Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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.
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.
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.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Like this one?
https://qzprod.files.wordpress...
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).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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
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.
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.
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.