[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-293826-105":59,"doc-detail-293826-en":131},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":124,"head_meta":126,"extra_data":128,"updated_unix":130},105,"en","engineers-of-jihad","Engineers of Jihad","","Findings from sociology working paper Paper Number 2007-10 analyze how graduates in science, engineering, and medicine are overrepresented among Islamist movements, while newer extremist Islamic groups in the West show different patterns. Engineers are especially concentrated in violent groups across both regions, despite being virtually absent from left-wing violent extremists and only present rather than overrepresented in right-wing extremists. Four hypotheses are tested, arguing that micro-level radicalization drivers and engineering-driven technical-social interactions best explain the engineers’ prominence and illuminate sources of Islamic extremism.",{"@graph":69,"@context":123},[70,84,106],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/engineers-of-jihad/293826/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/engineers-of-jihad/293826.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"River Wang","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-02","2026-09-17",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":105},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",17,{"@type":107,"mainEntity":108},"FAQPage",[109,115,119],{"name":110,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":112},"What does the paper find about science, engineering, and medicine graduates in Islamist movements?","Question",{"text":113,"@type":114},"The paper reports that engineers are strongly overrepresented among graduates in violent groups in both realms, which is highlighted as a puzzling relationship given engineers’ typical lack of association with religiously inspired movements.","Answer",{"name":116,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":117},"How does the paper describe the engineer pattern across different political wings of violent extremism?",{"text":118,"@type":114},"The paper tests four hypotheses: whether engineers’ prominence is historical/network-driven, whether technical skills make them attractive recruits, whether engineers have a ‘mindset’ matching Islamism, or whether vigorous radicalization comes from social conditions in Islamic countries.",{"name":120,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":121},"What explanation does the paper argue is most plausible for the observed pattern?",{"text":122,"@type":114},"The paper argues that the interaction between two of the proposed causes—rather than a single factor—offers the most plausible explanation, linking macro theories of radicalization with a micro-level perspective.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":125,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":127,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":129,"site_id":62},293826,1789669127,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":132},{"doc_id":129,"user_id":133,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":134,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":135,"file_id":136,"file_url":137,"file_type":138,"file_size":139,"view_count":105,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":11,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":130,"read_time":144,"preview_page_count":4},1099514067438,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/100002539ee87300030?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1780474512215547542","Sociology Working Papers  \nPaper Number 2007-10  \nEngineers of Jihad  \nDiego Gambetta Steffen Hertog  \nDepartment of Sociology  \nUniversity of Oxford  \nManor Road Oxford OX1 3UQ [www.sociology.ox.ac. uk/swp. html](www.sociology.ox.ac. uk/swp. html)  \n2  \nEngineers of Jihad1  \nDiego Gambetta, Nuffield College  \nSteffen Hertog, University of Durham  \n“You have trivialized our movement by your mundane analysis. May God have mercy on you”  \nAyman al-Zawahiri  \nAbstract. We find that graduates from subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the Muslim world, though not among the extremist Islamic groups which have emerged in Western countries more recently. We also find that engineers alone are strongly over-represented among graduates in violent groups in both realms. This is all the more puzzling for engineers are virtually absent from left-wing violent extremists and only present rather than over-represented among right-wing extremists. We consider four hypotheses that could explain this pattern. Is the engineers’ prominence among violent Islamists an accident of history amplified through network links, or do their technical skills make them attractive recruits? Do engineers have a ‘mindset’ that makes them a particularly good match for Islamism, or is their vigorous radicalization explained by the social conditions they endured in Islamic countries? We argue that the interaction between the last two causes is the most plausible explanation of our findings, casting a new light on the sources of Islamic extremism and grounding macro theories of radicalization in a micro-level perspective.  \n1 We wish to thank Peter Bergen, Ronan Gunaratna, Thomas Hegghammer, and Swati Pandey for sharing their data with us, and, for their help with various detailed pieces of information, Roberto Franzosi, Stephane Lacroix, Steven Lukes, Thomas Pierret, Josh Pollack, Maria Sobolewska, Valeria Pizzini-Gambetta, Larry Wright, and several Gulf2000 listserv members. We are very grateful to Becky Kahane, Jane Roberts, Neil Rudisill, Marina Tsvetkova and Karsten Wekel for their invaluable research assistance, to Heike Naumann from Hochschul-Informations-System Gmb H in Hanover, Germany, for her generous assistance on European higher education data, and to Ken MacDonald for his statistical advice. Finally, we are indebted to Michael Biggs, Annalisa Cristini, Jon Elster, Nils Petter Gleditsch, Elisabeth Iversflaten, Ekaterina Korobtseva, Elisabeth Longenesse, Rick Ludkin, Tiziana Nazio, John Owen, Andrea Patacconi, Roger Petersen, Valeria Pizzini-Gambetta, Tom Snijders, Anna Zimdars, two anonymous referees, and participants in the CSCW Workshop on The Role of First Actors in civil war, held at PRIO, Oslo, on 17-18 August 2006, as well as participants at Nuffield College’s Sociology Seminar and the Princeton Department for Near Eastern Studies’ seminar series, for comments on earlier drafts.  \n3  \nMany Islamic radicals are not economically dispossessed, are often better educated than their peers, and quite a few went to university. Even more surprising, many of them are engineers – a profession that we would not naturally associate with a religiously inspired movement. The evidence of this puzzling link is not limited to notorious cases, such as that of Mohammad Atta, the 9/11 mastermind who trained asan architectural engineer, but is found right at the start of modern Islamic radicalism. In Egypt, where it all began in the 1970s, three of the significant violent groups were founded or led by individuals who had a technical education2 – and so did many of their members. Saadedin Ibrahim, the first sociologist to study the early violent Islamists, interviewed 34 members of two of these groups, the Military Academy Group and al-Takfir, who were imprisoned in the late 1970s: 29 of them were either graduates or university students, and of the 25 of these for whom he reports the subject, nine were","cbCaikr6wUmh7y0j","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaikr6wUmh7y0j","pdf",446783,"English","# Abstract\n## Overrepresentation of technical graduates\n## Engineers in violent Islamist groups\n## Competing hypotheses for recruitment and radicalization\n## Proposed explanation and implications","[{\"question\":\"What does the paper find about science, engineering, and medicine graduates in Islamist movements?\",\"answer\":\"The paper reports that engineers are strongly overrepresented among graduates in violent groups in both realms, which is highlighted as a puzzling relationship given engineers’ typical lack of association with religiously inspired movements.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the paper describe the engineer pattern across different political wings of violent extremism?\",\"answer\":\"The paper tests four hypotheses: whether engineers’ prominence is historical/network-driven, whether technical skills make them attractive recruits, whether engineers have a ‘mindset’ matching Islamism, or whether vigorous radicalization comes from social conditions in Islamic countries.\"},{\"question\":\"What explanation does the paper argue is most plausible for the observed pattern?\",\"answer\":\"The paper argues that the interaction between two of the proposed causes—rather than a single factor—offers the most plausible explanation, linking macro theories of radicalization with a micro-level perspective.\"}]","Engineers of Jihad | PDF",227]