Time Immortal

Shaukat Khawja seems not to realize that the regions depicted on the map at the head of this blog post all got along more or less peacefully for several centuries prior to the arrival of Islam on the scene, and that since then the parts of the map denoted in various shades of green have been hotbeds of instability, roughly in proportion to the depth of the green hue.

(The green countries are, of course, those with higher concentrations of Muslims in the national populations. Deeper hues mean higher concentrations.)

It’s an interesting study in pathos, reading Rehmatpedia. One would think that not a single Qassam rocket had ever been fired into Israel by Muslims, that the Mossad was somehow behind it all. One would also think that the leaders of Hezbollah were Nobel Peace Prize winners, the wisest of thinkers and men of truly peaceful intentions. And one might half expect to see The Protocols of the Elders of Zion cited as truthful scholarship (although, perhaps disappointingly, this has not yet happened).

Let’s all watch Canada’s new favourite raving Muslim/power-generation engineer rant and rave about how great Hezbollah is, shall we? It’s another pitch-perfect piece that fuses anti-Zionism paranoia with fears of Christian conspiracy, all the while praising Hezbollah as “Lebanon’s Islamic Resistance militia” and noting their commendable “religious dedication, discipline, military skills, large public support base, high morale, good communication and [supply of the] enemy’s military information.”

Yup, he’s a Canadian. Apparently.

Over at Ace of Spades, LauraW and Ace joined the group of folks who have wondered aloud at the strange connection between engineering as an educational discipline and the tendency to become embroiled in radicalism — Ace, in particular, wonders if it’s a “personality type” issue, assuming I read him correctly. And certainly, there has been something of an established trend that has been observed in the past that suggests that engineers are prime recruiting targets for the global jihad.

It’s not hard to see why terrorist groups would want to recruit engineers — backpack nukes and Qassam rockets work so much better when someone with solid, relevant technical know-how has been involved/instrumental in their creation and setup. What’s perhaps harder to see is why engineers would be as apt as they are to sign on with the radicals.

Ace might just be on to something when he notes:

I’m asking because the engineer’s mindset — and likely then the personality type most strongly attracted to the profession — is much concerned with streamlining, simplifying, cutting through bullshit, cutting down on wasteful steps, etc. And I wonder if then doesn’t result in a tendency towards rejection of Politics entirely as simply irrelevant to one’s day-to-day life or else a strong identification with one political faction due to identifying one of any key factors (freedom, security, what have you) as primary and discarding most others as secondary at best.

Certainly, the above describes most engineers I know, including most of the ones I went to school with. But there’s a bit of a problem can emerge in all the simplifying and cutting out. Oh, one expects (as things like Dilbert have reminded us ad nauseum) a certain degree of social isolation to accompany any foray into engineering as a discipline, and certainly most of the people I went to school with could easily be said to fall under the category of “social misfit” — a category I myself an easily a part of.

There was an incident I can think of related to one engineering student in particular who wound up being banned from the University of Alberta campus, in no small part because his life had basically been trimmed to the point where all he had was his engineering, to the point of having forgotten the rules of basic human interaction. Suffice to say, he was banned for stalking a few women (some of whom I know), and I suppose that his doing so shouldn’t have come as the surprise that it did: having cut out all other aspects of normal human-to-human interactive ability from his life, he really had no idea what the proper way to express interest in a member of the opposite sex was anymore.

I think the sort of excessive social isolation that can accompany an education heavy in numbers and equations (untempered by the occasional bold expedition into writing or art) is not particularly different from the sort of social isolation that the young, exciteable men of…say…Palestine feel. Many of the same tensions are present, in fact…especially sexual tension, which fanciful tales of an endless harem of virgins in Paradise appeals to only too easily, and often with deadly results.

It’s a two-fold problem, then. On one hand, terrorist groups in need of people with solid technical training and education, who have only martyrdom and the lure of virgins in Paradise to offer. On the other hand, socially isolated, shy, technically gifted (and highly trained) professionals who’ve spent too much time in their books and wouldn’t mind a little companionship, but who may have next to no idea how to go about finding a companion.

Hmmn…and people wonder why there’s a natural connection here?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Arab terrorists kill ten at a Jewish seminary. At least one terrorist is shot in the head by a student who happened to bring a handgun to the seminary that day. Meanwhile, in Gaza, Palestinians flowed into the street cheering for joy at the news of yet more dead Jews.

Just another day in Israel, unfortunately.

This was a barbaric act, these shootings, and equally barbaric is the public celebration of the deaths of Jewish seminarians in the streets of Gaza City. Hamas even offered their blessings upon “the operation,” although they apparently did not claim responsibility.

I read something interesting on another blog that was a remark about genocide: against the threat of genocide, there can be no disproportionate response. That’s a sentiment with which I’d mostly agree, although I might tighten it a bit: against the threat of genocide, there can be no response — short of genocide in reverse — which can be considered disproportionate.

I think that, on the whole, Israel has shown a commendable restraint in how it has dealt with the past few decades worth of terrorism and attempts by various Muslim nations to effect genocidal plans against her. For having done so, Israel’s every action is condemned even more harshly by the rest of the world, while attacks against her are excused as being “the most one can expect” from an “oppressed people” such as the Palestinians.

I do not pretend that Israel is blameless, nor that she has always been in the right. But by the same token, the Palestinians have received billions — has it been trillions yet? — in foreign aid monies, most of which has then been forwarded to Israel in the form of Qassam rockets. Does anyone out there think that there could not be peace in the region of Israel almost overnight if the residents of Palestine gave up Jew-killing as their national sport, purged the religious fanatics from their government, and turned those aid monies over to urban renewal projects and the development of a comprehensive education system? Of course, the problem with the Palestinians building themselves a viable nation-state is that, if they give up the conflict with Israel, then they will have no other issue with which to stoke up global sympathy for their (mostly self-inflicted) “plight,” which might dry up the flow of UN payments somewhat.

And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?

…in one chart:

Israel’s predominantly Muslim neighbours do not want peace, no matter what lie they are telling in any given week. They want nothing more, nor anything less, than to wipe out the Jews. There will be no peace in the region of Israel until such time as that goal becomes a reality.