Politics

Terrorist orgs prey on people who are illiterate as they are way, way easier to coerce and manipulate via propaganda. obviously a gun in somebodies face can also help.

i believe malala meant something like if people can read, write and see the world themselves on their own terms they arent as easy to coerce and manipulate.

Atombender posted...

An upper middle and upper class person would have no reason whatsoever to join ISIS or commit a terrorist act.

Once again, and this time with the feeling, your reckons are contracted by the evidence.

Of a group of 404 members of violent Islamist groups in the Muslim world, Gambetta and Hertog tracked down the course of study for 178 individuals. Of those 178 violent Islamists, 78 (44 percent) were engineers. Broadening the course of study to engineering, medicine, and science, 56.7 percent of their sample had studied these fields.

And

Meanwhile, non-Muslim left-wing groups — Germany’s Red Army Faction, Italy’s Red Brigades, and Latin American guerrilla groups — include almost no engineers. Among anarchist groups, engineers are equally absent. Right-wing groups include some engineers, but they are far from overrepresented.

So just because you see a link between lack-of-education in #PantyFa type groups (and that a good education might cure then) that doesn't automatically mean it will apply to Islam - because the studies show it doesn't.

To account for this disparity in occupation among Islamic terrorists in the Muslim world, Gambetta and Hertog sketch out a particular engineering "mindset" in which the profession is "more attractive to individuals seeking cognitive ‘closure’ and clear-cut answers as opposed to more open-ended sciences — a disposition which has been empirically linked to conservative political attitudes." Engineers, the authors find, are far more conservative on the whole than members of other professions. Islamic extremism "rejects Western pluralism and argues for a unified ordered society" — a political worldview that lines up nicely with a profession averse to chaos.

So it's not about education, it's about mindset; specifically an engineering education (etc.) won't dissuade a conservative Muslim it'll just give them dangerous toys to play with.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/11/theres-a-good-reason-why-so-many-terrorists-are-engineers/

https://orientemiedo.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/diego-gambetta-steffen-hertog-why-are-there-so-many-engineers-among-islamic-radicals.pdf

Atombender posted...

Russian Rocket posted...

Just because some terrorists are educated doesn't disprove the point (although I would contend that education combined with other things can kill it). And this wasn't some new idea that Malala came up with. Tony Blair did a speech on this subject.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1311/S00251/terrorism-can-be-defeated-by-education-tony-blair-tells-un.htm

I think the TYPE of education is far more important than the level. Who do you think is more likely to become a terrorist? A man with a PhD in Islamic Studies or a woman with a college degree in economics?

Hmmmm, well it's possible that the Islamic Studies student would learn about actual Islam, and not the form perverted by ISIS. But yes, Blair stressed cross-cultural education and teaching tolerance and acceptance.

Malala should listen to Maajid Navaz who knows far more about Islamic fundamentalism than her, considering he was one in his earlier life and who isn't shying away from criticizing his own religion.

LuigisBro posted...

she's not wrong, terrorist tend to be very religious, and educated people tend to get less religious

The trouble is that "tends to" is really loaded and ignores causation. People who go to catholic mass every day "tend to" not be involved in crime, that doesn't mean we should encourage everyone to go to mass every day. On its own the statement is meaningless. There might be something to it in some sort of sense, but just stating it as some sort of truism is not a good idea.

Atombender posted...

She is a teen. She still doesn't know how the world works.

BTW Bush 43 had a HBS degree and Trump graduated from Wharton, so clearly having an Ivy League stamp of approval isn't protecting anyone from idiocy and violence.

Malala's a brand, just like Tony Blair. If people took random feel-good quotes off reddit and put them in place of what these people say nobody would ever know the difference.

And yeah, higher education is nothing but a big confidence trick and an intellectual pyramid scheme. You want to learn about something? Find the right books and articles from people who know it really well and read about it. That's all there is to it.

The_Undying_84 posted...

There's a reason those guys weren't the ones blowing themselves up.

Actually most of them did blow themselves up. Got any more s*** to throw at the wall in a desperate attempt to defend your little pet ideology?

Of course education is a good thing, but the problem here is that things like education and socioeconomic status tend to be cited as a solution in order to divert attention away from islam (as we can witness here from Malala as well as multiple posters in this thread already). The obvious solution to anyone looking at the situation with any information and objectivity whatsoever is a combination of education, economic prosperity, and a lack of islam.

fudrick posted...

The_Undying_84 posted...

There's a reason those guys weren't the ones blowing themselves up.

Actually most of them did blow themselves up. Got any more s*** to throw at the wall in a desperate attempt to defend your little pet ideology?

Of course education is a good thing, but the problem here is that things like education and socioeconomic tend to be cited as a solution in order to divert attention away from islam (as we can witness here from Malala as well as multiple posters in this thread already). The obvious solution to anyone looking at the situation with any information and objectivity whatsoever is a combination of education, economic prosperity, and a lack of islam.

Yeah, because terrorism is only an Islamic thing.

Russian Rocket posted...

fudrick posted...

The_Undying_84 posted...

There's a reason those guys weren't the ones blowing themselves up.

Actually most of them did blow themselves up. Got any more s*** to throw at the wall in a desperate attempt to defend your little pet ideology?

Of course education is a good thing, but the problem here is that things like education and socioeconomic tend to be cited as a solution in order to divert attention away from islam (as we can witness here from Malala as well as multiple posters in this thread already). The obvious solution to anyone looking at the situation with any information and objectivity whatsoever is a combination of education, economic prosperity, and a lack of islam.

Yeah, because terrorism is only an Islamic thing.

Very insightful and relevant response, thanks

Russian Rocket posted...

Yeah, because terrorism is only an Islamic thing.

Only? Or predominantly?

One commonly-used resource is the Global Terrorism Database (https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd). I think they're a slightly strange bunch with an agenda, e.g. the Lockerbie Bombing is not assigned to Libya, and you can see their own 9/11 figures for yourself.

Suffice to say they're clearly not Islamophobic.

Anyway, I put global terrorists outrages from Jan 2001 to Dec 2016 and printed four pages of it, sorted by death toll.

Now, as you say, Islam is 25% of humanity.

Now tell me they're 25% of these tables, or anything closely resembling it.

https://i.imgur.com/iBs8YN0.jpg