Success Quote by James Wolfensohn

Wolfensohn is doing something polite and incendiary at once: dragging “fundamentalism” out of the realm of theology and pinning it to material conditions. The verb “play on” is the tell. It frames extremist movements less as organic eruptions of belief than as opportunistic actors exploiting scarcity, humiliation, and the lack of institutional protection. Coming from a World Bank-era businessman, that’s not a neutral observation; it’s a policy argument smuggled into a diagnosis. If radicals thrive where people “have very little,” then development isn’t charity or technocratic housekeeping - it’s counterinsurgency by other means.

The phrasing also reveals a tightrope walk. He leads with “Muslim fundamentalism,” then quickly widens the aperture: “or fundamentalism in various areas and various religions.” That pivot reads like damage control, an attempt to avoid singling out Islam while still acknowledging the post-9/11 fixation on Muslim extremism that dominated elite conversations. It’s both a moral hedge and a strategic one: you can’t sell a global development agenda if your analysis sounds like civilizational blame.

Subtextually, Wolfensohn is challenging the comforting story that extremism is primarily about “ancient hatreds” or irrational zeal. He implies it’s rational in the way recruitment is rational: it offers identity, wages, belonging, revenge, a narrative that makes deprivation feel purposeful. The line doesn’t absolve fundamentalists; it indicts the conditions - and the global economic order - that leave large populations with too few options and too much rage to monetize.