2009-12-30

Of all the biographical details that have emerged about the Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas, perhaps the least surprising -- at least to those who study these things -- is what he studied in college.

The terrorist suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, earned a degree in mechanical engineering from University College London in 2008, just over a year before he tried to demonstrate his skills by detonating an explosive device aboard the Detroit-bound plane. Among violent Islamic extremists, that puts him in familiar company. Indeed, the propensity toward engineering studies is an aspect of the terrorist profile that has drawn increased scrutiny of late from scholars, who have been advancing theories about the high correlation between the two.

In a study published this year, European sociologists Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog researched more than 400 known violent jihadists since the 1970s, including the 25 men involved with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly half were known to have received some level of higher education, and of those, 44 percent were engineers -- including eight of the 9/11 plotters and hijackers. Engineering was by far the most popular field; the percentage of terrorists who had pursued it was more than twice as high as the second-place field, Islamic studies.

"The bottom line is that while the probability of a Muslim engineer becoming a violent Islamist is minuscule, it is still between three and four times that for other graduates," Gambetta wrote in an article in the New Scientist that summarized the pair's findings, which were published in August in the European Journal of Sociology.

So what makes engineers more likely to become terrorists? The most obvious theory is their technical expertise; al-Qaida and other terror groups need to recruit people who can make bombs. But Gambetta and Hertog say that doesn't explain the overlap. Their study found that engineers serve the terrorist organizations they join in many more capacities than making or deploying explosives. A significant number held higher-level posts that didn't directly involve their engineering training at all.

The authors instead conclude that the phenomenon is explained by a combination of mindset and professional circumstance. Citing studies finding that engineers as a group are more politically conservative than other professions, Gambetta and Hertog write that engineers by nature are more likely to be drawn to the kind of rigid, hierarchical worldviews that radical Islam provides: Their governing mentality "inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions everywhere." What's more, although engineering is considered an elite profession in Middle Eastern countries, the region's job market for engineers dried up during the economic crises of the 1970s and '80s, frustrating that era's recent graduates and driving them to radicalize.

Not surprisingly, the engineering community in the U.S. is decidedly cool to the suggestion that their profession breeds terrorists. "It's baffling," said Larry Jacobson, the executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers, which counts about 45,000 members across the country. "There's got to be some big difference between what goes on in the U.S. and what goes on in other countries."

Jacobson agrees with the notion that engineers are a politically conservative bunch, but not the type of conservative that tips over into radicalism. American engineers, he said, "just don't take risks. ... The hard-wiring of engineers makes them very cautious."

Defending the profession's contribution to national security, Jacobson also noted that engineers across a range of specialties "become the government's first defense against terrorism."

Still, he did give some credit to al-Qaida and its ilk for the logic of its HR strategy: "If I was to recruit terrorists, engineers would be the first guys I'd want."

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