Engineers of jihad: the curious connection between violent extremism and education

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface vii
1. The Education of Islamist Extremists 1
At the Origins 3
A Systematic Test 6
The Saudi Exception 19
Selection Effects 21
Conclusions 32

2. Relative Deprivation in the Islamic World 34
Frustrated Ambitions and Relative Deprivation 34
Beyond Egypt 38
Are Engineers Especially Deprived? 42
The Saudi Exception Again 52
Conclusions, and Facts That Do Not Fit 54

3. Relative Deprivation Probed 60
Western-Based Jihadis 60
Violent vs. Nonviolent Opposition 72
Religious vs. Secular Militants 76
Die-hard Militants vs. Defectors 80
Conclusions 83

4. The Ideology of Islamist Extremism Compared 85
Historical Links 86
Shared Values 88
Shared Tastes and Beliefs 90
Radical Ideologies Compared 94
Conclusions 98

5. The Education of Other Extremists 100
Left-wing Extremists 101
Right-wing Extremists 106
Are the Dividing Lines Robust? 113
Extremists Compared: Islamists, Leftists, and Rightists 120
Conclusions and Summary So Far 125

6. Mind-sets for Extremists 128
Traits for Types of Extremists 129
The Three Traits among Graduates 134
Enter Women 141
One More Trait: "Simplism" 146
Traits and Disciplines 150
Conclusions 154

7. Conclusions 159
Bibliography 167
Index 185

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 gap: 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 extremism: 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 factors: 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.

Diego Gambetta is professor of social theory at the European University Institute, Florence, and official fellow of Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. His books include The Sicilian Mafia and Codes of the Underworld (Princeton). Steffen Hertog is associate professor of comparative politics at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats.

(http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10656.html)