Here’s an interesting and important six-minute video in which Martin Kramer discusses the connection between birth rates and extremism. His commentary on his talk is here. (Kramer is a scholar of the Middle East at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Shalem Center, and Harvard ‘s National Security Studies Program.)  His thesis is that “superfluous young men” fuel radical movements, and the growth of Muslim extremism is a function of the birth rate in those societies. He credits this idea to Gunnar Heinsohn and links to this article of his, titled Islamism and War: the demographics of rage. His thesis:

Since 2002, I have been warning that the increasing turmoil in Afghanistan is due to factors other than religious fanaticism or abject poverty. Those factors have always been there – and in times when there was no substantial civil insurrection. Instead, the blame should be placed on Afghanistan’s baby-boom, which has created half a century of “youth bulges” in the country’s population. The study of history shows clearly that when 30% or more of a nation’s male inhabitants are in the 15-29 age bracket, the result is chaos, violence and upheaval.

Here are Afghanistan’s numbers, and a critically important point for those who want to help poor countries:

In the coming decades, close to 500,000 Afghani [he means Afghan] males will reach fighting age each year. Almost all of these young men want to prove themselves in the traditional warrior spirit of their homeland. Since 1945, every Afghan father who has retired from the battlefield has left his unfinished fighting to three or four sons. Almost none of these sons can find a legal job, i.e. in opium-free agriculture or within the army and police units financed with western money. But these aid measures continue to provide better food, education, and medical care than ever.

This is a marvellous humanitarian achievement. Yet, no combination could be more explosive. Peace activists promise that the victory over hunger will also bring victory over war, and triumph for democracy. Youth-bulge research, however, shows again and again that when hunger is not an overwhelming issue and jobs remain scarce, the killing starts in earnest. Why? Because humanitarian measures have made millions of sons stronger and better educated. It is easy to multiply rice bowls and textbooks. It is impossible to do the same with careers. Moreover, for bread, people will beg; for positions in society, they will fight. And fighting offers a tempting choice for some 350,000 angry young men out of the half million coming of age every year.

In short, aid that makes people’s lives better and increases the population, without a growing economy, leads to killing and terror. I don’t think either Kramer or Heinsohn makes enough of the dysfunctional economies in the countries where Muslim extremism is rife. There have been times in America’s history when there were a great many young people — in colonial times, for example, though I don’t know if 30% of the males were between 15 and 29. Come to think of it, we did have a revolution, didn’t we? But that was led by older men, and was not characterized by violence and terrorism.  Almost all Muslim countries, maybe all, have economies where opportunities are few; mobility is limited; if there is wealth, it belongs to the government as in Saudi Arabia.

This is not necessarily a function of Islam, since there have been entrepreneurial Muslims from the beginning of Islam, and there are such now, even in economically rigid countries. It is more a problem of entrenched interests and corruption, and, relatedly, crippling regulations and laws. And western aid, of course, usually goes to governments, with very little going directly to encourage entrepreneurship (like the micro-loans we hear so much about but which are a minuscule portion of international aid).

(I don’t want to dwell on polygamy since it is almost a side issue here, but Kramer mentions bin Laden as being the 17th child out of 60-some children his father had by multiple wives. There was plenty of money in the family, but being one of 60-plus offspring could make a person feel insignificant and want to increase his importance and visibility, in a society with limited mobility.)

There are two connections to refugees in this situation. First and obviously, the turmoil the superfluous young men create is what has fueled many of the refugee problems around the world. And second, we have perhaps seen this situation in the U.S. in microcosm, as Somali young men have felt themselves without opportunity and unimportant and have sought out war and violence as the path to glory.

This demographic explanation doesn’t cover all situations, of course. Note the Muslim doctors and other professionals who have been involved in terrorism in the west. And some of the Minneapolis Somalis who joined the jihad were doing just fine in their quest for upward mobility here. Yet the Muslim birth rates in Europe are quite high, and the economies there are fairly stagnant with Muslims generally doing worse than the rest of the population, so there are fertile demographic conditions there as well. This is a complicated subject which I have only touched on, and I welcome comments from anyone with more facts.