This paper explains why some Sunni Muslim clerics adopt the ideology of militant Jihad while others do not. I argue that clerics adopt or reject Jihadi ideology because of career incentives generated by the structure of cleric educational networks. Future clerics with strong connections to prominent teachers in Islamic academic networks are able to leverage these connections to improve their prospects on the cleric job market. Clerics with the endorsement of influential teachers are more likely to gain access to academic positions at Islamic universities, appointments within government ministries, opportunities for “shariah consulting,” and other prestigious options. Clerics with few connections to teachers will be disadvantaged in the competition for elite cleric jobs. If these clerics fail to successfully enter the academic track, they search for other ways to build a career that uses their human capital investments in the Islamic sciences. There are many options available to these clerics, but with the traditional academic career closed, some clerics find a move toward radical Jihadi ideology attractive. Jihadism is a viable career option for several reasons, but one may be that it allows clerics to draw financial support from constituencies of lay Muslims who distrust the regime-sanctioned clerics. Jihadist clerics are better able to attract the support of these constituents because their Jihadist positions credibly differentiate them from regime-supported clerics. I argue that the divergence of these two pathways is one key to understanding cleric radicalization. I provide evidence of these dynamics by collecting and analyzing 27,124 fatwas, articles, and books written by 101 contemporary clerics. Using statistical natural language processing, I measure the extent to which each cleric adopts Jihadi ideology in their writing. I then show that the structure of academic networks and the subsequent career paths taken by clerics predict cleric ideology. Clerics that have the most teachers have only a three percent chance of becoming Jihadist, while clerics with no academic connections have an almost 50 percent chance. These results align with observations from the field. Interviews at al-Azhar University in Cairo confirm that students consider networks to be strongly predictive of future career options and that individuals without these options are more susceptible to extremist ideas. These results offer a provocative explanation for the adoption of Jihadism: that clerics' ideas are subtly but profoundly shaped by the interplay of educational, religious, and political institutions in the Middle East.