idea that all political turmoil was the result of clashes between socioeconomic classes. Although Marxism ultimately failed, that core tenet became the default thinking of many Westerners.

We perceive the motivations of the Jihadists through a distinctly Western lens. We’re projecting our beliefs onto them, and assuming that their behavior must be motivated by what our teachers taught us was the source of all conflict. Marxism may not have destroyed the West economically, but it could destroy the West psychologically, by preventing us from seeing the threat as it is.

Just because we learned in school that all conflict results from friction between the classes doesn’t make it so. This conflict stems from a profound cultural difference, one that can’t be papered over by feel-good policies like increased foreign aid.

Take Egypt, for example. Since 1975, Egypt has gotten well over $50 billion in U.S. foreign aid. Has this money made Egypt any less beholden to the Jihadists?

Not if the treatment of Abdel Kareem Soliman is any indication. This past week, the Egyptian blogger was sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and the president of Egypt. An abridgment of freedom that—in the U.S.—would send lawyers scurrying to television cameras was instead met with a shrug:

As the court hearing ended, the media moved to the street in front of the courthouse and started interviewing people about what they thought of the trial. With the exception of human rights activists and bloggers, the Egyptian public seemed satisfied with the verdict, if not disappointed it wasn’t longer.

Many people expressed the view that Abdel Kareem should be killed for what he wrote, and each of them shared their preferred way to kill him: stabbing, hanging, and of course, the classic beheading. One actually asked a lawyer if it was legal to now kill him, since this verdict clearly brands him as an apostate, and the Sharia punishment for an apostasy is death. People were talking about killing him in the most casual manner, as if he was no longer a human being to them.

As I said, today’s conflict with the Jihadists arises from a profound cultural difference, not from America’s past foreign policy or failure to hand out even more money around the globe. But for some reason, many of us prefer to point the finger back at ourselves and ignore the real source of the problem. Simply put, finding fault with other cultures just isn’t politically correct.

But in war, refusing to understand the enemy is suicidal.