The Washington Post reports that Donald Rumsfeld has argued that their inherent laziness makes Muslims susceptible to terrorist propaganda.

In an internal memo from May 2004 the then US Defense Secretary wrote that oil wealth had detached Muslims “from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world”.

“Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed,” he wrote. “An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism.”