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Magdi Abdelhadi, a BBC Arab affairs analyst writes:

The news that many of the suspects in the failed car bomb attacks in Britain are medical doctors from the Middle East has shocked many and raised questions about connections between class, education and militant Islam.

There is a popular misperception that only the destitute or ill-educated are drawn to the ranks of militant Islamic organisations. But nothing could be further from the known facts…

Many of the leaders of Palestinian Islamist groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, are either medical doctors, engineers or university professors.

And the oldest and most influential movement of political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, whose doctrine is blamed for the mushrooming militant groups across the world, is largely an organisation of middle class professionals.

Why is this? Abdelhadi’s explanation almost seems to make sense:

The lure of an Islamic utopia, where justice and virtue prevail according to a puritanical version of Islam, is too strong to resist for rich and poor alike. For many it is an end that justifies any means.

Some believe that their ‘Islamic utopia’ is not only an answer to the problems of their own societies, but for the entire world. It is an idea that has an enormous appeal for the masses in Middle Eastern states lacking in freedom, social justice and the promise of a fulfilling existence.

It is particularly attractive for young idealists who want to make the world a better place. [my emphasis]

But the argument is unsound; indeed, it’s nonsensical. Yes, by Western standards a place like Egypt lacks “freedom, social justice and the promise of a fulfilling existence” for the great majority of its citizens. But of course the remedy suggested, an Islamic state, will not provide those things, at least not in any sense that we understand those terms. Such a state is characterized precisely by totalitarianism, inequality, and injustice.

And I’m convinced that these highly educated Islamists understand this quite well. It’s not social justice or especially freedom that they crave.

If they live in the West, even if they were born in the West, where these things are much more available than in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, they don’t revel in them — they reject and try to destroy them.

The problem with modern society for the radical Islamist, it seems to me, is that there is too much freedom, too many choices. They don’t want to have the option of drinking alcohol or spending time alone with attractive women, because then they would have to struggle with their desires. Their “better place” is a world in which they are not stressed by the need to make moral choices. Islam for them is the ‘religion of peace’ in the sense that they are at peace from the turmoil of souls for whom everything is not already decided.

Interestingly, this explains why, as Abdelhadi says, “it is an end that justifies any means.” Or, as I prefer, it explains their psychopathological behavior.

One of the most difficult moral questions that we all face is the balancing of ends vs. means. Should a person cut ethical corners in business in order to send his children to college? If it is really, really important to replace the government, is it therefore acceptable to spread lies about it?

But the Islamist rejects moral questions. His goal is to live life without moral stress, to simply submit. He has already made his decision to live in this way. So it’s not exactly that the end justifies the means, but rather that the question of means vs. ends doesn’t even come up. He doesn’t deliberate, he just does. Some day the world will be a better place, in which nobody will have to deliberate, inshallah.

Technorati Tags: Islamism, jihadism, radical Islam

The Salem military court in the West Bank sentenced Muhammed Amudi to 11 life sentences, and 20 additional years in prison for his role in a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv shawarma restaurant last spring.

On 17 April, 2006, a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated himself at a crowded fast-food stand near Tel Aviv’s old central bus station. Amudi was the mastermind behind the terror attack, which left 11 people killed and dozens injured. — YNet

The attack was actually carried out by Sami Salim Mohammed Hammed, a young man from Jenin. The explosive device detonated after a security guard asked Hammed to open his bag; it included the usual nails, etc. to inflict the maximum number of injuries. The same restaurant had been previously targeted in January with 31 injuries and no deaths. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad took credit for both attacks.

I have no idea of what Amudi said to Hammed to get him to agree to be a human bomb. Some sources give his age as 21. Judging by the photo, I doubt it.

All of this is remind us that when the various terrorist groups demand the release of ‘political’ prisoners from Israeli jails, they are talking about creatures like Muhammed Amudi.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, terrorism, shawarma, Amudi, Hammed

More is known about the two doctors that were arrested in connection with the attempted terrorist bombings in London and Glasgow:

Dr Mohammed Asha, 26, from Chesterton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs, was arrested with a 27-year-old woman believed to be his wife on the M6 on Saturday night.

Originally from Lebanon, he trained in Jordan and worked at the North Staffordshire Hospital, Stoke under a provisional GMC registration. He lived there with his wife and baby boy.

The second doctor is thought to have been one of the two men who drove a blazing Jeep packed with gas canisters into a terminal building at Glasgow Airport.

He was employed at Paisley’s Royal Alexandra Hospital, where police yesterday detonated a car in a controlled explosion. One of the men involved in the Glasgow attack is also receiving treatment at the hospital. — Daily Telegraph, UK

In my previous post, I suggested that entirely new categories of thinking are needed in order for the West to deal with the assault against it exemplified by these attacks.

In the past, areas of concern for security forces included agents of enemy states, members of organized terror groups, mentally disturbed individuals, and criminals.

Today the threat appears to come from a combination of a particular ideology — radical Islamism — with ‘facilitators’ such as certain nations as well as independent groups like al-Qaeda, all amplified and ultimately coordinated by internet communications. Some of these radical Islamists are prepared to use violent means to achieve their goals; this group can be called ‘jihadists’.

Jihadists, inspired by Islamist websites, may develop plans for terrorist actions with or without the help of facilitators. They may establish a connection with a facilitator earlier or later in the planning process and the ultimate result can be amateurish, like the “Fort Dix six” plot, or horrendous like the London Transport bombings.

There are 1.5 billion (1.5 x 10⁹) Muslims in the world. How many of these support radical Islamism? Estimates vary, both by who is doing the estimating and what population is being studied; but Daniel Pipes puts the figure at 10% worldwide (the UK, interestingly, tends to have one of the highest figures). Let’s be conservative and use 5%. Now assume that of this 5%, one out of a thousand is prepared to take direct, violent action in support of his belief. That comes out to 75,000 violent jihadists, with possibly ten times as many prepared to offer material support.

There is no way that security agencies can determine who these people are in advance of their actions by traditional intelligence techniques, because they may have no connection with any known terrorist group; and if they are in contact with a facilitator, it will be an electronic one buried among millions of harmless web views, chats, or emails.

What I am about to say will be highly offensive to some, but I don’t see an alternative.

The only way to stop this kind of terrorism is to develop techniques of profiling to determine who, among the Muslims living in the West fit the category of ‘radical Islamists’, and which of these are most likely to belong to the smaller category of violent jihadists.

There is no way to do this with the limited amount of resources available other than by investigating people who have not committed any crime and who have no demonstrated connection with terror groups, people singled out only for their beliefs.

I am aware that this is anathema to many in our society where such great value is placed on privacy, freedom of thought and expression, freedom of association, etc.

The alternative — which we may decide to choose — is to simply accept a certain amount of random terrorism from those like the British murder doctors, and hope that they do not come to possess weapons with more potency than propane canisters.

Technorati Tags: terrorism, jihadism