It is one of the widespread assumptions of the war on terrorism that the Muslim religious schools known as madrassas, catering to families that are often poor, are graduating students who become terrorists. Last year, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell denounced madrassas in Pakistan and several other countries as breeding grounds for "fundamentalists and terrorists." A year earlier, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld had queried in a leaked memorandum, "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
While madrassas may breed fundamentalists who have learned to recite the Koran in Arabic by rote, such schools do not teach the technical or linguistic skills necessary to be an effective terrorist.
The educational backgrounds of 75 terrorists behind some of the most significant recent terrorist attacks against Westerners, found that a majority of them are college-educated, often in technical subjects like engineering. In the four attacks for which the most complete information about the perpetrators' educational levels is available - the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the 9/11 attacks, and the Bali bombings in 2002 - 53 percent of the terrorists had either attended college or had received a college degree. As a point of reference, only 52 percent of Americans have been to college. The terrorists in our study thus appear, on average, to be as well educated as many Americans.
The 1993 World Trade Center attack involved 12 men, all of whom had a college education. The 9/11 pilots, as well as the secondary planners identified by the 9/11 commission, all attended Western universities, a prestigious and elite endeavor for anyone from the Middle East. Indeed, the lead 9/11 pilot, Mohamed Atta, had a degree from a German university in, of all things, urban preservation, while the operational planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, studied engineering in North Carolina. We also found that two-thirds of the 25 hijackers and planners involved in 9/11 had attended college.
Of the 75 terrorists investigated, only nine had attended madrassas, and all of those played a role in one attack - the Bali bombing. Even in this instance, however, five college-educated "masterminds" - including two university lecturers - helped to shape the Bali plot.
Muslim Madrassas Not As Dangerous to the West as Implied
by EvilForce 28 Replies latest members politics
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EvilForce
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EscapedLifer1
What is your point?
I don't think anyone, including the US govt, is blaming every single Madrassa out there, or claiming that they are a terrorist training camp. The danger, though, is that they produce Islamic fundamentalists and encourage violent terrorist acts by supporting the agenda of terrorists and praising them as heros.
Yes, the terrorists you mention did have western style college educations. But it is the extreme religious beliefs, taught in the madrassas, that makes these type of folks candidates for turning to active terrorism.
So again, what is your point?
Brandon
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EvilForce
As a matter of national security, the United States doesn't need to worry about Muslim fundamentalists with whom we may disagree, but about terrorists who want to attack us. As I mentioned less than 15% of the terrorists attended Madrassas. 85% did not.
The idea that madrassas are incubating the next generation of terrorists offers the soothing illusion that desperate, ignorant automatons are attacking us rather than college graduates, as is often the case. It's easy to pigeonhole Muslims as stupid religious fanatics trying to bring down the West's way of live.
It's not Muslims we are fighting. It's terrorists. That's my point. -
jula71
Ok, in businesses maybe only 15% of the workers went to a University. But much like the terrorist structure, the ones that went teach all those under them.
And EF you have to admit, not all Muslims are terrorists but so far, all those terrorists have been……….
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EvilForce
Timothy McVeigh ?
Terry Nichols?
My point which you missed Jula is that the terrorist training isn't happening at the Madrassas...they are happening at "terrorist training camps". So let's make sure we are picking the right target to fight. -
John Doe
I agree, EF. Americans want a simple scapegoat to pin all their troubles on, when the problem is much more complicated. The misunderstandigns and illusions both sides seem to harbor are dangerous.
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jula71
Normally I’m not one for conspiracy theories. But, why was McVeigh put to death so fast? Why is there a bunch of people that have testified under oath they saw him with a Middle Eastern man? That man even appears on the security cameras at the car rental place with him where he got the truck. But, anyhow, their training is at the camps, but the indoctrination is at the Madrassas. At the Madrassas they learn they should “kill the infidel. At the camps they learn how to.
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EvilForce
9 out of the 75 went to a Madrassas and were only involved in the Bali attack. Where did the other 66 get their fundamentalism? It's easy to demonize all of Islam for the actions of a handful of people.
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Scully
the terrorist training isn't happening at the Madrassas...they are happening at "terrorist training camps".
Isn't that kind of like saying that JWs don't learn to treat DF'd and DA'd people like shit from attending the Kingdom Hall?
Just asking.
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jula71
Who’s “demonizing” all of Islam? I say again, not all Muslims are terrorists. That’s a tactic of the extreme left, to group all people into a category, I don’t do that. In fact extremists make up about 10% of Muslims. That’s a pretty low average, but as I said, almost 100% of the terrorists are……