the educated terrorist

The Educated Terrorist
July 12, 2005

Mohammed Atta was the son of middle-class Cairenes and obtained an advanced degree in urban planning at the Technical University of Hamburg. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the mastermind behind the killing of our colleague Daniel Pearl, attended a tony British public school before doing undergraduate work at the London School of Economics.

Now comes the news that "extremist recruiters" are at work on British university campuses looking for converts. The report, in the Times of London, is based on a government policy dossier that notes that the link "between social deprivation ... and extremism is not simple cause and effect." Terrorists can sometimes be simple criminals drawn to fanatical circles -- people like "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. As often, however, they are "well educated, with degrees or technical/professional qualifications."

As the résumés of Atta and Sheikh suggest, this is not surprising. What is surprising is how often the realities of the terrorist enterprise are forgotten in the rush to offer convenient explanations regarding its causes. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has listed "conflict, ignorance, poverty and disease" among the root causes of terror. By these measures, the appropriate response to terrorism would be a campaign to eradicate world poverty: exactly what Tony Blair, President Bush and the other world leaders were doing when London bombers struck last week.

In fact, neither poverty nor ignorance nor disease drove Mohammed Atta into the North Tower of the World Trade Center; hatred did, as did belief. Those who are serious about fighting terrorism at "the source" should ask themselves where those beliefs come from. As the British government is finding out, the problem isn't about economics but about ideology. And the answer lies in fighting evil ideas, such as jihad, with good ones, such as democracy.