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Jihadis Twice As Likely To Be Students of Science Than Of Sharia (telegraph.co.uk)
Bruce66423 writes: Time to cancel all the encouragement of studying STEM subjects, obviously...
The Telegraph is reporting that prominent jihadists "are twice as likely to have studied science at university than subjects related to Islam," citing a new report by the Centre on Religion and Geopolitics. "The report, which analyzed the histories of 100 of the most prominent jihadist leaders of the last three decades, said that despite claiming to be the sole interpreters of Islamic theology, they often had little or no training in the subject." Osama bin Laden went to a secular school and studied economics at college with little formal Islamic training, while the "underpants bomber," who tried to detonate a bomb in a plane over Detroit in 2009, got his degree in mechanical engineering. Of the 100 cases examined, "Around half had attended university, with 57 per cent of them studying science subjects, compared to only 28 per cent studying Islamic subjects."
The Telegraph is reporting that prominent jihadists "are twice as likely to have studied science at university than subjects related to Islam," citing a new report by the Centre on Religion and Geopolitics. "The report, which analyzed the histories of 100 of the most prominent jihadist leaders of the last three decades, said that despite claiming to be the sole interpreters of Islamic theology, they often had little or no training in the subject." Osama bin Laden went to a secular school and studied economics at college with little formal Islamic training, while the "underpants bomber," who tried to detonate a bomb in a plane over Detroit in 2009, got his degree in mechanical engineering. Of the 100 cases examined, "Around half had attended university, with 57 per cent of them studying science subjects, compared to only 28 per cent studying Islamic subjects."
Spit it out would you?
Is it the Jews?
This just in: some completely random and useless data. Coming up next on this slow news day, our anchorman will stand on his head for your amusement.
People of science are far more likely to be using computers, and have far less patience for nonsense. Add a forced Win10 upgrade into the mix and... well...
This will be the sixth time we have submitted the same story over the years and by now we have become very good at it:
https://slashdot.org/index2.pl...
My opinion to this was and still is that Engineers make the better terrorists because they are the only ones with the necessary skills to excel at it.
Art, Literature, Law and even Sharia students simply do not have the know-how nor the analytical mindset to take apart a problem (building standing, people living) and formulate an efficient solution (bomb) to archive the desired end result (panic, destruction and mayhem).
Perhaps if they studied Islam a little more, they'd realize blowing shit up does not constitute religious devotion.
I would wager it's exactly the same reason why so many nerds I went to university with turned into raving, foam-at-the-mouth libertarians:
Wahhabism/Qutbism is yet another simple, crude world view, which makes sense to smart minority kids who have to deal with adversity and petty racism that most Slashdotters don't have to deal with. Never mind the fact that it's wrong.... seeing yourself as a king who is being held down by people you see as culturally and religiously inferior to yourself (and then getting a license to rape and murder at will) has a lot of appeal to impressionable young minds.
And it's not xenophobia to question it (it's definitely not racism, either, as Islamic isn't a race). It's that most people think of Jihadis as being some cave-dwelling illiterate camel-herders halfway across the world, then call me names when I question the vetting process of the people we're letting into our modern, western, civilized nations. We've seen what's happened in Europe, yet it's still cliche amongst the liberals and elites to question an open border policy.
You see, it appears that many fundamentalist Islamics are highly educated, in many cases (as referenced here) in the sciences, and many come from wealthy families. Combine that type of training and means with someone motivated to cause harm and you've got a perfect storm. At least here in the states, people like to compare fundamental Islam with Christian fundamentalists. Forgetting for the moment that Christianity's holy book doesn't call for the extermination of non-believers and infidels, most Christian fundamentalists are poor, very uneducated, and without the means (and in most cases, motivation) to cause any real harm.
This being said, I don't for a second believe that every Muslim wants to blow something up or cause anyone harm. They probably just want to come here to get an education so they can better themselves. I've met them, and most seem like normal people. But it only takes a few suggestible people to cause one hell of a shit-storm. This is why I didn't understand the outrage towards Trump when he simply said we should take the time to make sure the Islamic people we are letting into our countries are not of the "kill-the-non-believer" persuasion. To me, it would be common sense to vet members of a religion that has sworn the destruction of western society into our western countries, but that makes me a "racist" xenophobe. Especially when the majority of Muslims that enter the U.S. in particular are military-age men here to attend our universities and earn advanced STEM degrees.
But I digress, my point is when you live in country where it is illegal to NOT swear allegiance to Allah, even the rich, educated, jetsetting types that we in the western world equate with liberalism and atheism/agnoticism have the potential to be fundamentalist nutcases. And this is something that concerns me, whether it's fashionable or politically correct to do so.
Empiric evidence differs. Just like huge intimidating bodybuilder who turn out to be very nice guys, I have more confidence in a gun carrying republican than a sneaky slim frustrated liberals...
As shown in V, an allegorical drama about aliens on Earth...
First they came for the scientists, removing those who would show the world the horrors it was facing.
Now "they" are saying that studying science is linked to (one day they will say "causes" but not yet) terrorism.
That's right. Look on all science students with suspicion. They may be closet terrorists. Turn them into your government leaders.
E
We're just fed up to compromise over, and over, and over, with mindless crybaby liberals...
If you're hellbent on blowing shit up, studying religion in college is useless. That's why you go for the scientific stuff instead. They don't teach you chemistry or offensive network penetration in a class about the Koran.
Seems like this is being posed as a counter-intuitive idea, but it really makes perfect sense.
Go on, read the books.
meh. As I see it both groups lack empathy. There is your common thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If it was, it would offer some theories that, you know, predict stuff reliably, and we wouldn't have one crisis after another.
How many of them had training from the CIA at Camp Peary? ref
How many people go to university to study subjects related to Islam and how many go to study science (and obviously subjects related to science since STEM has more than science). I don't remember a religion department in my university but maybe that's different elsewhere.
Also, US presidents don't study subjects related to political science.
Maybe this is a perfect fear mongering platform. STEM is an immigration term. It was originally created to implement immigration policies that favored immigrants who studied science and engineering. So, a large portion of recent immigrants are educated in science, precisely what the immigration policy set out to do. Perhaps you meet an immigrant who has studied science, they he's likely a terrorist? Seems something perfect for Trump's America.
I keep hearing this canard from the Regressive Left. I've heard nobody claim that the more one studies Islam the more Radical one becomes. What is a true however is that the belief that violence is a legitimate response to perceived injustices towards Islam has a *mountain* of support from the Quran and Hadith, and unlike the Old Testament the Islamic texts haven't been "defanged" by modernity yet.
They analyzed 100 of the most prominent jihadist leaders. In any organization the leadership tends to have a significant level of education. Typically dumb and/or uneducated people do not rise to a leasership position. This is true for any organization so why would it be different for jihadists and terrorists?
Many of the posts here are either giving (a type of) science nerds crap for believing in overly simplistic ideologies or using this fact (which is hardly news) to support the terrorists are unislamic shtick (I have no problem defining terrorists out of "true" islam and emphasizing that anti-terrorist doesn't mean anti-islam but let's not pretend this has anything to do with one interpretation being right as a matter of historical interpretation and another wrong...no one really follows any historically correct interpretation,)
A more generous take on the matter is that people who go into engineering and the sciences are more likely to take belief systems at face value and follow out their logical consequences. I mean even take a fairly mainstream belief like belief in the correct god is essential to salvation and that salvation means the difference between an eternity of bliss and an eternity of suffering. If you *really* believe that then any decent person should be willing to bring about any amount of earthly suffering to convince just one more person to believe correctly since that earthly harm is surely outweighed by the difference between an eternity of bliss and an eternity of suffering.
The moral I take is that most people don't really whole heartedly believe what they profess. Instead they put social cues from their community over the implications of the faith they claim to believe. On the other hand even supposedly mainstream religious beliefs can encourage people who take these things seriously to search for a more coherent solution.
When atheism is a serious option things probably turn out pretty well but in a society where the only coherent narrative is being offered by extremists a small fraction of those looking for serious coherent answers will turn to them.
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You are welcome on my lawn.
What does that have to do with the GP's point? Answer them, answer the point they were making about lack of opportunity. They are absolutely correct in that assertion.
It's well understood why young, educated Muslims get radicalized. They know enough to see that the deck is stacked against them and all that is on offer is a life of mediocrity, especially in certain parts of the US and UK. Of course that's the same for most people, but the difference is that they experience some bigotry that makes it much easier for recruiters to radicalize them.
Whiney conservatives complain that it's not their fault if people decide to blow themselves up, trying to simplify the problem down to "it's those crazy idiots, and the crybaby liberals who aren't hard enough on them", when it's just a little more complicated.
That's why we keep failing to address the problem.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
and the religion is just a front for it. Really, the US did (and does) a _lot_ of nasty things in the Middle East to secure enough oil to drive it's economy at the prices needed. It wouldn't be the first time religion was just a pretext, and it's in everybody's interests to keep the pretext up. For the Jihadi leaderss they get a supply of the really faithful ready to die and for the United States they don't have to discuss the very real grievances these countries have (like how we disposed Iran's democratically elected gov't and how we did the same in Afghanistan to get an oil pipeline they didn't want).
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Double whammy
We'll know come November.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And at the same time, radical jihadists are not going to study theology at a foreign university. They have already been fricasseed in jihadist culture.
There's a reason liberal arts has the word liberal in it.
Yes, they were meant to be the education of a free ("liber") individual, meaning someone not burdened with the drudgery of crafts or agriculture or other manual work.
Ezekiel 23:20
Don't bother, you'll only get downvoted for this. Happened to me today, too. The truth is inconvenient (not only for this peculiar brand of Republicans - which, I have to admit, does not include all Republicans, of course).
Ezekiel 23:20
What fraction of the student population in general studies science vs. religion? If 57% of jihadis study science, but 90% of non-jihadis study science, then this would actually show that scientists are less likely to turn to jihad (and vice-versa). We need more numbers.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
There are more than twice as many science students. So at best, the ratio coming from science is far less...
As a socially-liberal vegetarian gun enthusiast who's lived and worked in literally the most liberal as well as conservative areas in the country, I have to sadly agree (and I *detest* hicks and fox news watchers (rednecks are a bit more of a mixed-bag while genuine hillbillies can be downright awesome).
Some of the September 11 hijackers studied in Germany.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
Telling us that prominent Jihadis are twice as likely to have studied STEM is informative, but doesn't really give us any extra insight.
Here's the full quote:
Prominent jihadis are often well educated. Forty-six per cent of our sample went to university. Of these, 57 per cent graduated with STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) degrees. This was double the number of jihadis taking Islamic studies.
That they're well educated isn't surprising, prominent people often are.
But does something about STEMM make you more likely to be a Jihadis? Well we don't know since it's only prominent Jihadis.
We also don't know how those ratios compare to the seed population of Arab Sunni males in those countries. Are those fields over-represented or under-represented?
And how is the breakdown among STEMM fields? Are some particularly over-represented? If so is it a result of them being extra-susceptible or extra-recruited?
It just bugs me since it's been known for a long time that prominent Jihadis come from STEMM, but no one ever seems to get around to investigating the interesting questions.
I stole this Sig
One hell of a lot more about Islam and Jihad than all the fucking idiot lawyers (and former lawyers) in the US government who keep claiming ISIS and terrorism have nothing to do with Islam.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The message of the article could easily be turned 180 by pointing out the ratio of % of Jihadis who studied Islamic subjects to the % of non-Jihadis who did. Unfortunately I couldn't easily find the total % of those who study engineering disciplines to do a comparison on that point. Please do your part to prevent clickbait like this in the future.
Hitler studied art. Bill Ayers studied education. Gudrun Ensslin studied education, English Studies, and German studies. Ulricke Meinhof studied philosophy, sociology, education and German.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Just like regular people, scientists can make stupid decisions too!
But seriously this has more to do with the fact these kids who are doing these 'scientific' studies are more likely to be loners who don't fit in and who are probably angry at society about it (yeah I've been there too) and they find a group of people (usually on social media) who are like "Hey we get you, we're just like you! Come talk to us, we're your friends" After a bit of conditioning and peer pressure from their new friends who have told the "real truth" and how to fix the world through violence. Most gangs and cults work like this, and this approach works well on socially awkward loners with little to no friends.
In short just because they were studying science doesn't make them any less human then anyone else, just as gullible and foolish as the rest of society.
Let's see where to start.
They are for denying women birth control, but not men viagra. They are for forcing invasive and unnecessary procedures on women in the name of "medical care" but it's really just religion. They gerrymander districts significantly more than most Dem states, often to the detriment of the poor. They restrict voting to felons who have already served their time, which disproportionately affects people of color. They routinely "accidentally" purge voter rolls almost all of which end up being Democratic voters or people of color. This is all as a group.
Donald Trump has announced that if elected he plans to build a wall around MIT.
or funded by some american blackops or 3 letter alpabet agency in their past.
Liberals aren't shooting up clinics, aren't shooting up schools(I mean really this isn't a conservative issue either), aren't shooting up churches.
No, they just socially shame you, turn what they don't like/agree on to be illegal and remove you by force from society... when they don't brainwash your kids.
Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon... all the same vermin.
People who have studied Islam in depth will know that ISIS' claim to be a Caliphate is bogus, as are pretty much all the corruptions of Islam that the terrorist groups are using to motivate and control their members.
The ones who know their religious history just won't fall for it. Furthermore, they aren't as useful (since they can't build bombs), so the propaganda machine isn't so directly aimed at them.
Repeat after me: correlation does not imply causation. It could simply be because smart people prefer to study science, and you have also to be somewhat smart to become "prominent leaders" in any group of people, including jihadists.
Get one.
That's something that engineers and STEM students in general eschew. Worse yet, look at all the coders out there that claim not to need even a CS education, let alone broader studies in social sciences, humanities, history, etc. So what we end up with is a bunch of idiot savants. Now throw in a pinch of the Dunning-Kruger effect and people think that because they are educated in one area, that carries over to other topics.
Have gnu, will travel.
Another way to look at it is... Terrorists are disproportionately likely to major in Islamic Studies.
Consider the overall percentages into each study category and compare it to those of terrorists. I'm doubting 28 percent of all Muslims major in Islamic studies.
It's the Shriners, you clod
Of the hundreds of thousands of Jihadists, from the Philippines to Indonesia to Bangladesh to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Chad, America, EU, and elsewhere, the Brits chose to count 100 of them and then declares that the STEM graduates are more prone to violence
It's BULLSHIT to the highest degree !
The thousands of suicide bombers who had killed themselves and others, most of them, don't even finish high schools
Those who finished 'schooling' mostly came from the madrassa, the Islamic religious schools, where they were brainwashed since they were little toddlers that to die for 'allah' is the most glorious thing they can ever done in this life
In other words, the Brits are TOTALLY FUCKED UP!!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Robert Lewis Dear is neither Republican or liberal. He's just fucking nuts.
And when was "liberal arts" actually liberal? I mean in the classical sense. It's current incarnation is far from liberal, quite the opposite in fact.
Sheesh. What does it take? Isn't it enough that conservatives have historically opposed right for both those groups? If not, why don't you come to where I live in the not-so-deep South and I can fucking introduce you to proud republicans who oppose both. Not all republicans are racist misogynists, but pretty much everyone I've met who is racist or misogynist is a republican.
The more people studied about theology and the bible, the more they actually could reflect on the relative value of any short-lived interpretation of their religious values in terms of a possible absolute law.
If you actually know and understand how religion is transferred into laws, then you wont make up your rules just to justify raping, killing and stealing.
OK /. editors, listen up: economics and engineering are NOT science. Osama was an economist, underpants was an engineer, and stats show that many fewer scientists go jihadi. Please stop trying to give scientists a bad name.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
...than reading comments from those who are loud and proud in their support for 12 carrier groups, 2300 fighter jets, bases in a hundred countries, guns in every home, safety through armament, gigantic standing army their founders were terrified of...all sounding off on how inherently, congenitally violent another culture is.
As to the STEM jihadis, not remotely surprising. We're taught to think our way logically and critically through technical problems, but that doesn't automatically transfer to how you think through personal decisions. If it did, STEM students would also be mentally healthier in general, less depressed and anxious, more successful in romance...and oh, man, is THAT not that case...
Whenever I sit next to a scientist or scholar at a banquet I always take the opportunity to pick their brains. For example I once sat next to an aero-astro professor so I tried to get him to explain the Bernoulli effect in plain language -- and he almost succeeded. If I don't know anything about the person's field I'll ask him what the one thing he'd like his introductory level students to take away from his class.
So I was sitting next to a sociologists, and since I knew literally nothing about sociology she got the "one thing" question, and her response was that she wanted her students to understand how important it was to what she called "disaggregate the average"; that is when you're looking at an average figure for a population not to assume that it represents everyone, or even anyone in that group. You need to investigate how different subgroups can be very different from the overall group.
Thinking of a lifetime spent in STEM, STEM people can't be reduced to a single stereotype, but you can find support for any of the stereotypes of the science geek. Most science and engineering types are pretty normal socially. But you don't have to be socially normal to succeed in STEM, so there is a distinct minority who are socially impaired. They don't deal well with other people as people, but are more comfortable dealing with them as abstractions. And those are the kind of people who become fanatics -- aided by the fact that they're used to being right when most of the people around them are wrong, they're persuadable to almost anything because they are impervious to self-doubt.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There's probably a simpler explanation. People in general are vastly more likely to be science students than "sharia" students. The ratio of science students to "sharia" students being 2:1 is actually incredibly low compared to the population in general. The percentage of Islamic scholars is still abnormally high among the jihadi group, which is pretty much what common sense would lead one to expect.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Feminism proves you wrong. A large portion of them are psychotic and violent.