Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education

> 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.

Not sure if it is good for my ulcer, but here goes.

I think its a bit of a jump to go from those examples to "lots of muslims".

In all instances i see situations where you have lines drawn as much, or more, based on ethnicity than religion. That the two often blend over in various places, because certain lineages has held to certain beliefs over generations, is a confounding variable, not a causation.

Never mind that i wonder how many plays along to save their own bacon. Humans will be humans when push comes to shove.

Lets not forget that Europe had its 30 year war over a disagreement on Christian doctrine.

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

This is the opposite of what the books claims based on the evidence they have accumulated.

"The study of engineering simply brings people from less developed countries to the West, where they are exposed to the seeds of radicalism."

The authors provide evidence showing that the effect is not restricted to engineers who studied in the West, so this hypothesis seems to have been disproven by the authors.

>> But hopefully, you've got a STEM degree, and can figure that fact out out yourself ;)

Sadly I bet someone in some ostensibly serious conversation will suggest increasing attention based on major (the person making the suggestion will have no understanding of statistics).

I don't think it's totally useless information as it informs us about the type of person who joins such groups. It might be useful in terms of tailoring counter-extremist propaganda. If the most susceptible to recruitment are of group X you want to make your counteroffer tailored to group X.

I can't think of a good example for transnational groups but it could be that after removing a government (or whatever you call ISIS) prioritizing reconstruction/aid projects that need local engineers is an effective way to reduce the likelihood that insurgencies start at all.

Also from the summary, if you're afraid of communist extremists you need to find work for English and International Affairs majors and you're really in trouble :)

I wouldn't discount the possibility of a correlation between radicalism and the "engineering personality" (or the limitations of an engineering education) playing a significant role, but this other, more Marxian explanation strikes me as the best starting point. A young, smart, ambitious middle-class man with thwarted personal ambition is a dangerous thing, because when he sublimates his career ambition into some other goal—and for people from an Islamic background, fighting for Islam and achieving glory in the next life is a very obvious alternative goal—he's likely to make something like the proverbial dent in the universe.

> It's really more likely -- and I'm replying without having read the topic article -- that this is related to the fact that developing states with "socialist" (I use the term advisedly) bents tended to privilege engineering, medical and scientific education in its universities, while not having economies capable of effectively supporting those graduates.

And to be fair that emphasis probably really is quite rational, because engineers are probably the kind of people a rapidly-developing middle-income country most needs. Unfortunately setting up the pipeline of trained engineers isn't nearly enough on its own to ensure the rapid development, of course.

One reason I find that interpretation plausible is that this seems to have happened before:

"The writers who invented and elaborated the post-Kantian theory of the state belonged to a caste which was relatively low on the social scale. They were, most of them, the sons of pastors, artisans, or small farmers. They somehow managed to become university students, most often in the faculty of theology, and last out the duration of their course on minute grants, private lessons, and similar makeshifts. When they graduated they found that their knowledge opened no doors, that they were still in the same social class, looked down upon by a nobility which was stupid, unlettered, and which engrossed the public employments they felt themselves so capable of filling. These students and ex-students felt in them the power to do great things, they had culture, knowledge, ability, they yearned for the life of action, its excitements and rewards, and yet there they were, doomed to spend heartbreaking years as indigent curates waiting to be appointed pastors, or as tutors in some noble household, where they were little better than superior domestics, or as famished writers dependent on the goodwill of an editor or a publisher."

That's from /Nationalism/ by Elie Kedourie http://www.amazon.com/Nationalism-Elie-Kedourie/dp/063118885.... http://www.worldcat.org/title/nationalism/oclc/27812918 : he's talking about Germany around 1800. This group of radicalised students produced colourful people like Karl Sand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Ludwig_Sand , and of course an ideology which was eventually to burn Europe down at least a couple of times. And they tended to be literary-minded types who'd studied theology in university. (Though no doubt that partly reflects that fact that relatively few people did technical subjects at university at that time.)