Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
In the Algerian insurgency, pharmacists were over represented. I do think there is something about being torn between the culture of science and the culture of religion that causes personal turmoil which, for a tiny portion of people, manifests itself in violence. The violent are punishing the world for their own internal turmoil.
These students enroll in curricula that are practical, profitable, and offer upward mobility. These engineering / pharmacy students are most likely from the professional class, as the children of the ruling class are studying finance and law at elite institutions. I understand that these students selected a course of study, or major, that would be beneficial to their growing nation (demographics, anyone?).

These students would most likely never tell their paternal sponsors that they had dropped civil engineering for art history; and “joined a fraternity”.

I predict that many of the professionally educated radicals listed in the study are second sons. The first son (professional class assumption) is learning and participating in the profession of the father. The second son is sent off to university to start a complimentary profession and represent the family well. The toxic emotional state of the “El Segundo”, away from his family at the university, is ripe for recruitment into a radical group (similar result pg 62-63) (cognitive dissonance pg 68). The profession was selected or dictated by paternal sponsors long before the recruitment into the group. The conclusion of the study does acknowledge a full biography on each radical could offer better solutions.

All of my terms are broad; however, I simply wanted to place the decisions of profession and group affiliation in sequence.

It is odd that the study does not offer the sequence as an argument (moves right past it on page 58). Also, the spread of the professional class in regards to science vs. non science tracks in western and ME societies does not seem well defined or separated. The exact contents of the engineering curricula may need to be examined as well; compared to the US colleges, an MA in Math is not comparable professionally to a BS Elec Engr. Also, as the authors loosely compare western and ME society, they fail to mention the simple fact that in western society the supermajority of engineers are men. This population fact should skew the comparisons amongst various professional groups and the western / ME comparisons.


Although my experience is at an American university, the birth year group is the same as that listed in the study. The year group for my major (Aero Engr, U of AZ) had 13 students; 6 Americans and 7 Kuwaitis. The Kuwaiti students lived together, and lived comfortably. The greater engineering college had many clusters of students on visas from ME countries. Quite simply, the nation of origin sponsored the education of native talent to build their respective countries infrastructure. This developing expertise would also allow for the smart contracting of western efforts, as opposed to being taken to the cleaners on infrastructure and natural resources projects. These students were serious, driven, and had little interest in the “shopping mall experience” that is the American university at the turn of the century. And, we were just one block away from the infamous Tucson mosque.