You don't live in a mud hut with no utilities and no hope of ever bettering yourself. They sell Religion as a way to paradise by blowing up people and getting a first class ticket to heaven and dozens of virgins to attend your every need.
It may sound far fetched to us but to people who are likely to die young of sickness and malnutrition its not that hard of a sell.
That is why I applauded Bush's decision to invade Iraq and Nation Build. If you change their economy and infrastructure to where people aren't living on the edge of starvation and can better themselves that nonsense extremist crap can't take hold. But it will take years of work to change. The Nutjob fanatics know it and will try and destroy all efforts to stop Iraq becoming a capitalist Economy with Free Elections.
Just for your information, this guy is filthy rich...so that “poor” of an excuse is mute on this one! And I don’t recall osama bin laden being too poor either.