Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education

Probably also because engineers know how to use the new technology and how to make the bombs? i.e. how to develop the new weapons.

When I studied insurgency/extremism more actively I would always hear the assertion, generally voiced in advocacy of increased foreign aid or nation building efforts, that extremists are generally recruited from the ranks of those left behind by the political and economic worlds and violence remains their only recourse. It's a nice narrative because it feels intuitive and provides an addressable problem, the downside is that it's not really true[0]. The 9/11 hijackers were very well educated and not impoverished and while this work looks awesome (can't wait to read it!), there has been previous work that showed that extremists do tend to be more educated than not.

My working hypothesis on why extremists tended to be more educated was (is at least until I read this book?) that educated people are just more likely than uneducated to do the unconventional in any sense, including extremism, since they're aware of more options and know/can learn how to pursue them.

It had occurred to me how it always seemed like the attackers had engineering masters degrees in their little [bios|obits] but I figured that for some reason I was just not noticing the social science degrees. It's nice to see this book and data in general on the subject. I find it interesting the engineers are more likely to split towards right-wing extremism when the extremist ideology is highly likely to be religious or have religious pre-conditions. I generally get the impression that engineers are less religious than their liberal arts counterparts, perhaps the engineers that remain religious are more inclined to become more so?

[0] At least in expeditionary attacks and transnational orgs like AQ, generally attacks on targets in places not at war (i.e. 9/11, Mumbai, London, Madrid etc.). I'm not 100% sure about insurgent attacks that could be termed terroristic so it might depend on the definition you're using.

Engineering teaches that there's always a way to create an outcome. To not take 'no' for an answer. To dig into underlying fundamentals and figure out why things are the way they are. It also encourages you to find solutions to problems that you can implement itself.

It's only natural that someone who grew up in a shithole, that studies engineering would be attracted to terrorism as a way of solving political problems. It's the path that you can walk all by yourself.

When it comes to actual attacks, there are more engineers. When it comes to merely joining the ideology itself, however, there are few engineers.

  'We realised immediately that this was an invasion, but we couldn't fully process the thoughts. My mother sat there shaking her head from side to side and said: 'Nothing bad will happen.' We were not Shi'ites who they hated. We were just Yazidis who they wanted to have control over.

  'We quickly put long dresses over our night dresses. We then ran out onto the street to see the fighters who were approaching. They waved their black flags with white Arabic writing on them in the air.

  'The first faces we saw from the passing vehicles were known to us. Regardless what jobs they did before, whether they were craftsmen, teachers or doctors, all of our Arab neighbours seemed to have joined up with ISIS.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3462146/Raped-beaten...

This echoes stories from what happened in ex-Yugoslavia, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and even older stories from Israel's independence war. The same story keeps repeating : a lot of people who lived in areas with lots of muslims suddenly found that nearly all of them hold extremist ideologies. Enough to kill and rape at least. And the thing is, we don't even know most of the time that this happens.

What I think is that most people can't be bothered to actually do anything. If the effort they'll put into their life doesn't include getting an education and the sacrifices an education demands, it likely doesn't include fighting and the sacrifices that demands.

> Maybe engineers are just more likely to be effective extremists?

No , it's just that the educated are just more likely to become ideologues (thus more dangerous) because more articulate than the common thug. Ben Laden was an educated man, al-Zawahiri is a surgeon, al Baghdadi has a PhD . A lot of them actually spent time in the West, even in US and the culture shock triggered their hatred for the western civilization, the women roaming free in the streets, uncovered, the "debauchery", ... it went all against their upbringing and they can't accept people living in a different culture than an Islamic one, and they are also worried in would "infect" the culture back home. That's partly why Saddat was murdered, because he was turning Egypt into a place way too "westernized", along with the peace with Israel.

As for the thugs who become terrorists like the ones who killed 130 people in Paris, Jihadism give them a divine justification for their violence, like religion give them a justification for their hatred of the west or their misogyny. They feel one with themselves since they can express their violence while, they think, following their religion to the letter, since the enemy is just a non-believer,worse a atheist thus can be killed and the killing be sanctioned by their "god". But these thugs aren't ideologues, they are the useful idiots that get strapped with the explosive belt, while the ideologues stay safe.