Al Qaeda’s members are not the Palestinian fourteen-year- olds we see on the news, but join the jihad at the average age of 26. Three-quarters were professionals or semi- professionals. They are engineers, architects, and civil engineers, mostly scientists. Very few humanities are represented, and quite surprisingly very few had any background in religion. The natural sciences predominate. Bin Laden himself is a civil engineer, Zawahiri is a physician, Mohammed Atta was, of course, an architect; and a few members are military, such as Mohammed Ibrahim Makawi, who is supposedly the head of the military committee.
This isn't the only reason I support the violent overthrow of the natural sciences, but it's one of the saner ones.
And as for the lack of folks with humanities backgrounds, well, looks like all those crazy leftists with their anti-American "post-colonial studies" and whatever other departmental horror programs d'jour conservatives want to cry about don't become evil-doers after all. Liberal Arts education FTW!
H/T: Yglesias
1 comment:
quite surprisingly very few had any background in religion
Not really surprising, given that someone with an academic grounding in Islam would have known about contested textual meanings, the difference between actual Koranic requirements and tribal traditions, etc. Biblical scholars who know about the variations in translation probably are the Christians least likely to assume that God hates fags.
People with humanities backgrounds are a) cowards and b) useless to the jihad because they have no practical skills. I'm unsurprised that there aren't economists among them; it's hard to be an economist, look at the U.S. and think, "That's a bad idea." Pity that the hearts & minds push hasn't included a few lectures on the virtues of the free market coupled with a decent welfare state.
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