There was an article by Paul Blustein in the January 26, 2002 Washington Post "Unrest a Chief Product of Arab Economies" that I lost the link to. He wrote:

It is not poverty that drives their discontent so much as an economy that provides few chances for interesting work and upward mobility. While many countries in Asia and Latin America have taken advantage of Western money, technology and markets as a means to fashion dynamic economies, much of the Arab world remains stuck in a time warp, with large state bureaucracies weighing down the private sector and government service offering the most appealing option to much of the workforce.

He writes how there are simply not enough jobs. Unemployment "is particularly prevalent among the relatively well-educated." So much for poverty giving rise to terrorism.