To Defeat Islamic State, Treat Muslims Better

It is intuitively appealing to connect the number of fighters a country sends to the Islamic State with poverty and inequality. The more desperate and economically downtrodden people are, the more likely it is that they'll join a terrorist group, right? Wrong, recent research indicates: It's much more likely that the reasons for the Islamic State's recruitment success are cultural.

The terror militia has between 25,000 and 30,000 foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq. Disproportionate numbers of these radicals hail from Muslim nations: Tunisia alone is responsible for 6,000 of them, according to the Soufan Group.