Why So Many Terrorists Get Their Start as Engineers

Sphere ^ | December 29, 2009 | Russell Berman

[1rudeboy]

(Dec. 29) -- Of all the biographical details that have emerged about the Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas, perhaps the least surprising -- at least to those who study these things -- is what he studied in college.

The terrorist suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, earned a degree in mechanical engineering from University College London in 2008, just over a year before he tried to demonstrate his skills by detonating an explosive device aboard the Detroit-bound plane. Among violent Islamic extremists, that puts him in familiar company. Indeed, the propensity toward engineering studies is an aspect of the terrorist profile that has drawn increased scrutiny of late from scholars, who have been advancing theories about the high correlation between the two.

In a study published this year, European sociologists Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog researched more than 400 known violent jihadists since the 1970s, including the 25 men involved with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly half were known to have received some level of higher education, and of those, 44 percent were engineers -- including eight of the 9/11 plotters and hijackers. Engineering was by far the most popular field; the percentage of terrorists who had pursued it was more than twice as high as the second-place field, Islamic studies.

"The bottom line is that while the probability of a Muslim engineer becoming a violent Islamist is minuscule, it is still between three and four times that for other graduates," Gambetta wrote in an article in the New Scientist that summarized the pair's findings, which were published in August in the European Journal of Sociology.

[Locomotive Breath]

Let’s say you’re a disgruntled dipshat who wants to express himself by blowing things up. What are you going to study. Sociology?

[Locomotive Breath]

You’re ignorant.

[Locomotive Breath]

Colleges and particularly professors love them because they come here on student visas. You can work them as hard as you want and they can’t complain or they get shipped home in disgrace. Think indentured servants from 300 years ago and you’ll be on the money.

[Locomotive Breath]

Well either the bridge you designed fell down or it didn’t fall down. There’s not much room for “shades of gray”.

[HangnJudge]

So why do they focus on commercial aircraft?
What is really going on?

This has never made sense to me
A halfway competent terrorist could cause
a fairly massive degree of mayhem
and still be able to walk away undetected
to repeat over again as needed

That is what I'd do...

A car bomb at a hospital, school, or other soft target
would be virtually impossible to stop,
or even detect, in advance
and would be ridiculously simple for a
competent chemical engineer

You could even set up a webcam to "broadcast" the event

[piytar]

“The complexity of an engineering degree is real but it is not broad enough to see those shades of gray or to necessarily recognize the best answer to problems outside of the specialty.”

You know, I see that line of opinion a lot. Sure, there are some narrow engineers. They are the media’s stereotype.

In college (before moving on), I took more of some “broad” subjects than most majors in the subject. Took graduate level philosophy and business courses. The non-graduate level ones were “blow offs” - read the book, show up to required classes if any, and blow the curve. Those courses were also BORING in terms of depth.

Engineers’ course hour requirements were more than 20% over most other majors’ and included a lot of “general education” requirements. Many if not most of my classmates took advantage of that to learn a lot outside of engineering. (Now the nerds did take just the easy ones and didn’t learn much.)

Also, anyone who doesn’t think there are shades of grey in engineering is clueless. The math to be exact is impossible for even many seemingly simple problems, and that’s even if you have access to a supercomputer. Much of engineering is knowing what parts of the grey areas you can estimate and what parts you cannot. That takes something called “judgement.”

I’ve known more plenty of engineers with a broader understanding of history and philosophy than many philosophy (usually clueless), polisci (more clueless), english, and even history majors. Now, I’ve also known plenty of very one-dimensional engineers aka classic nerds, but they were not the majority.

But our “culture” treats engineers as dorks, so no wonder that’s the accepted view.

PS You want narrow? Talk to your average leftist indoctrinated polisci, journalism (shudder), or lib arts major. They think that their thinking is broad, but it’s generally narrow party line pseudo-marxism or pure marxism with little bredth or awareness. (Again, there are many exceptions.)

[piytar]

more plenty = plenty PIMF

[grey_whiskers]

"Nepeta
Since Oct 1, 2009"
Welcome to FRee Republic!

Warning: Addictive!

[April Lexington]

How could a real engineer think that burning his dick off would bring a plane down?

[word_warrior_bob]

How could a real engineer think that burning his dick off would bring a plane down?

________

It’s a guy thing.

[April Lexington]

Oh. Like deer hunting?

[April Lexington]

You make a good point. The airplane thing is so 1960s/1970s. A Yassir Arafat kind of event. For some reason, achmed the magnificent seems to think this scares people. In fact, Mohammad.... it pisses us off. If you or your pathetic ilk ever try anything on a plane I'm on, they'll be hauling your slightly built, feminine carcass out in one of those plastic zipper bags. And... I don't have to sneak anything in my underpants to accomplish the task...

[Ronaldus Magnus]

An interesting statistic from the referenced "New Scientist" article/opinion piece referenced in the main article:

US engineering professors are seven times as likely to be right-wing and religious.

[Nepeta]

"Nepeta Since Oct 1, 2009" Welcome to FRee Republic! Warning: Addictive!

Thank you! I've been lurking a long time.

[catnipman]

Not all engineers are created equally. Some aren't very good.

Indeed. While you can teach the tools needed for actually implementing a solution once it's thought of, you can't really teach the creative and innovative thinking needed to think up problem solutions. Thus, one can have all the tools in the world, but if one is a dunce, they won't know what to do with the tools.

[BigBobber]

It's poor research because they put into one pile Christian conservative Americans and radical Islamic jihadists, when in fact radical Islam is a leftist totalitarian movement.

Take a look at this post "Plane Bomber Was Anti-War Activist in London":

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2417342/posts

Radical Islamists are fellow travelers with Bill Ayers, John Kerry and the Winter Soldiers, and Al Gore. Osama Bin Laden's propaganda could easily have been written by the editorial staff of the New York Times.

Further, as stated in my original post, your hero researchers who publish in the European Journal of Sociology and editorialize in New Scientist do not understand the difference between cause and effect. That's why they don't ask why radical Muslims become engineers rather than why engineers become radical Muslims.

[rahbert]

dude, it was the herbs..

[Clemenza]

Colleges love them. Colleges welcome them with open arms, because they are dark and belong to a group that promises to eliminate Western Civilization. Colleges give them priority in admissions and free tuition, paid for by the normal people who built up Western Civilization.

Speaking as an alumnus of a prominent private university that had a 40% foreign born student body, and as someone with two friends in admissions at a large public university, I can tell you that the real reason is that the foreign students pay full tuition, either via daddy or their governments. There is also the residual belief that these folks will become the elites in their countries, enhancing the university's reputation on a global basis.

Don't confuse the foreign students with the affirmative action cases, the latter of which wind up flunking out or dropping out after two semesters because they can't/couldn't do the work.

[ROTB]

>Bozo is a name and should be capitalized.

You’re an engineer!

:)

[ROTB]

So why do they focus on commercial aircraft?
What is really going on?

This has never made sense to me
A halfway competent terrorist could cause
a fairly massive degree of mayhem
and still be able to walk away undetected
to repeat over again as needed

************************************

Think 9/11:

1) The footage, spectacular.
2) The destruction, epic.
3) The cleanup, months.