Why do so many terrorists have engineering degrees?

[lostinblue 1,989]

http://www.slate.com/id/2240157/

Engineering is not a profession most people associate with religion. The concrete trade of buildings and bridges seems grounded in the secular principles of science. But the failed attack this Christmas by mechanical engineer Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a reminder that the combination has a long history of producing violent radicals.

The anecdotal evidence has always been strong. The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, was an architectural engineer. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed got his degree in mechanical engineering. Two of the three founders of Lashkar-e-Taibi, the group believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks, were professors at the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore.

A paper released this summer by two sociologists, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, adds empirical evidence to this observation. The pair looked at more than 400 radical Islamic terrorists from more than 30 nations in the Middle East and Africa born mostly between the 1950s and 1970s. Earlier studies had shown that terrorists tend to be wealthier and better-educated than their countrymen, but Gambetta and Hertog found that engineers, in particular, were three to four times more likely to become violent terrorists than their peers in finance, medicine or the sciences. The next most radicalizing graduate degree, in a distant second, was Islamic Studies.

So what's with all the terrorist-engineers? The simple explanation is that engineering happens to be an especially popular field of study in the countries that produce violent radicals. But Gambetta and Hertog corrected for national enrollment numbers in engineering programs and got similar results. Even among Islamic terrorists born or raised in the West, nearly 60 percent had engineering backgrounds.

Another possible explanation would be that engineers possess technical skills and architectural know-how that makes them attractive recruits for terrorist organizations. But the recent study found that engineers are just as likely to hold leadership roles within these organizations as they are to be working hands-on with explosives. In any case, their technical expertise may not be that useful, since most of the methods employed in terrorist attacks are rudimentary. It's true that eight of the 25 hijackers on 9/11 were engineers, but it was their experience with box cutters and flight school, not fancy degrees, that counted in the end.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Math makes some people crazy? I don't know, it is a theory...

[scandal 951]

I blame Consolemaster. He is the leading engineer-radical of VJ.

[christeen 966]

Why do rednecks have so many missing teeth???

[MrsCat 6]

Why do rednecks have so many missing teeth???

That's not a mystery, its Mountain Dew consumption.

[christeen 966]

That's not a mystery, its Mountain Dew consumption.

OH... never considered that... I figured it was too much Schlitz, laffy taffy and snuff (at least that was the case in my family)....

[MrsCat 6]

OH... never considered that... I figured it was too much Schlitz, laffy taffy and snuff (at least that was the case in my family)....

:lol:

[~PalmTreeGurl~ 154]

well, dont have the answer to the question, but just wanted to say that my muslim brother in law has a degree in engineering and so does his younger brother and father. I have alot of respect for him bcz he takes great care of my sister and their 2 daughters, hes a very hard worker and provider and a great brother in law. Glad to have an engineer in the family!

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Ridiculous. Not all these terrorist have been engineers, but they have ALL been Muslim. The extremes people will go to avoid the obvious would be funny if it weren't so serious. I am a mechanical engineer, by the way, but not a Muslim. Which do you think is more critical in profiling a potential terrorist?

When we stop writing nonsensical pap and focus on who would-be terrorists are, then we will take steps to providing for our safety.

[slim 1,514]

Perhaps it's because engineers find solutions to problems instead of just sitting around and b!tching about them like the rest of us.

[mendeleev 68]

Throughout the world, in my experience, engineers display (perhaps because that's how they were trained?) to have a no-nonsense view of the world, to be very sure of their convictions, and to be much more intolerant of (scientific) uncertainty, dissent, and so forth than their scientific colleagues. That is, many are trained to be intolerant and arrogant. It isn't a muslim thing, its an engineering thing.

Then, beyond that, engineers are trained to go do things.

(Good engineers, who have seasoning and experience, also become very risk averse. That is, they really don't like projects that fail.)

Combine all that with a radical ideology, and its easy to see why (by definition radicalized) Muslim terrorists are often engineers.

Edited January 5, 2010 by novotul

[SpiritAlight 1]

What a theory.

What I want to say is this:

I am sick and tired of airport "security".

Most of these people are paid less than good wages and are not made of the "right stuff" to do this kind of job.

When a breast-feeding mother gets questioned on breast milk she's bottled, and men with obvious records are welcomed on planes, it just floors me.

#######, over?!

[Ban Hammer 12,884]

I blame Consolemaster. He is the leading engineer-radical of VJ.

where is consolemaster anyways?

[SMR 368]

http://www.slate.com/id/2240157/

Engineering is not a profession most people associate with religion. The concrete trade of buildings and bridges seems grounded in the secular principles of science. But the failed attack this Christmas by mechanical engineer Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a reminder that the combination has a long history of producing violent radicals.

The anecdotal evidence has always been strong. The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, was an architectural engineer. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed got his degree in mechanical engineering. Two of the three founders of Lashkar-e-Taibi, the group believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks, were professors at the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore.

A paper released this summer by two sociologists, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, adds empirical evidence to this observation. The pair looked at more than 400 radical Islamic terrorists from more than 30 nations in the Middle East and Africa born mostly between the 1950s and 1970s. Earlier studies had shown that terrorists tend to be wealthier and better-educated than their countrymen, but Gambetta and Hertog found that engineers, in particular, were three to four times more likely to become violent terrorists than their peers in finance, medicine or the sciences. The next most radicalizing graduate degree, in a distant second, was Islamic Studies.

So what's with all the terrorist-engineers? The simple explanation is that engineering happens to be an especially popular field of study in the countries that produce violent radicals. But Gambetta and Hertog corrected for national enrollment numbers in engineering programs and got similar results. Even among Islamic terrorists born or raised in the West, nearly 60 percent had engineering backgrounds.

Another possible explanation would be that engineers possess technical skills and architectural know-how that makes them attractive recruits for terrorist organizations. But the recent study found that engineers are just as likely to hold leadership roles within these organizations as they are to be working hands-on with explosives. In any case, their technical expertise may not be that useful, since most of the methods employed in terrorist attacks are rudimentary. It's true that eight of the 25 hijackers on 9/11 were engineers, but it was their experience with box cutters and flight school, not fancy degrees, that counted in the end.

Being an electrical engineer myself, I think there are a couple things that should be considered here.

A) We need to get cause and effect straight. Many terrorists, and perhaps most, are in organizations long before they make their attacks. If I was in a terrorist organization and going to school, engineering would be a good field to go into. So part of this is probably not that engineers become terrorists but rather that terrorists become engineers because it's useful to know how the world works when you want to throw a wrench into things.

B) I think engineers are more acutely aware of the fact that lots of things in the world hang by threads a lot more than a lot of us would like to think. That is, engineers are more aware of specific vulnerabilities in the world. If the world is angering you, you would only attack it if you thought there was a chance of doing some damage. Engineers realize or at least believe that they can do some damage. Does it seems so weird to anyone that the 9/11 mastermind was an architectural engineer? He had to understand that the buildings could be knocked down. If he wasn't an engineer, he might of remained a disgruntled Muslim. Because he was an engineer, he realized he could do something and did.

All of this aside, Gary makes an excellent point. Why are we trying to draw a weak, incomplete line between terrorists and engineers when we refuse to make the more obvious observation that all terrorists attacking the US have been Islamic?

Profiling would be better for everyone, including innocent people who fit into the terrorist profile. They would be safer and things as a whole would move faster. Instead of profiling, we subject everyone to huge lines. If we profiled, even those that had to wait in line would be able to move faster because the line would be shorter. The problem is that we think we need to make things "fair" so we make breastfeeding women and grandmothers wait in line even though they pose little threat.

[Jenn! 918]

The study was done on radical islarmic terrorists, engineers being a subset of that group. I don't see how that's implying anything about non-radical muslim engineers. The connection is not being made between terrorism and engineering. The point is that one might expect engineers to be less religious, so it was surprising that of the terrorists in the study, the most common field was engineering as opposed to any other field.

Calm down, engineers. No one thinks you're more likely to be a terrorist. Unless, of course, you are also a radical muslim.