MUST READ: DOC JIHAD, PART II

Doc Jihad, Part II
An old connection.
By Stanley Kurtz

Terrorist doctors? There’s nothing unusual here, I’m sorry to say. On the contrary, in the universe of Islamist radicalism, professional terrorists — who are also professionals — are the oldest story in the book. Consider this: A study of 172 al Qaeda members and associates found that two-thirds had gone to college. Most of them were professionals. Another study of five major anti-Western attacks by Islamists found that 54 percent of the terrorists had attended college (compared to 52 percent of Americans who have done so). A study of 300 militants prosecuted for the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat found that, of those who were students, around a third were studying in Egypt’s elite faculties of medicine and engineering.

These facts and more are laid out in “A Matter of Pride,” a thoughtful article by Peter Bergen and Michael Lind. Bergen and Lind do an excellent job of puncturing “the myth of deprivation” — the notion that poverty causes terrorism. Certainly Bergen and Lind allow us to conclude that the British terror doctors are not anomalies. Unfortunately, Bergen and Lind go on to make some less-than-convincing suggestions about what actually does cause Islamist terror — and how to go about stopping it. Tracing down the sources of Islamist terror is the key to solving some of America’s most urgent policy dilemmas. So here, in Part II of “Doc Jihad,” I’ll continue to explore the strikingly significant role played by medical doctors in the spread of political Islam, in light of which we can return to the important issues of theory and policy raised by Bergen and Lind.

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Pertinent Links:

1) Doc Jihad, Part II

2) Doc Jihad