The devil makes work for idle hands — and it’s striking how much support Jihad finds among idle Westerners. According to one poll, more people in France support ISIS than people in Gaza do.

In a fascinating portrait of Aqsa Mahmood, a Scottish public school girl who is believed to have volunteered to become a Jihad bride, journalist Jamie Dettmer makes the following observation:

“Mahmood is one of at least 50 British women and girls who are thought by security experts to have joined ISIS in Syria, although some argue the number maybe higher. Her parents, through their lawyer, insist that as a middle-class woman and at one time a successful student she is not a ‘stereotypical’ case. But many male and female Western ISIS and al-Qaeda recruits come from middle-income backgrounds and are often fairly well educated — the 9/11 hijackers were.”

Middle-class, well educated, tech-savvy. We are often led to believe that fundamentalism is the product of social marginalisation caused by globalization. Economic change probably does explain some of it, but it doesn’t begin to explain why grade-A students raised in mock-Tudor mansions join the Jihad.

A more psychologically compelling answer might be alienation: Jihad as the symptom of an existential crisis. A number of smart American conservatives have been exploring the theme, starting with the very smart Michael Brendan Dougherty:

“As long as Western liberalism has existed, it has been found charmless or contemptible by some men. Western liberalism asks men to be governed by laws made by mere men and their politicking. It demands of most men that they be mere citizens. It urges thrift, prudence, and industry. This is not for everyone.”

The way Michael describes it, it’s probably not for me either. But then it takes a traditionalist conservative to see the flaws in liberalism to understand why some people might reject a way of life that is so grindingly materialist and empty.

Yes, I’m afraid it is. A system that rejects transcendental values, that seeks to solve all conflict through a mix of negotiation and therapy, and which always tries to satisfy the lowest common denominator is not a system that poets would die for — and, so, it can be a struggle to live in if you have a low tolerance for mundanity.

Charles Cooke (a libertarian) notes with sadness: “One reason that liberty can be difficult to preserve is that it so often lacks the romance, the heroism, and the sense of involvement that so many appear to crave.” Matt K Lewis adds: “Going back to ancient times, young men have craved honor and glory. But when there’s no communal higher calling, and no Wild West frontier for those afflicted with wanderlust to conquer, they’re left empty. Playing video games isn’t enough.”

Revolutionary movements “offer visions of justice that are larger and deeper than some dirty court system,” Michael Brendan Dougherty explains. “And the struggle in establishing them holds out prizes that are extremely rare for men of the West: glory, martyrdom, and heroism. Revolution beats a life of traffic tickets, creditors, bosses, and — if you’re especially lucky — angst about real-estate.”

Alienation from Western materialism being expressed through revolution is far from new. It demands comparison with the urban guerrilla movements of the 1970s — all of which were predominantly drawn from middle-class kids who saw their parents’ success as a form of collaboration with capitalism and fascism. Is there any real difference between, on the one hand, Mahmood allegedly abandoning professional achievement and the life of a liberated Western woman for Jihad, and, on the other hand, Ulrike Meinhof of the Red Army Faction abandoning her children and sparkling literary career for a life of assassinations and bombings in the 1970s German terrorist underground? None, except the contrasting ideological manifestations of their malaise.

Aside from bourgeois angst, Seventies Marxism and contemporary Jihad are linked by (a) an obsession with America/Israel as a nexus of capital and military power that is responsible for everything wrong with the world, and (b) an unrealistic sense of their ability to do anything about it. They are, in reality, grubby little criminals poking at the system with a blunt dagger. But they believe they are heralds of a New Order. They all suffer from the arrogance of youth.

This existential explanation of why some Westerners turn to Jihad helps us to draw a thick line of separation between legitimate Islam and Islamism — between an ancient faith practised by millions and something motored by the unhappiness of individuals.