Western education does not prevent terrorism

Are you bright, hard-working and well-educated? Then you might
be just the person for a myriad jobs, and foremost among them
““ terrorist mastermind.

Contrary to popular belief, terrorists are often not
poverty”“stricken, uneducated, disenfranchised youth. Many of
the world’s deadliest terrorists are highly educated and come
from the bourgeoisie or privileged upper class.

While clearly devoid of any wisdom, there is no shortage of
fanatics with advanced schooling degrees willing to commit murder
in the name of religious delusions and xenophobic bigotry. In fact,
higher education at times seems like a prerequisite for launching
the most sinister of death plots and destructive machinations.

No matter your field of study, there are plenty of erudite and
degree-ridden terrorists who can serve as role models.

Perhaps you are interested in medicine, as Dr. Ayman al-Zawahi
and Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi were. Both physicians decided to split
their time between treating Egyptians, Afghans and Palestinians by
day and blowing up Israelis and Americans by night.

Dr. Zawahiri, the spiritual leader of al-Qaeda, was born into a
wealthy Egyptian family and is remembered for being a well-read
child.

Dr. Rantisi, a university lecturer and pediatrician by trade,
helped found Hamas, an organization that has murdered scores of
Israeli civilians and numerous Americans. A ruthless campaign of
terror ““ replete with cafe and discotheque bombings ““
against Israeli civilians and numerous Americans has been waged
since the groups’ inception. He became the leader of Hamas in
Gaza in early 2004 before rightly being eliminated by the long arm
of justice of the Israeli Defense Forces shortly thereafter.

If you’ve considered studying abroad at the prestigious
London School of Economics, then perhaps you can follow in the
footsteps of Ahmed Omar Sheikh. Scholarly Sheikh was a mathematics
student at the LSE in the early 1990s. Needless to say, his elite
Western education hardly halted his decision to kidnap and murder
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in the depths of
Pakistan.

Maybe you’re interested in pursuing architecture, as
Mohammed Atta did. Atta’s family owned a posh beach-front
property in Egypt, and his two older sisters are a university
lecturer and a doctor. His father was a lawyer.

Atta studied architecture and he received his degree from Cairo
University in 1990. Atta went on to study urban planning at a
technical university in Hamburg. Later, he piloted the first plane
that hit the twin towers on Sept. 11.

In one final example, Hasan al-Turabi must be among the most
educated people on the planet. He holds a law degree from the
University of Khartoum, a master’s from the University of
London and a doctorate from the famed Sorbonne in Paris.

Al-Turabi also happens to be the radical leader of the
al-Qaeda-affiliated National Islamic Front in Sudan. Al-Turabi
hosted Osama bin Laden on many occasions and has overseen gross
human rights violations as his group attempts to implement
stringent Islamic law in Sudan.

The point is clear. Immersion in the writings of Descartes, Adam
Smith or Walt Whitman is no shield against the jagged spear of
fundamentalist terrorism. Many terrorists educated in the West
still maintain the most mid-evil of delusions.

The average Hezbollah terrorist killed in action, for example,
is more educated and wealthier than the average Lebanese citizen,
according to a recent Princeton study.

Similarly, after interviewing nearly 250 aspiring suicide
bombers and recruiters, Pakistani relief worker Nasra Hassan said
“none were uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded or
depressed. They all seemed to be entirely normal members of their
families.”

In short, many terrorists are not illiterate reactionaries who
live in dearth. They can be calm, calculating, financially stable
and extremely well-educated professionals. Their analysis is sober
and executed with great foresight.

Terrorism remains, as it has always been, a choice ““ plain
and simple. It is born from the totalitarian mind-set; its
wellspring is tyranny and political repression. Only liberalism,
freedom and democracy are its antidotes. A rise in GDP or a lesson
on the teachings of Kierkegaard may feel good, but it will do
little toward the elimination of terrorism.

Only the freedom to dissent, associate and live without tyranny
can remove the sordid scourge of terrorism from our midst. Whether
Egypt’s Mubarak is serious about allowing multi-party
elections remains to be seen, yet it is a step in the right
direction. Let us pray that the liberals and courageous dissidents
in Saudi Arabia can overthrow the web of oppression that has
engulfed them for far too long. Hopefully Lebanon too will cast off
Syrian dominance and become sovereign again.

The fate of the free world and the eradication of terrorism are
intimately linked with the outcome of these nascent democratic
movements.

Keyes is a third-year Middle Eastern studies student. E-mail
him at dkeyes@media.ucla.edu.

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