Bill Clinton links extremism, lack of opportunity during Dubai speech

Dubai: Former US president Bill Clinton on Wednesday drew a link between extremism and lack of opportunity in the Middle East, telling students at the American University in Dubai (AUD) that suicide bombers are driven by a feeling they have more to gain in the afterlife than now.

Clinton told a packed basketball stadium at the American University in Dubai that people are driven to blow themselves up because they "believe they have more to gain in the next world than this one" and that "tomorrow is going to be just like yesterday."

"They believe that change is not possible through reasoned, common efforts," he said. "They believe that, absent some cataclysmic and destructive event, that tomorrow is going to be just like yesterday."

The former president and husband to the current US Secretary of State said this feeling is the biggest danger "in the Middle East and in the difficulties that the Palestinians and the Israelis are having today."

"If we keep going on where the Palestinians are absolutely convinced that tomorrow is going to be just like yesterday, it can have calamitous consequences not just for them, but for all the rest of you as well," he said.

In the talk, the former president praised the American-style university for offering young women the same chances as young men, drawing enthusiastic applause when he said such equality was "key to the future of the Middle East."

Clinton also highlighted the need promote education, equality and economic opportunity in fighting extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying "we cannot shoot our way out of the world's instability". 

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