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Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education
A groundbreaking investigation into why so many Islamic radicals are engineers
The violent actions of a few extremists can alter the course of history, yet there persists a yawning gap between the potential impact of these individuals and what we understand about them. In Engineers of Jihad , Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog uncover two unexpected facts, which they imaginatively leverage to narrow that they find that a disproportionate share of Islamist radicals come from an engineering background, and that Islamist and right-wing extremism have more in common than either does with left-wing extremism, in which engineers are absent while social scientists and humanities students are prominent.
Searching for an explanation, they tackle four general questions about Under which socioeconomic conditions do people join extremist groups? Does the profile of extremists reflect how they self-select into extremism or how groups recruit them? Does ideology matter in sorting who joins which group? Lastly, is there a mindset susceptible to certain types of extremism?
Using rigorous methods and several new datasets, they explain the link between educational discipline and type of radicalism by looking at two key the social mobility (or lack thereof) for engineers in the Muslim world, and a particular mindset seeking order and hierarchy that is found more frequently among engineers. Engineers' presence in some extremist groups and not others, the authors argue, is a proxy for individual traits that may account for the much larger question of selective recruitment to radical activism.
Opening up markedly new perspectives on the motivations of political violence, Engineers of Jihad yields unexpected answers about the nature and emergence of extremism.
The violent actions of a few extremists can alter the course of history, yet there persists a yawning gap between the potential impact of these individuals and what we understand about them. In Engineers of Jihad , Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog uncover two unexpected facts, which they imaginatively leverage to narrow that they find that a disproportionate share of Islamist radicals come from an engineering background, and that Islamist and right-wing extremism have more in common than either does with left-wing extremism, in which engineers are absent while social scientists and humanities students are prominent.
Searching for an explanation, they tackle four general questions about Under which socioeconomic conditions do people join extremist groups? Does the profile of extremists reflect how they self-select into extremism or how groups recruit them? Does ideology matter in sorting who joins which group? Lastly, is there a mindset susceptible to certain types of extremism?
Using rigorous methods and several new datasets, they explain the link between educational discipline and type of radicalism by looking at two key the social mobility (or lack thereof) for engineers in the Muslim world, and a particular mindset seeking order and hierarchy that is found more frequently among engineers. Engineers' presence in some extremist groups and not others, the authors argue, is a proxy for individual traits that may account for the much larger question of selective recruitment to radical activism.
Opening up markedly new perspectives on the motivations of political violence, Engineers of Jihad yields unexpected answers about the nature and emergence of extremism.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published February 22, 2016
12 people are currently reading
488 people want to read
About the author
Diego Gambetta
18 books20 followersDiego Gambetta is a Professor of Sociology at Nuffield College of the University of Oxford.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 2, 2019
Many jihadis are better educated than their peers, and a good proportion attended college, with many becoming engineers like Muhammad Atta and Osama bin Laden. The strange part about this puzzle is that engineering is a profession that is not naturally associated with a religious movement!
The authors compiled a list of 284 members of Islamist groups. Of those, they found that 196 had higher education. For 178 of those cases, they were able to determine the subject of study, and of those, the most common fields were engineering 78, Islamic studies 34 (not surprising), medicine 14, and economics/business 12. So the representation of engineers among this group is 78/178 (44%). Among the 42 of the 78 cases for whom they could find the precise discipline, electrical, civil, and computer-related studies predominated.
The authors claim that radicalisation is related to relative deprivation! In trying to answer this question: Why engineers became more radicalised than people with other degrees? They considered four hypotheses, one of them is: “The special social difficulties faced by engineers in Islamic countries”, which presupposes:
(a) engineering is a prestigious field of study,
(b) graduates expect to achieve high status,
(c) in many Islamic countries, their expectations are frustrated by lack of economic opportunity,
(d) the resulting "frustrated expectations and relative deprivation" explain why engineering graduates are more likely to become radicalised,
I don't find this hypothesis plausible because the causal chain sounds fragile, since engineers still remain overrepresented among the set of western-based graduate jihadis, so this relative deprivation does not account for the engineers puzzle. And even if true, it doesn't survive close scrutiny. It's so hard to test, it verges on being unfalsifiable.
Though it's provoking and research analytical, it doesn’t demystify this puzzle in all of its aspects, it just sheds interesting light on some facts while speculating on some other causes. I believe the book is just intriguing observation and good use of data to refine the question.
If you don't want to read the whole book, it looks like you can get most of the results from this 90-page working paper, which is free to download:
http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/materia...
The authors compiled a list of 284 members of Islamist groups. Of those, they found that 196 had higher education. For 178 of those cases, they were able to determine the subject of study, and of those, the most common fields were engineering 78, Islamic studies 34 (not surprising), medicine 14, and economics/business 12. So the representation of engineers among this group is 78/178 (44%). Among the 42 of the 78 cases for whom they could find the precise discipline, electrical, civil, and computer-related studies predominated.
The authors claim that radicalisation is related to relative deprivation! In trying to answer this question: Why engineers became more radicalised than people with other degrees? They considered four hypotheses, one of them is: “The special social difficulties faced by engineers in Islamic countries”, which presupposes:
(a) engineering is a prestigious field of study,
(b) graduates expect to achieve high status,
(c) in many Islamic countries, their expectations are frustrated by lack of economic opportunity,
(d) the resulting "frustrated expectations and relative deprivation" explain why engineering graduates are more likely to become radicalised,
I don't find this hypothesis plausible because the causal chain sounds fragile, since engineers still remain overrepresented among the set of western-based graduate jihadis, so this relative deprivation does not account for the engineers puzzle. And even if true, it doesn't survive close scrutiny. It's so hard to test, it verges on being unfalsifiable.
Though it's provoking and research analytical, it doesn’t demystify this puzzle in all of its aspects, it just sheds interesting light on some facts while speculating on some other causes. I believe the book is just intriguing observation and good use of data to refine the question.
If you don't want to read the whole book, it looks like you can get most of the results from this 90-page working paper, which is free to download:
http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/materia...
September 27, 2018
While the statistics exhibiting the overrepresentation of engineers in violent right-wing extremist groups in contrast to social science graduates in left-wing ones is convincing, I am not sold on the authors' contention that certain innate psychological traits lead people to engineering or the social science schools, and thenceforth to political movements on the opposite ends of the spectrum. As the authors themselves note, students in the developing world are propelled to engineering and medical schools by a joint impulse of career prospects and peer pressure. Nevertheless, any reference to innate traits should be substantiated with reproducible genetic studies rather than qualitative analysis of statistical data.
January 18, 2017
كتاب "مهندسو الجهاد: العلاقة بين التطرف العنيف والتعليم"، وهو من تأليف كل من "دييجو جامبيتا" أستاذ علم الاجتماع في معهد الجامعة الأوروبية بفلورنسا، و"ستيفين هيرتوج" أستاذ مشارك في كلية لندن للاقتصاد والعلوم السياسية.
ويتناول الكتاب علاقة تخصص الهندسة بالانضمام للجماعات المتطرفة سواء في البلدان الإسلامية أو الغرب، محاولاً تقديم تفسير لما يمكن تسميته ظاهرة "تطرف المهندسين" ووجود عدد كبير من المهندسين في الجماعات المتطرفة العنيفة، فضلاً عن تسليط الضوء على التطرف المرتبط بالأيدولوجيا.
وقد توصل الكتاب إلى عدة نتائج رئيسة، لعل أبرزها أن نسبة كبيرة من المتطرفين الإسلاميين هم جامعيون ذوو خلفية هندسية، وأن انتشار المهندسين المتطرفين في بعض الدول الإسلامية مرده الإحباط والحرمان النسبي، وبالتالي فإن وجود التنمية والفرص الوظيفية من العوامل المساعدة على الحصانة ضد التطرف. كذلك، فإن العوامل المشتركة التي تربط بين المهندسين والتيار اليميني أكبر من نظيرتها بين المهندسين وتيار اليسار الراديكالي.
يحاول الكتاب تقديم تفسير لكون خريجي الهندسة أكثر ميلاً للتطرف مقارنةً بالتخصصات الأخرى، ويرجع ذلك إلى حالة الإحباط الفردي أو الجماعي التي يُمنى بها خريجو كليات الهندسة في كثير من الدول الإسلامية، حيث لا يجد هؤلاء الخريجون فرصة لتحقيق أحلامهم في الحصول على وظائف جيدة. أي أن اجتماع عاملي (الطموح ثم الصدمة) قد يؤدي إلى انتشار التطرف.
ويؤكد الكتاب أن الظروف الاجتماعية ليست كافية بأي حال من الأحوال لتفسير هذا الربط ، حيث أن الغرب يوجد به وضع اقتصادي وفرص أفضل مما عليه الوضع في عدد من البلدان الإسلامية، ومع ذلك يوجد متطرفون في الغرب. ولذا فإنه يمكن اعتبار السمات الشخصية والدوافع والميول النفسية المختلفة هي أيضاً وراء التوجُّه نحو التطرف
يشير الكتاب إلى أن التطرف لا يرتبط بالدين فقط، ولكنه يرتبط بالأيدولوجيات أيضاً. وفي هذا الصدد، يفترض الباحثان، من خلال ما تم تجميعه من بيانات ومعلومات، أن العوامل المشتركة التي تربط بين المهندسين والتيار اليميني المتطرف أكبر بكثير من العوامل المشتركة بين هذه الفئة والتيار اليساري الراديكالي.
ويطرح الكتاب عدة أمثلة على اليمين المتطرف في ألمانيا والنمسا وروسيا والولايات المتحدة، حيث يتضح انتشار تخصص الهندسة بشكل أوسع بين اليمينيين المتطرفين.
ويتناول الكتاب علاقة تخصص الهندسة بالانضمام للجماعات المتطرفة سواء في البلدان الإسلامية أو الغرب، محاولاً تقديم تفسير لما يمكن تسميته ظاهرة "تطرف المهندسين" ووجود عدد كبير من المهندسين في الجماعات المتطرفة العنيفة، فضلاً عن تسليط الضوء على التطرف المرتبط بالأيدولوجيا.
وقد توصل الكتاب إلى عدة نتائج رئيسة، لعل أبرزها أن نسبة كبيرة من المتطرفين الإسلاميين هم جامعيون ذوو خلفية هندسية، وأن انتشار المهندسين المتطرفين في بعض الدول الإسلامية مرده الإحباط والحرمان النسبي، وبالتالي فإن وجود التنمية والفرص الوظيفية من العوامل المساعدة على الحصانة ضد التطرف. كذلك، فإن العوامل المشتركة التي تربط بين المهندسين والتيار اليميني أكبر من نظيرتها بين المهندسين وتيار اليسار الراديكالي.
يحاول الكتاب تقديم تفسير لكون خريجي الهندسة أكثر ميلاً للتطرف مقارنةً بالتخصصات الأخرى، ويرجع ذلك إلى حالة الإحباط الفردي أو الجماعي التي يُمنى بها خريجو كليات الهندسة في كثير من الدول الإسلامية، حيث لا يجد هؤلاء الخريجون فرصة لتحقيق أحلامهم في الحصول على وظائف جيدة. أي أن اجتماع عاملي (الطموح ثم الصدمة) قد يؤدي إلى انتشار التطرف.
ويؤكد الكتاب أن الظروف الاجتماعية ليست كافية بأي حال من الأحوال لتفسير هذا الربط ، حيث أن الغرب يوجد به وضع اقتصادي وفرص أفضل مما عليه الوضع في عدد من البلدان الإسلامية، ومع ذلك يوجد متطرفون في الغرب. ولذا فإنه يمكن اعتبار السمات الشخصية والدوافع والميول النفسية المختلفة هي أيضاً وراء التوجُّه نحو التطرف
يشير الكتاب إلى أن التطرف لا يرتبط بالدين فقط، ولكنه يرتبط بالأيدولوجيات أيضاً. وفي هذا الصدد، يفترض الباحثان، من خلال ما تم تجميعه من بيانات ومعلومات، أن العوامل المشتركة التي تربط بين المهندسين والتيار اليميني المتطرف أكبر بكثير من العوامل المشتركة بين هذه الفئة والتيار اليساري الراديكالي.
ويطرح الكتاب عدة أمثلة على اليمين المتطرف في ألمانيا والنمسا وروسيا والولايات المتحدة، حيث يتضح انتشار تخصص الهندسة بشكل أوسع بين اليمينيين المتطرفين.
August 5, 2019
It has an intriguing Why question and the authors have used statistics heavily and partly psychology to explain the over-representation of engineers in the extremists and right-wing groups. I'm just overwhelmed by the footnotes. They also looked into the other disciplines that are 'attracted' to these groups. There are some words that I'm not comfortable with like 'Islamists' which equates religion with the current throng of violent extremists. But this is essential to look into the narrative of poor recruits that are recruited but rather, those who are highly educated and disillusioned ones have the most propensity to be radicalized, and much more, take the violent route.
March 26, 2020
A book written after excellent research. However Author has not gone into the type of curriculum by various group and it’s impact. For example, Engineer have higher NFC(Need For Cognitive Closure), but why?? Any contribution of books or syllabus he is studying?? Probably during his engineering period, he is expected to be more specific for any problem he is solving. Say, a civil engineer will calculate whether a bridge can bear certain load.. Yes/No. No ambiguity..
Effect of environment he is studying is also missing. Does an engineer gives more importance to logic, guilt?? Guilt that his community is being prosecuted, logic to justify Jihad.
Although overall a good read.
G S Malik
Effect of environment he is studying is also missing. Does an engineer gives more importance to logic, guilt?? Guilt that his community is being prosecuted, logic to justify Jihad.
Although overall a good read.
G S Malik
January 26, 2018
Apart from a few clearly uniformed dig's at Tolkien (who is just as popular with leftist groups, along with Frank Herbert's DUNE as he is with rightest groups) it was an excellently researched book looking to solve an interesting question.
October 18, 2019
Breaks down their research process very well to explain a strange phenomenon
February 5, 2024
This is a really interesting look into the thinking styles of individuals, and what those thinking styles leave people susceptible/vulnerable to.
July 12, 2016
The book at times seemed very repetitive and was somewhat biased towards the left, however it makes a decent case that engineers are over represented among Islamists due to the same traits (described in detail) that push them into discipline of engineering in the first place, therefore making them predisposed to joining militant/extremist movements.
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April 29, 2016303.48409 G189 2016
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September 30, 2016Not very impressed by the book. I don't see it answering any questions or raising any new questions. It feels more like a research for the sake of research.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews