ABSTRACT
The proliferation of strategic weapons has a home, it is among Muslims, especially those living in the Middle East. There is no direct connection between faith and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The conventional view becomes virtual article of faith in the Middle East and the West that poverty has caused the surge in fundamentalist Islam that has so wracked the Muslim world, and only its relief will cause fundamentalism to subside. Even fundamentalists themselves accept the connection between poverty and radical Islam. If poverty does cause fundamentalist Islam, then economic growth is the solution. Fundamentalist Islam not only appears not to result from poverty, but it may in fact gain in appeal as Muslim societies become wealthier. In a sense, this fits a universal pattern, for the historical record shows that peoples become active politically only when they reached a fairly decent level of economic welfare. Revolutions take place only when a substantial enough middle class exists.
