Engineering is not a profession most people associate with religion. The concrete trade of buildings and bridges seems grounded in the secular principles of science. But the failed attack this Christmas by mechanical engineer Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a reminder that the combination has a long history of producing violent radicals.

The anecdotal evidence has always been strong. The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, was an architectural engineer. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed got his degree in mechanical engineering. Two of the three founders of Lashkar-e-Taibi, the group believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks, were professors at the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore.

A paper (PDF) released this summer by two sociologists, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, adds empirical evidence to this observation. The pair looked at more than 400 radical Islamic terrorists from more than 30 nations in the Middle East and Africa born mostly between the 1950s and 1970s. Earlier studies had shown that terrorists tend to be wealthier and better-educated than their countrymen, but Gambetta and Hertog found that engineers, in particular, were three to four times more likely to become violent terrorists than their peers in finance, medicine or the sciences. The next most radicalizing graduate degree, in a distant second, was Islamic Studies.

So what's with all the terrorist-engineers? The simple explanation is that engineering happens to be an especially popular field of study in the countries that produce violent radicals. But Gambetta and Hertog corrected for national enrollment numbers in engineering programs and got similar results. Even among Islamic terrorists born or raised in the West, nearly 60 percent had engineering backgrounds.

Another possible explanation would be that engineers possess technical skills and architectural know-how that makes them attractive recruits for terrorist organizations. But the recent study found that engineers are just as likely to hold leadership roles within these organizations as they are to be working hands-on with explosives. In any case, their technical expertise may not be that useful, since most of the methods employed in terrorist attacks are rudimentary. It's true that eight of the 25 hijackers on 9/11 were engineers, but it was their experience with box cutters and flight school, not fancy degrees, that counted in the end.

Gambetta and Hertog propose that a lack of appropriate jobs in their home countries may have radicalized some engineers in Arab countries. The graduates they studied came of age at a time when a degree from a competitive technical program was supposed to provide a guarantee of high-status employment. But the promises of modernization and development were often stymied by repression and corruption, and many young engineers in the 1980s were left jobless and frustrated. One exception was Saudi Arabia, where engineers had little trouble finding work in an ever-expanding economy. As it happens, Saudi Arabia is also the only Arab state where the study found that engineers are not disproportionately represented in the radical movement.

What else might account for the radical, violent politics of so many former engineering students? Is there some set of traits that makes engineers more likely to participate in acts of terrorism? To answer this question, Gambetta and Hertog updated a study that was first published in 1972, when a pair of researchers named Seymour Lipset and Carl Ladd surveyed the ideological bent of their fellow American academics. According to the original paper, engineers described themselves as "strongly conservative" and "deeply religious" more often than professors in any other field. Gambetta and Hertog repeated this analysis for data gathered in 1984, so it might better match up with their terrorist sample. They found similar results, with 46 percent of the (male American) engineers describing themselves as both conservative and religious, compared with 22 percent of scientists.

Gambetta and Hertog write about a particular mind-set among engineers that disdains ambiguity and compromise. They might be more passionate about bringing order to their society and see the rigid, religious law put forward in radical Islam as the best way of achieving those goals. In online postings, Abdulmutallab expressed concern over the conflict between his secular lifestyle and more extreme religious views. "How should one put the balance right?" he wrote.

Terrorist organizations seem to have recognized this proclivity—in Abdulmutallab, obviously, but also among engineers in general. A 2005 report from British intelligence noted that Islamic extremists were frequenting college campuses, looking for "inquisitive" students who might be susceptible to their message. In particular, the report noted, they targeted engineers.

Powerful Before and After Photos Show Just How Much ISIS Destroyed Palmyra

By Daniel Politi

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/04/02/don_t_call_hamburger_helper_s_mixtape_a_comeback.html

A general view taken on March 31, 2016 shows a photographer holding his picture of the Temple of Bel taken on March 14, 2014 in front of the remains of the historic temple after it was destroyed by Islamic State (IS) group jihadists in September 2015 in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra.

JOSEPH EID/AFP/Getty Images

Joseph Eid, a photographer for AFP news agency, went to the Syrian city of Palmyra after it was recaptured from ISIS. Rather than simply take photos of the ancient city as it is now, he carried photos that he had snapped two years ago to try to recreate the images. The results put on stark display just how much damage ISIS did to the world-famous city.

Syria’s antiquities director, Mamoun Abdulkarim, had sounded an optimistic note on Palmyra’s ruins, saying they were in better shape than expected. But he also said it would likely take as long as five years to restore them, and some things have been lost forever. “Of course the Temple of Bel will never be the same. According to our experts, we will definitely be able to restore a third of the destroyed cella, or maybe even more if we carry out additional studies with UNESCO’s help,” Abdulkarim said. “I invite archaeologists and experts everywhere to come work with us because this site is part of the heritage of all humanity.”

Daniel Politi has been contributing to Slate since 2004 and wrote the "Today's Papers" column from 2006 to 2009. You can follow him on Twitter@dpoliti.

Charlie Hebdo: Acceptance of Practicing Muslims in Society Contributes to Terrorism

By Daniel Politi

A woman looks at the special commemorative edition of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo at a newsstand in Paris, on January 6, 2016, to mark the one-year anniversary of the jihadist attack that claimed the lives of 12 people, including three of its best-known cartoonists.

Photo by JACQUES DEMARTHON/AFP/Getty Images

Satirical French publication Charlie Hebdo is coming under fire for an English-language editorial that seems to at least partly blame practicing, and peaceful, Muslims for terrorist attacks. A little more than a week after 16 people were killed in Brussels, the newspaper wonders, “How did we end up here?” The newspaper that suffered a terrorist attack of its own last year says that “the attacks are merely the visible part of a very large iceberg indeed. They are the last phase of a process of cowing and silencing long in motion and on the widest possible scale.”

To make its point, Charlie Hebdo uses three examples: Tariq Ramadan, an Islamic scholar, a nameless woman in a burqa and a baker who is a Muslim. Ramadaan, who, incidentallycondemned the attack against Charlie, has devoted his life to defending Islam. “His task, under cover of debate, is to dissuade people criticizing his religion in any way,” notes the editorial. He effectively makes “little dent[s]” in secularism by imposing “a fear of criticising lest they appear Islamophobic.” The editorial then goes on to sarcastically dismiss concerns that a woman wearing a burqa may be hiding a bomb. And finally there is the baker who stops selling ham and everyone simply shrugs and accepts it because “there are plenty of other options on offer.”

The editorial then goes on to mention the Brussels attackers, noting that while no one in the three examples really did anything wrong, the terrorist attack can’t happen “without everyone’s contribution.” The enforced silence to not criticize someone who is different or holds different beliefs means that “it is secularism which is being forced into retreat.” The editorial concludes:

The first task of the guilty is to blame the innocent. It's an almost perfect inversion of culpability. From the bakery that forbids you to eat what you like, to the woman who forbids you to admit that you are troubled by her veil, we are submerged in guilt for permitting ourselves such thoughts. And that is where and when fear has started its sapping, undermining work. And the way is marked for all that will follow.

Criticism of the editorial came fast and furious on Twitter.

Writer Teju Cole took to Facebook to write what is perhaps the most extensive, and reasoned, criticism of the editorial, saying “the people of Charlie … finally step away from the mask of ‘it's satire and you don't get it’ to state clearly that Muslims, all of them, no matter how integrated, are the enemy.” Charlie seems to want to defend “the wish to discriminate freely against Muslims without having to be called out on it” and somehow characterizing the whole exercise as brave and speaking truth to power. “This is precisely the logic also of the masses who praise Trump for his ‘honesty’—as though only ugliness could be honest, as though moral incontinence were any more noble than physical incontinence,” writes Cole.

Charlie had already come under fire this past week for its front page about the Brussels attacks.

Daniel Politi has been contributing to Slate since 2004 and wrote the "Today's Papers" column from 2006 to 2009. You can follow him on Twitter@dpoliti.