It's my understanding that Al Qaeda terrorists are often people who were in a set of circumstances that made them highly succeptible to propaganda - often illiterate, living in poverty and with few, if any, prospects for advancment. It is easy to manipulate the ignorant and disenfranchised.

No, that is completely wrong: the correlations are quite the opposite way, terrorists tend to be better educated and wealthier. Bin Laden is the most extreme possible example of that - he was a multimillionaire son of a billionaire!