open Democracy News Analysis - A prescription for terror, Debora MacKenzie - Comments

robert browne on "A prescription for terror"

robert browne — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 19:35:31 +0100

I had the good fortune to work with a group of Arab students in the UK, one aspect of which may throw light on this issue. One of the students spoke openly about his religious / political ambitions and what he usually referred to as 'my group', which turned out to be A-Ikhwan (The Muslim Brotherhood). I think he saw me as a possible convert, and was in consequence more forthcoming than perhaps he ought to have been. He was studying towards a PhD in Nano Technology and all other members of 'his group' were in similar hi-tec training a mix of medicine, IT or high end engineering such as nuclear technologies. During a discussion about what the different societies could learn from each other he said:" The only advantage the west has over The Muslims is science. The Prophet told us we should learn from other people, even if they are unbelievers. During the Crusades we learned how to build siege engines from the Franks. My group here learns martial arts from a buhdist so we are strong. All we want from you is your science so we can beat you." He went on to study nano-technology in Hamburg where many people from ‘his group’ were studying. The answer is yes, science and suicide attacks are linked, but the link is not direct and it is not causal. Oh and a thought for Kamalp, Locke probably was a slave trader, but then again if the hadiths are to believed so was Mohammed.

Kamalp on "A prescription for terror"

Kamalp — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 23:04:51 +0100

The title is catchy: a "prescription" for terror. Doctors write prescriptions, don't they? And the question itself is wrong: "In particular, does scientific training make a person more or less likely to embrace terrorist solutions to perceived wrongs than other members of his group? " These people are not terrorists - they are liberators, freedom fighters. Were the North American Indians terrorists? Were the sufi-sanyasi fighters in Bengal terrorists? No! Secondly, the so-called Enlightenmnet was when the slave trade was reaching a peak. By not focusing on this "dark" side of the Enlightenment, you "whitewash" it. Indeed, John Locke himself was a slave trader - he preached liberty and practiced slavery. Just like the western powers today. Very enlightened!

prepared on "A prescription for terror"

prepared — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 17:35:15 +0100

In response.... I think that cultural relativism and postmodernism provide an environment where fundamentalist ideas can be found - however, the seed - i.e. the cause of terrorism - is, I repeat, a seperate education these people pick up from fundamentalist preachers of violence from the Arab dictatorship countries and also the likes of Pakistan. This article is absolutely wrong, and frankly demented, in even suggesting that there is any causal link between terrorism and a scientific education. Our Universities should continue to be places of free inquiry and intellectual liberty - any attempt to discredit these values is very harmful indeed and fulfils the terrorists aims. In the meantime, the Wahhabis and suchlike that have funded preachers of terrorism in Arab countries and places like Pakistan and even Mosques in the West - are allowed to continue because they exist in countries where there are dictatorships. That is the real problem. Again the reason why many terrorists have a technical background is that they are from the socioeconomic group who can easily travel and who study engineering subjects (just as the Japanese, Chinese and Indians do) to get better jobs. They commit terrorism because they receive a separate 'education' from fundamentalists in muslim dictatorship countries where they have a lot of grievances. Sorry- again, this article touches on an important subject, but it completely misses the point: Not surprising since it is written by a New Scientist journalist with clearly no substantial knowledge of Middle-Eastern politics. But that's freedom of speech for you. So I'd suggest Ms MacKenzie heed the words of Wittgenstein: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".

jdubow on "A prescription for terror"

jdubow — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 20:46:58 +0100

Rogers and Prepared make the argument that a certain fraction of Muslims enrolled in US education programs will turn terrorist because of the statistics. Yet those percentages don't seem to hold for Indian, Japanese, Israeli, Western European, Russian or Chinese students. They have their own grievances yet they typically don't go in for mass murder. The Universities are partly to blame in this radicalization because of the cultural relativism that is the norm in an institution that formerly didn't entertain norms. This chorus is joined by a media that has also become mono cultural. Yet Enlightenment values balance tolerance and liberty with individual responsibility. Curiously, despite another article on neo liberalism and responsibility in Open Democracy, the doctrine of responsibility seems to be very selectively applied. But more of that elsewhere. Ms. Mackenzie raises a very relevant issue and OpenDemocracy was well to publish it. Pure tolerance leads to a quagmire, and it is impossible to avoid value judgements if you want to live in the world. Enlightenment values have a proven track record and trashing them as new age academics and journalists do have not produced a viable alternaitve. The doctrine of individual responsibility states that an individual is responsible for their actions. Since this is only applied to white male conservatives at present I'll choose my examples there. A man cannot come into court and claim he raped or killed a woman because of what someone else did or said. You cannot tell the IRS that you won't pay taxes because of George Bush or the War. To extrapolate only a little, a Muslim cannot claim justification for mass murder because of George Bush, the Iraq war, Israel or the Koran. In the West, which still espouses individual responsibility and equal justice, the legal system and the society it represents judges mass murderers by their actions and consequences and doesn't acquit the murderer because of the actions or words of others. This is enlightenment values writ large, and they aren't appreciated in the University or the media as much as they should be. Indeed, the only thing that allowed a multicutural US (Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and citizens of many hues from many countries) to do productive business toghether and build a productive and powerful society that faces its problems and works hard to grant equal citizenship to all its citizens is the adoption of non-normative enlightenment values. If other values, such as Jihad or Shari'a law would work better then please, we would all like to hear your plan.

prepared on "A prescription for terror"

prepared — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:15:53 +0100

This article - albeit thought-provoking - is full of the worst kind of dangerously loose and woolly thinking you can find in journalism. I will attempt to clear up Ms MacKenzie's confusion so that we don't have to deal with it... People from relatively poor Middle-Eastern countries are not going to spend all that money to study Media Studies or pottery in Western Universities. Immigrant families usually go for science and engineering sujects simply because they pay off better and they are useful. The fraction of a percentage of those of them, who become radicalised, have their own grievances and pick up a SEPARATE education from radical fundamentalist preachers. That's why they do it. In any case- some could argue that people have to pick up so-called enlightenment values from childhood and school- enlightenment values are everywhere, surround us in everyday life - democracy, individuality, satellite TV, the internet, science - these aren't things you have to go to University to find out about!! It really is as simple as that Ms MacKenzie. And OpenDemocracy - very disappointing - is this really the calibre of 'journalism' you should be publishing?

Steven Rogers on "A prescription for terror"

Steven Rogers — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 14:26:33 +0100

This comment suggests a simple explanation for the noted phenomenon: many of those involved in the new transnational terrorism of al-Qaida and related groups are far from the products of slums or backwoods religious schools: they tend to be well-off, educated people, often with roots in Africa or Asia but who have typically lived - and become radicalised - in the west. This is not the first time it's been noted that many of those who have become leaders in terrorist movements studied in the West, and became radicalised there. Doesn't it also seem likely that individuals from these countries who study in the West are likely to take up scientific and technical courses, simply because these are expected to be more useful when the students return to their home countries? If you were an upper middle class Saudi family sending a son to study in England, would you want that son to take up medicine or engineering, or philosophy, or art history? I suspect that all we're seeing here is a preference for scientific and technical courses among individuals from Islamic societies who are sent to study in the west. If, hypothetically, 80% of foreign muslim students who study in Europe take such courses, and 1% of the entire group becomes involved with radical Islamic movements, then we would naturally expect 80% of those radicalised to come from scientific or technical courses. Correlation is not causation; let's not pretend that it is.

kimrich on "A prescription for terror"

kimrich — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 07:16:25 +0100

When I studied medicine, one of my co-students was a British former professor of English literature and a regular contributor to the TLS. The man was clearly an antisemite and eloquently declaimed in a most offensive way about Jews and Blacks in what he thought was a highly amusing way . Seldom did people challenge him because of his legendary brilliance. What is the difference between a westerner educated in the humanties holding such repugnant views and a scientifically trained dark foreigner committed to Jihad. Has it anything to do with science at all? Rather it must have to do with indoctrination which somehow transcends rationality.

joe_11 on "A prescription for terror"

joe_11 — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 02:39:47 +0100

Education has the potential to increase capacity,. To the extent that it does empower people, it does so in ways that do not always comfort others. Edward Teller, Robert Oppenheimer, and Henry Kissinger all received and participated in "good" educations. The Enlightenment in the Western World may have reduced one kind of violence - the kind based on religious differences. But violence is everywhere. And there are those who define violence very broadly to include poverty and cultural imperialism. A recent poll of US servicemen was shocking in the small percentage of respondents who were willing to say that [Iraqi?] civilians were worthy of respect. Is that a function of education and training? Socialization? Extreme circumstances? One idea associated with the Enlightenment is "progress" which is sometimes used to include the moral improvement of humanity. Some modern ideologies - arguably including Marxism - are built, in part, on that idea. Other ideologies - say Fascism - grew partly out of cynicism and despair resulting from disillusionment with that idea. Both of those are associated with a certain degree of brutality. (I wonder if those implicated in assassination attempts against Hitler were accused of "terrorism"?) We'd like everyone to have more capacity to solve problems without resorting to violence - and to avoid committing atrocities if forced by circumstances to use violence in self-preservation. We'd like everyone to help build institutions, structures, customs, and beliefs conducive to those ends. In that context, educational practices would certainly be an important, if not a crucial element. But if that is truly a project growing out of the Enlightenment (to the arguable extent that the Enlightenment expresses universal human needs and aspirations) we have taken only the most faltering steps.

paul.carline on "A prescription for terror"

paul.carline — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 01:12:43 +0100

Deborah MacKenzies' analysis is fatally flawed because it is based on official disinformation instead of fact. Because it does not appear to have penetrated certain levels of academia and media, it needs to be stated once again loudly and clearly: there is no compelling evidence to substantiate the 'official' accounts of 9/11, Bali, London, Madrid etc. - so any analysis which assumes as fact that these attacks were carried out by Muslims, whether well- or scientifically-educated or not, is worthless. What evidence we have leads inescapably to a different conclusion: that all these attacks were in fact further examples of the well-known phenomenon of government-sponsored 'false-flag terrorism' (FFT). Any Muslims who may have been involved (and there is no evidence that any were) would merely have been 'patsies', primed and groomed by 'handlers' from the secret services. It really is time that commentators such as Deborah MacKenzie got up to speed on the realities of FFT and ceased to perpetuate the myths about Islamic terrorism. The evidence that 9/11 was an inside job is now so overwhelming that anyone who persists in repeating the entirely unsubstantiated official myth automatically loses all credibility as a commentator. Even though the evidence is not yet as clear in the other cases, there is sufficient cause to doubt the official accounts. An appropriate analysis of the phenomenon of terror must start with government-sponsored false-flag terrorism (we can start in the late 1960s in Europe through to the 1980s, including the Bologna station bombing which killed nearly twice as many people as the London bombs of 7/7. Let's begin by dealing with the major terrorists - governments.

krishnamc on "A prescription for terror"

krishnamc — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 23:12:54 +0100

binatone to get these degrees could these people be more focused than their peers and therefore more obsessional ? Could this actually be the cause of their radicalisation ?

jee on "A prescription for terror"

jee — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 19:20:26 +0100

Prescription for terror indeed Those educated in science can come across the corruption that exists in democracy. It can be quite a shock to find that despite their education they are second class citizens with no effective voice when they try and tackle the corruption that is present. The group of people who meet the corruption that the judiciary and the lawyers present are very small and have a tendency to be below the radar. It can be very difficult to meet year after year the lies that civil court judges visit upon people. Think fathers4justice. Think scandals of the family courts. Think GMC and its behaviour. Think Meadows struck off and reinstated by the Judges. Think how people have taken the GMC to court won their case only to find that the Judges refuse to insist that the GMC follow its own guidelines. Look at the incompetent doctors sacked by the hospitals but had to be reinstated because the Judges did not consider the lives of ordinary people were worth protecting. Look at what psychiatrists have been able to do to people. When challenged with wrong doing, the judges protected them. One could go on and on. Some of us with qualifications have networks which enable us to remain in the political system and work towards methods of protecting people from corruption by getting the law makers to make laws to protect people. We are in for the long haul and we are supported by others who have experienced the same thing. Some of us have support in dealing with the Mind Rape that we have experienced from people in authority. An educated person who finds that they have no networks with which to try and deal with the corruption that they find is in a difficult situation. Their belief in the system has been shattered. They have to deal with all the emotions that this generated. Some of these emotions are very strong. How distressing the emotions are is a matter that is never discussed. The community needs to find ways to deal with their emotions so they can heal. The community cannot deal with the emotions they have until the community recognises that their experience of injustice is real. They need to find effective ways that benefits the community when they deal with the injustice that they have experienced. The 1948 United Nations Charter of Human Rights says that everyone is equal before the law. This has been ignored on many occasions by English Civil Court Judges. Think Denning and the Birmingham 6 as a good example.

andrewmyerson on "A prescription for terror"

andrewmyerson — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:49:53 +0100
Sorry,but for a sceince jouranlist this piece reads full of cliches and statistical ramblings with no coherence. As an example of english writing it is the sort of work that my english teacher would have had a blue fit over. It is full of far too many parenthses and sub clauses; either come out and say something and stand by it or don't. For example, you state at the beginning "that people - perhaps wrongly, sometimes - believe doctors are pledged to save life. The idea that protectors of life might be perpetrators of death cuts deep." What does this mean? "Perhaps wrongly" - is it wrong or isn't it? It it is wrong this seems like a potentially much more interesting article which you could have written. You appear to be advocating "deep" sceintific thinking as a new enlightenment, Perhaps history generally and the history of sceince might demonstrate this to be an unlikely palliative.

jdubow on "A prescription for terror"

jdubow — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:09:41 +0100
Deborah MacKenzie is clearly groping, as are many of us, for why many scientifically educated people end up leading terrorist organizations. She identifies many of the factors involved. Just as there are many factors, it is difficult if not impossible to devise a single cure to what is most surely a problem. However, there are things that will surely make things better, and thus should be tried. As in most applied research projects it is the approach of incremental continual improvement which, while seemingly slow, actually moves fast to success. Her point about the lack of enlightenment education of scientists and especially engineers is particularly germane. I have taught and chaired departments at a number of highly ranked engineering schools for thirty years and speak from experience in these matters. The problem is not only a scarcity of humanistic training but also the nature of what training exists. I'll summarize both issues in a paragraph each below. Engineers typically take about 25% of their courses in "non technical" subjects including language, history, behavioral science, philosophy and yes business and economics. This small percentage is dictated by the need to retain the four year to graduation nature of the program. Engineering was and to an extent is the wayout of the lower middle class or upper lower class economically and five year or more programs didn't fit the "stakeholder" needs. With tuitions rising and costs rising the contraints on four year program are growing slowly despite the increasing demand for engineering. So there is a limited window for "enlightenment" studies and what passes through that window had better be high quality. Despite this need, the quality of non-technical courses has, from an enlightenment values viewpoint, declined significantly over the past few decades. The cause is easy to discern and in fact is known by many engineering educators in the field. I'll state the more strongly than I would amongst colleagues or in public so readers can experience the visceral response to the subject of many in the field. The bad seed is the domination of humanities education by "agenda-driven" courses. For example most universities in the US require as one non-technical engineering course a "course in diversity". While this was intended to expose students to other cultures and other values, at the present time many students call it the "course in self-loathing". The agenda of most of these courses amounts to legal briefs that the cause of all the worlds problems are Western White males. The gender related courses may be summed up with the mantra "when I'm feeling sad and blue blaming men will get me through". The culture or history related courses have similar mantras. The cause of this is the political correctness that is espoused by, according to Pew foundation polls, around 90% of University humanities faculty. The combination of a guilt/shame driven humanities offering with kick-me main stream journalism turns many if not most of those so inclined to devalue the Enlightenment and the West in general. These, combined with skills that make science/medicine and engineering students attractive to terrorist organization along with a range individual trauma, can lead to violence in certain cases. This intellectual environment is contrary to the values of society, of the professions and of the Universities involved. It is presently very hard to change. If we want to reduce the number of highly trained people choosing to destroy the very institutions that made their education and life style possible then we need to get serious about teaching Enlightenment values during the course of higher education.

andrew.spencer01 on "A prescription for terror"

andrew.spencer01 — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 13:24:12 +0100
The comments from hfakos are spot-on. It's perhaps worth pointing out to Ms. MacKenzie that, since the 1940's at least (let's say since Dresden and the May 1945 fire-bombing of Tokyo), civilians have been the target of choice in most of the serious conflicts involving highly advanced industrial powers (including Israel). Killing civilians by the 100s of 1000s for political and economic gain (witness today's Iraq) is terrorism, isn't it? Killing relatively small numbers of innocent civilians in Western countries in order to exert pressure on Western governments could be regarded as the only rational military response of any country or group that feels threatened by the Western military-industrial complex. I don't see how Enlightenment philosophy relates to any of this. The trouble is that in the Enlightenment, wars were fought by brightly uniformed soldiers in serried ranks, not by US bomber pilots playing glorified video games.

hfakos on "A prescription for terror"

hfakos — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 12:46:20 +0100
I find this 'analysis' very weak and patronizing. Leaders in any conflict tend to be from the educated classes, in the West as well. Most of the Nazi leadership was highly educated, just like the Bolsheviks in Russia. And both resorted to rather bloody methods. The colonial West was also led by educated men and still caused horrendous suffering in the third world. The simple explanation is that educated people are much better equipped to recognize injustice in the world, so they tend to be overrepresented in the leadership positions of political struggles. No need to resort to patronizing, and somewhat racist, arguments about the lack of Enlightenment values in developing societies. I also wonder when will Deborah analyze what makes US psychologists participating in torture at Guantanamo? Or what makes Western scientists and engineers working on weapons of mass destruction in nuclear labs such as Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, etc. In general, what makes supposedly enlightened, well-educated Westerners work in the arms business, controlled overwhelmingly by Western companies? Where is your analysis of that Deborah? Before you resort to your patronizing attitude towards third world extremism, you should analyze your own lot first, there is plenty of war criminals and state terrorists there too.

A prescription for terror, Debora MacKenzie

Debora MacKenzie — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:35:29 +0100

The headline said it all: doctors who kill. When it emerged that trained medical practitioners were involved in the failed terror attacks in London and Glasgow on 29-30 June 2007, there was near-universal shock in the media, the blogosphere and the workplace in many lands.

A lot of that, as Michel Thieren says in openDemocracy ("'Terror doctors': anatomy of a void concept" , 12 July 2007), was because people - perhaps wrongly, sometimes - believe doctors are pledged to save life. The idea that protectors of life might be perpetrators of death cuts deep.
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