MANHASSET, N.Y. " Is there a thread that ties engineers to Islamic terrorism?
There certainly is, according to Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog at Oxford University, who recently published a paper titled, "Engineers of Jihad." The authors call the link to terrorism "the engineer's mindset."
The sociology paper published last November, which has been making rounds over the Internet and was recently picked up by The Atlantic, uses illustrative statistics and qualitative data to conclude that there is a strong relationship between an engineering background and involvement in a variety of Islamic terrorist groups. The authors have found that graduates in subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the Muslim world. The authors also note that engineers, alone, are strongly over-represented among graduates who gravitate to violent groups.
However, contrary to popular speculation, it's not technical skills that make engineers attractive recruits to radical groups. Rather, the authors pose the hypothesis that "engineers have a 'mindset' that makes them a particularly good match for Islamism," which becomes explosive when fused by the repression and vigorous radicalization triggered by the social conditions they endured in Islamic countries.
But what is the engineer's mindset?
The authors call it a mindset that inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions.
A past survey in the United States has already shown that the proportion of engineers who declare themselves to be on the right of the political spectrum is greater than any other disciplinary groups--such as economists, doctors, scientists, and those in the humanities and social sciences.
The authors note that the mindset is universal.
Whether American, Canadian or Islamic, they pointed out that a disproportionate share of engineers seem to have a mindset that makes them open to the quintessential right-wing features of "monism" (why argue where there is one best solution) and by "simplism" (if only people were rational, remedies would be simple).
You will note that those most "prone" to terrorism are best described as "objective", the same mindset that overthrew mysticism, tyranny and achieved the Renaissance (birth of Western Civilization). These people and heretical ideas were also called "terrorists". So, now our civilization is imploding, being steered mainly by misguided ideas from the humanities which deny basic human nature and class us all into groups, fighting for dominance over others, denying the right to freedom, being left alone and survival for ALL people.
It is beyond dispute that engineers are high contributers to our civilization. This is for the simple reason that we have knowledge, which I define as: "knowing the immutable relationship between action and consequence in a defined environment, with no exceptions". Or, the laws of nature do not lie and therefore can be used as a standard of TRUTH.
Unfortunately, we (engineers and other objective persons) are stuck with having to submit to ignorance, political, management, ecoonomic and social, in what appears to be an accelerating dark age.
So, what happens to builders of civilization, when confronted with destroyers of civilization? What happens when the destroyers are so arrogant that they believe they can define reality?
I, for one believe that it is our moral duty as engineers to try to influence a civilization which appears to be bent on self-destruction, ironically, using the power, tools and technology we have ourselves provided to fools.
Now, to the "Terrorist Engineers". It is just a choice of methodology. These poor souls have been driven over the edge and concluded that fact and reason is pointless in dealing with their oppressors. They have chosen plan "B".
There is a way out, but, reason is required and appears to be lacking.
http://www.nazisociopaths.org/modules/article/view.article.php/c1/34
Bill Ross,
Ottawa, Canada
Hello,
the article above is oversimplifying, and what about the title which just reverses the argument!!! It is about the terrorists considered having an engineering mindset, about engineers being terrorists!
Now, what about reading the study itself? I browsed through it and I still think the authors might have a point in noticing the high proportion of highly educated people, and especially of engineers among these known terrorists.
If anybody cares about reading it (follow the link
http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers%20of%20Jihad.pdf
), he/she will see that the study itself does not imply that "engineers are terrorists" nor that "muslims are terrorists" in any way, nor would I imply it, because this is false to facts.
I stand equally against two things:
- primitive bashing on "muslims", "islamists", etc. and identifying them all to "terrorists"
- politically-correctedness which hampers any critical speech and rational discourse about islam or other issues.
I am also against HA55AN who says these studies do not good and should not been spread. The article itself (above) is sensationalist, not the study - just read it.
Please keep your heads cool! Just to make a point, I quote from the study (p.36):
"How can we explain the over-representation of engineers?
The vast majority of engineers in Islamic countries did _not_ join violent movements,
and our account does not aim to explain why certain engineers rather than others
became radicalized."
Now having accepted there is an unusually high proportion of engineers among the terrorists who describe themselves as "islamic", where could that come from? That's where the study becomes interesting, but I leave you to read it (pages from 48).
As a conclusion, yes the article at the top of this page just does not have its place on this website being "tabloidistc" and simplistic.
regards to all,
A non-muslim western engineer who backpacked in muslim countries.
Hello,
this article should be published in a tabloid and not in a respectable newspapers.
the argumentation is really for guys looking for scandals and not for news.
Regards,
A muslim engineer (I hope that it is OK)
The more we catagorize, and try to understand, the further we get away from the source of the problem. Engineers are not terrorists. Muslims are not terrorists. Thats great that there might be a correlation, but articles like this don't do us any good when we have yet to understand the source. Publishing this type of "social research" is ridiculous because it only makes people more prejudice and more apt to stereotypes. There are thousands, if not millions of Muslims living in America AND working as Engineers. How would an article like this break the stereotype of Muslims being terrorists? It doesn't. In fact, this article only fuels the fire, and makes those hard working, well deserving American Muslims more uncomfortable in the work place....
Is this what you need to do to get a paper into the news?
Wow!
This reminds me of that other statistical study of burgers and stress that concluded that burgers are a likely cause for stress, instead of the other way around...
They should rather study something like liberal arts, or business administration.
One thing is sure: the mindset of whomever wrote that paper has as much common sense as those terrorists they are studying.
1) Lot of amalgams:
- Terrorism = islamic terrorism !!
- Islam = Radicalism
- Islam is a nationality !!! from article :"Whether American, Canadian or Islamic, ..."
2) No logical reasoning:
talking about engineer mindset in general and making conclusion about muslims
3) simplism in making quick and irrelevant conclusions from statistics:
Statistics show a majority of engineers in islamic terrorist groups and the gays conclude that muslim engineers have terrorist mindset!! THIS IS AS SILLY AND NON SENSE AS saying: Statistics show that 99% of pedophiles are non-muslim Americans, and I conclude that non-muslim Americans are pedophile mindset !!!
definitely this is again and again a quite silly and fake paper trying desperately to be interesting and look smart by surfing on the wave of writing garbage about islam...
Finally I would make a last conclusion:
Regarding this article, it is statiscally proven now that non brilliant minds could exist in brilliant places like Oxford ;-)
I find this information interesting and can see the possibility of a more rigid mindset in engineers than other disciplines, BUT I applaud Ahmad Nasser for speaking out. We must always be careful of generalized characterizations of any group. This article made the jump from "Islamic terrorist groups" to Islam in general with the statement, "... the authors pose the hypothesis that "engineers have a 'mindset' that makes them a particularly good match for Islamism," which becomes explosive when fused by the repression and vigorous radicalization...". Violence is not a true representation of Islam and all Islamic people any more than it is a true representation of Christianity and all Christians even though there are militant and terrorist groups who claim emphatically (and sometimes violently) to be Christians. Any group can become victim to misrepresentation when an extremist faction attaches themselves to it. It is up to each of us to recognize the difference.
I was not expecting EETimes to stoop to this level. I am more dissapointed that you would even publish this on your website.You grab a few buzzwords like"Holy War","Jihad","Islamic Terrorist" and you try to make case for the possible link between being an Engineer and being a terrorist. Such stereotyping of a religious group made of over 1.5billion people has no place in the Engineering community.
It's enough that we have many misconceptions about Islam and Muslims in the media and political arena, we don't need this here.
Sincerely,
Ahmad Nasser
As an engineer, I'm apparently in the minority. I have yet to develop an urge to behead people, kill innocent women and children or to use mentally challenged individuals as suicide bombers. What's wrong with my mindset?
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