"It's a mistake to assume that Islamists always come from the slums. Indeed, many come from affluent families but for some reason just couldn't manage to integrate into Western society, even though they had good opportunities for advancement"
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Schily’s line is less a sociological finding than a political corrective: stop blaming poverty alone, start scrutinizing belonging. By rejecting the convenient “slums make extremists” story, he redirects attention from material deprivation to the more combustible terrain of identity, recognition, and perceived humiliation. The move is rhetorically savvy because it quietly inoculates policy against a one-note welfare solution; if radicalization can occur in comfort, then the problem must be cultural, psychological, or ideological - and therefore a matter for policing, education, and integration regimes.
The subtext is sharper: Western societies can offer “good opportunities” and still be experienced as closed clubs. Schily frames the failure to “integrate” as something the individual “couldn’t manage,” a phrasing that shifts agency - and blame - toward the would-be extremist. Yet the sentence also contains an uneasy admission: integration is not automatic even with money and credentials. Affluence can buy access but not acceptance; it can even heighten the sting of being treated as perpetual outsider. That “for some reason” signals both uncertainty and impatience, a political stance that treats radicalization as willful estrangement rather than a response to discrimination, foreign policy grievances, or community dynamics.
Context matters. As a German interior minister associated with post-9/11 security politics, Schily is speaking into a European debate that oscillates between social-program explanations and hardline assimilation demands. His quote sits neatly inside the era’s governing tension: liberal democracies want proof that opportunity works, but also need a story that justifies surveillance and tougher integration expectations when it doesn’t.
The subtext is sharper: Western societies can offer “good opportunities” and still be experienced as closed clubs. Schily frames the failure to “integrate” as something the individual “couldn’t manage,” a phrasing that shifts agency - and blame - toward the would-be extremist. Yet the sentence also contains an uneasy admission: integration is not automatic even with money and credentials. Affluence can buy access but not acceptance; it can even heighten the sting of being treated as perpetual outsider. That “for some reason” signals both uncertainty and impatience, a political stance that treats radicalization as willful estrangement rather than a response to discrimination, foreign policy grievances, or community dynamics.
Context matters. As a German interior minister associated with post-9/11 security politics, Schily is speaking into a European debate that oscillates between social-program explanations and hardline assimilation demands. His quote sits neatly inside the era’s governing tension: liberal democracies want proof that opportunity works, but also need a story that justifies surveillance and tougher integration expectations when it doesn’t.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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