Holy War! Researchers say EEs have a 'terrorist mindset'

1/28/2008 1:45 PM EST

This article is appaling and non-sensical. Today in America we have the Republican right wing extrimist all living in heartland & South where the main source of income is farmering & cattle ranching. Majority of educated engineers (EE) reside across west coast, Califonia, Oregan and Washington state otherwise known as the land of Liberals. We also have the east coast Masachussets another land of liberal and engineers.

Where did these guys do their research and study? USA?

1/28/2008 1:52 PM EST

Not my experience. In fact sort of the opposite. Long time ago while working with a group of engineers developing hardware and software for an OS, I noticed alot of them were into music at various levels or another. I did a quick survey and found that many, many engineers on the project in fact were deeply and seriously into the arts. It was surprising given that I even feel into the trap of stereotyping engineers as geeks. Not so. But it makes sense. Engineering is a creative endeavor. The expression of that creativity is through a particular jargon which mystifies most people, and misinforms people about the field. But still, engineering is fundamentally about creation and imagination, and that urge toward creativity just doesn't stop at work. Of course I have run across rigid engineers, but less so than normal it seems to me.

1/28/2008 2:40 PM EST

Then as engineers I assume you've thoroughly read the originating article before making the criticisms you have in addition to the methods of data collection and analysis. And of course as engineers I'm sure you know that your personal experiences are considered anecdotal evidence and are not statistically relevant.

1/28/2008 4:39 PM EST

I think adding such an article to a publication like EETimes shows poor judgement. Such fringe and minimally researched opinions with sweeping statements like this should have no place in EETimes or perhaps I shouldn't be reading EETimes.

1/28/2008 5:08 PM EST

I believe that this article is not just inappropriate, but that it's
a bigoted libel against the entire engineering community, regardless
of the industry that's being served. To infer that any engineers are
Islamic terrorists simply because some engineers are right of center
as to their political beliefs is stupid, poorly documented, and an insult
to the intelligence of the newsletter's readers. In short, pure garbage
from what once was considered to be a decent trade publication.

1/28/2008 6:01 PM EST

Dear Respected Editor EEtimes,

I am an avid reader of your magazine since 8 years. I have never been so much "shocked", but after reading this report

Many points about this report can be questioned straight away: e.g. most people in the developing countries (including Muslim countries) aspire to become engineers/ doctors to have a better future. I do not see anywhere the report, the percentages of the engineers/scientist who resort to such antics

Also clearly missing in the report are the percentages of engineers and scientist who have actively educated their countrymen and brought their citzen out of ignorance !!

Terrorism is a already a very sensitive topic and I expect and hope that the hawk propoganda on both sides will not polarize the world further !!

Kind Regards,
Faisal Mateen (Pakistani Engineer working in Germany)

1/28/2008 7:12 PM EST

I am an engineer and have been one for close to 35 years. Reading this article filled me with outrage, as it seems to have done with a number of other readers. I just had to read the original paper to see what possible rationale could have resulted in a conclusion like this. First, this article over-sensationalizes the paper. They do NOT make the argument that engineers have a 'terrorist mindset'. The key observation that the paper depends on is some statistical evidence that Islamic radical groups have a much greater proportion of engineers than should be expected due to chance. Exploring the source of this correlation is legitimate. However, I can't let the article's authors completely off the hook as I had to grit my teeth reading through a few phrases such as "Before attempting to explain what’s ‘wrong’ with engineers, ...". Also, Their explation of conservative influence is amusing because their own statistics indicate that social sciences (e.g. sociology) have a distinct liberal bias. I also was not impressed with some of their metrics. For instance, an engineer's success was measured by publication only. My impression was that they were trying to characterize engineers based completely on available statistics and without much insight. Their conclusions seem like too much of a stretch, even if they haven't called all engineers terrorists. Their conclusions have a lot to do with the expectations of Islamic engineering graduates vs the realities of living under corrupt/ authoritarian regimes. Well, maybe. I give them a C+.

1/28/2008 7:29 PM EST

As an Engineer and former Broadcast Journalist from the USA, I'm unhappy to see some of the "Don't Tell Bad News" comments here.

READ the (very accessible) PDF first. At least read the Abstract...

I recently lived for 3 years in an African Muslim country. There was NO bad news in LaPress. I believe that was a bad long-term situation for the citizens of that country.

My wife is an Educator in International Schools, and I'm now living in "Communist China". I am very impressed here with the increasing openness and self-criticism of the Chinese society. Of course, I'm an old news-junky so I dig through many sources, some under or over the Great FireWall. But the Chinese young people I have met have a strong sense of freedom and an appreciation for Democracy. I believe that is because they are hearing, in recent years, more truth.

Islamic countries with a fundamentalist perspective are among the worst in the world in allowing free expression and unbiased news from "Outside". That, added to the language barrier, makes millions of people stay ignorant of the real larger world. THATS dangerous.

The real question is what makes ANY person want to blow up their oppressors or enemies??

Engineers like problems and ideas. If they are motivated, they will make excellent bombs. I possessed an Explosives License in New York at one time, but I was never motivated to hurt anyone.

Right after the first World Trade Center bombing, in which a poorly-assembled bomb still did damage, I was sitting in an IBM cafeteria drinking morning coffee with several fellow Engineers. One of the most brilliant ones, who is now an "IBM Fellow", said, "It's a good thing we're not the ones doing this stuff. 'Cause we'd be GOOD at it! "

We need to look at motivations, not just Engineers.

1/28/2008 10:02 PM EST

At first I was offended. Subsequently, I felt better, for two reasons.

First, I had to laugh at the author "Junko Yoshida". Is this a real name? He has a VERY appropriate first name: JUNK-o. LOL! In this poorly-written sensationalist article, the last paragraph has a spelling error. The proper spelling is monism, not "monoism". DUUUUH!! The mispelling tells us something interesting: either the author or the editor did not fully and carefully consider the article before making it avaliable to the engineering audience. From personal experience in being an engineer, there is absolutely nothing that could be found universally in engineers of all religious and non-religious categories as a kind of mindset that is akin to monism. If you know or check the definition of this word, it refers to everything being reduceable to a single principle or substance; thus, you know that it cannot be true with mathematics and phyics, the cornerstones of engineering. Math and physics have multitudes of rules, formulas and conditions for application to engineering. The sociology kids writing their paper only seem to be targeting Muslims for their discussion, and don't make a clear argument that any non-Muslims have a "terrorist mindset." So, I see that it's most likely a regional or unlikely coincidence for a small number of engineers who happen to be bent towards being terrorists. Shame on EETIMES for sending out this dumb Junko article.

1/29/2008 3:24 AM EST

Susceptibility to turn to violent groups, specially those that connect themselves to religion, is a malady common to all educated youth in our part of the world. Many people who turn to violent radical groups belong to young educated class (such as 9/11 hijackers), who having awareness of the injustices inflicted upon their fellow countrymen or coreligionists have a tendency to react angrily and become an easy prey for terrorist groups.

It is just a socio-economic coincidence that engineers form the single largest subgroup among people with college education in south asia and parts of middle east and thats the primary reason they are overrepresented in these groups.

However, in my experience there IS something in the engineers that makes them more likely to be on the right of political spectrum in general. Most engineers I know, tend to compartmentalize their knowledge and analytical abilities. While they are amazingly analytical and knowledgeable about their particular technology, they tend to be poorly informed in humanities, social sciences, and current affairs - where they are more likely to accept the conventional wisdom prevailing in their society.

1/29/2008 7:27 AM EST

When I first read this, I thought it was an April Fools joke come early.

The key to understanding the whole thing is one little phrase: "uses illustrative statistics and qualitative data." In other words, the authors had an idea and went looking for data to support it. Had they been intellectually honest, they would have used quantitative data (like an engineer).

My guess is that one of them got in a dispute with an engineer and, lacking any way to combat the engineer's superior intellect, lashed out at all engineers.

Or maybe they wanted to prove their significance by having something published.

In any case, they sound more like little kids trying to one-up somebody than intelligent social researchers.

I only hope those two didn't waste any tax dollars on their "research."

1/29/2008 10:03 AM EST

Hi,
I am a graduate both in Sociology and EE and I found this kind of simplification quite laughable. May I add that I am from an Islamic background too? This kind of study ignores the main fact that in these educational systems where radicals are raised, Science, Technology and Medicine are the subject areas of the most gifted students. So we could as well establish a correlation between Radicalism and IQ. But you do not need a degree to be a radical. The main problem of these people is of identity and sense of purpose as an individual and as a society.

1/29/2008 12:55 PM EST

I think you guys are misinterpreting what was said. It's not implying that Engineers are terrorists. It's saying that Terrorists have quality X and Engineers have quality X.

We are able to be focus with single-mindedness when necessary. We are not exactly people oriented. We have our own subculture. We are not conformists.

These are not bad qualities. It's just that some bad people happen to share them too.

1/29/2008 1:22 PM EST

I can't provide a scientific sampling, but most of the engineers I know are libertarians of the Ayn Rand variety. They take pride in solving problems, creating wealth and generating benefits to society as a whole--for which they expect to be compensated. Destruction usually doesn't fit into their value system, if for no other reason than it's too easy and doesn't generate a stream of positive benefits (admittedly a value judgement).

1/29/2008 2:42 PM EST

While I think some of the previous posts are a little over reactionary, I do believe there is some point to be made here. The problem with this article is that it implies Engineers tend to be Terrorists. If the article worded it in such a way as to say Terrorists tend to be Engineers, I would probably agree.

I also see, as others have noted before me, that engineers tend to be problem solvers and have at least a modicum of initiative and drive. I can see the mindset of a terrorist being that there is a problem in the world and they are the ones to solve it. I can also see engineers having that mindset. This is of course what the article is trying to say, but I think the editors did not read into what the wording of the article might imply.

I'd also like to replay to the first post when he said 'monoism' was not an engineering mindset. I disagree. There is usually one best solution for every problem. On the other hand that best solution can change based upon what is important when drawing that conclusion. For instance, of cost effectiveness is the most important thing, you'll attempt to find the cheapest solution. If efficiency is the most important thing, the solution will change. It is extremely rare when all possible solutions are weighed with all of the mitigating factors also weighed in correctly that two or more things will be equal.

1/29/2008 2:51 PM EST

A huge proportion of engineers work in defense related fields, and the rest of us have friends and former classmates who do. These jobs are generally supported by Right wing parties, as are other glamorous tech projects such as NASA. Left leaning parties often have some Luddite elements (unions resisting mechanization, ect) which engineers detest. The rise of green-tech may be attracting some interest, but it's competing with 747's shooting down missiles with freaking lasers...

Considering how much harder engineers work than other students in school, when many people form their political views, it is also unsurprising that fighting inequality doesn't score high on their priorities.

I believe it's factors like this that tend to make engineers right leaning.

What I think motivates engineer radicals is that engineering is an empowering skill. Engineers have the skills to do things and the confidence to undertake a challenge and succeed. It isn't surprising at all that such folk when faced with an issue that they sympathize with will think 'I can help' more often than those with a less imposing skillset. Fortunately such people here will tend to do something like modify a prius to be all-electric rather than build bombs, ect.

1/29/2008 2:52 PM EST

This is an utterly idiotic correlation. Isn't it obvious that Engineers are most likely to be targeted for recruitment by to be terrorist bombers because of their abilities as engineers, not because of their "mindset"? I'm sure there are other professions that are "useful" to terrorists, but doesn't it make sense that terrorists want to recruit engineers because they are most likely able to make or handle explosives and other technical equipment required to be a "suicide bomber"? It's sorta useless for a sociologist or an accountant or doctor to be used as a bomber when they are probably best used in other parts of their organization. So of course when people find out the identities of these suicide bombers, hmm big surprise most of them are engineers... They are being used to their best capacity, who knew terrorists would be smart enough to assign roles to people that best suit their needs. Guess what degrees people would have if you found out the identities of all the people that handled terrorist funds, surprise surprise the majority would be accountants. How about "terrorists" that attended their wounded? Probably doctors... This correlation is strictly based on the known "terrorists" that are known because they are bombers, I'm sure there are tons of "unknown" terrorists that probably come from all walks of life.

1/29/2008 4:02 PM EST

The problems with the conclusions is that they are concluding a "mentality" based on statistics. That akin to concluding that people 6ft or taller have a "basketball mentality" because statistically the majority of basketball players are above 6ft. How can you make a statement about "mentality" based on a statistic where there are so many other variables.

1/29/2008 6:33 PM EST

As a Muslim engineer, born and raised in California, I find this to be the most ridiculous article published by an engineering magazine. We all know as engineers that data can be manipulated to prove whatever you, especially when no other data is provided to explain the scope of the research. I could very easily say political scientists and economists are terrorists as well, as they are the ones who "engineer" wars all over the world. Regardless, this article shows nothing more than Islamaphobia and no sane human, let alone engineer would give it any worth or legitimacy. Shame on EE Times for publishing such trash. Take your bigotry elsewhere.

1/29/2008 10:49 PM EST

Here's a fascinating article about the actual guys building the Quassam rockets:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,531578,00.html

I often wondered what the basic technology was. Turns out it's the simple nitrate-sugar propellant we used in High School, right after Sputnik. We didn't have smuggled TNT for a payload, but we cooked propellant much like this article describes.

BTW, the online English version of DER SPIEGEL can give you a constant different perspective on the news of the world.

I start each day by bopping around the world newspapers here: http://terryking.us/news

Of course, you Engineers can design your own version :-)

1/30/2008 5:32 AM EST

This is the most studpid and ridiculous article I have ever seen !
I still expect the author to come later and reveal it as a 'Joke'

1/30/2008 5:52 AM EST

What interests me the most concerning the article is that so many engineers are in denial when it comes to how the profession (if I can still call it a profession) and its pratitioners are perceived by non-technical people. After a quarter century of engineering, I can not count the times I've been accused of having a digital mindset, seeing things in black and white and not being able to express complex issues in simple language. Many of these aspersions were cast during technical discussions involving non-technical people trying to defend technical issues that they understood poorly. Whenever technical concerns overroad their business cases, they played the 'too technical to understand real life' card.

'You engineers are so digital! You see everything in black and white; there are many shades of gray in between ." - Duh... my education is in analog electronic design.

"You engineers are so calculated. Some decisions have to be made on a gut feeling. Technical people just can't do that. That's why you need managers with liberal arts degrees." - Hmm... I guess all my years of being a professional musician and photographer don't count if I understand differential equations.

"Engineers are so negative. I ask if something _can_ be done and instead of being creative, you spend all your time telling me why it shouldn't be done."

The most dangerous question in a non-tech's vocabulary is 'can'. The short answer is almost always 'yes' while the long answer is almost always deemed extreme...

1/30/2008 7:23 AM EST

This indeed is a dim-witted analysis based on few variables but I agree with the fact that terrorist happened to share the hi-fi technical guts. But terrorist could be of any religion.

To my understanding this research has been done about a specific human society ‘Muslims’. So some figures should be expected as correct. And if we extend the same research over different societies new figures will come up. So this idiotic research should not only have Muslims as its target society : -).

Yes, the bad thing is that your paper has been putting this in the wrong way & I am sorry to say ‘a false propaganda’ against Muslim brotherhood.

Have a good day!
Ali Muslim (Software engineer)
--
Islamabad-Pakistan.
http://alimuslim.blogspot.com/

1/30/2008 1:09 PM EST

I have been reading EE Times for six seven years. I have never seen such a biased article like this one in EE times.
The article is based on a unknown paper, and this article dramatically amplifies the idea by using rhetoric like "monism" etc..
Dear editor please apply common sense, may be you are upsetting a broad class of your readers based on some biased article and paper
that are very questionable..

1/30/2008 4:14 PM EST

I work for a defense contractor and this article is being passed around by the Senior Intelligence Officer associated with the military command my company supports. He is -- necessarily so -- on pins and needles about anything and everything security related, and any independent publication that writes anything about terrorism is picked up by the intelligence community at some level. Most of the complaints printed so far are from people in the industry who are offended by the "why" conclusion of the study. Unfortunately, the statistical correlation is sound, even if the interpretation of "why" is dodgy. I, too, find the "mindset" arguement rather insulting and simple-minded, but you can bet that this kind of study is going to have an impact on the pro-active efforts of counter-terrorism authorities. These organizations put great stock in profiling, and the "profile" of engineers has just gone up.

2/1/2008 10:42 AM EST

I find it would be funny if it were not so sad that folks equate stupidity, lack of education, or dogmatism with religious faith.

It is frankly offensive to suggest this with such certainty. But hey, we're used to it.

Plenty of us Christians, especially engineers and scientists, believed first because the facts are on the side of Christianity, then converted because the life of a Christian is worthy. I'm glad we have a worldview that values human life and individual freedom, the kind that founded the USA, in which even these ideas can be discussed freely.

As far as the article goes, I think so far that there are many areas in which to seek correlation (but certainly not causality), and it's pure speculation and sensationalism to pluck out and highlight the few items that the author did.

There certainly are various worldviews contributing to Islamic terrorist groups, among these are social/cultural, political, and religious beliefs. I don't see a great significance thus far if there's some coincidental overlap between what makes somebody pursue a technical career and what has them be attracted to extreme and violent groups. Lots of other such intersections happen to exist, that's what made "Freakonomics" such an interesting book!

2/3/2008 8:31 PM EST

This article is horrific. I think it's time we need to define the term "terrorism." If terrorism is killing innocent people then we Americans (tax payers) are all terrorists. We have now killed a million civilians in Iraq by now. So my suggestion: Let's take a step back and define terrorism first and then figure out if Muslims or for that matter Engineers are terrorists !!

2/5/2008 8:04 AM EST

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?

2/5/2008 10:59 AM EST

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

2/5/2008 11:26 AM EST

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.

2/5/2008 11:29 AM EST

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 ;-)

2/5/2008 6:46 PM EST

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.

2/6/2008 8:26 AM EST

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....

2/7/2008 2:53 PM EST

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)

2/8/2008 11:13 AM EST

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.

2/11/2008 1:35 PM EST

Oh, great. In addition to being boring, we're now terrorists.

3/12/2008 11:29 AM EDT

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