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.
工程师并不是大多数人所联想到的宗教职业。建筑和桥梁的具体行业似乎扎根于科学的世俗原则。但是，机械工程师乌马尔·法鲁克·阿卜杜勒穆塔利布（Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab）在去年圣诞节的失败袭击提醒了人们，这种结合长期以来一直在产生暴力激进分子。
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.
传闻证据一直很有力。9/11 袭击的幕后主使者穆罕默德·阿塔是一名建筑工程师。哈立德·谢赫·穆罕默德获得了机械工程学位。据信策划孟买袭击的拉什卡尔-塔伊巴组织的三位创始人中，有两位是拉合尔工程与技术大学的教授。
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.
今年夏天，两位社会学家迭戈·甘贝塔和斯特芬·赫托格发布了一篇论文（PDF），为这一观察结果增加了实证证据。这对学者调查了来自中东和非洲 30 多个国家的 400 多名激进伊斯兰恐怖分子，他们大多出生于 20 世纪 50 年代至 70 年代。早期研究表明，恐怖分子往往比同胞更富有和受过更好的教育，但甘贝塔和赫托格发现，工程师尤其是三到四倍于金融、医学或其他科学领域的同行更有可能成为暴力恐怖分子。其次最具激进化作用的研究生学位是伊斯兰研究。
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.
那么恐怖分子工程师是怎么回事？简单的解释是工程学恰巧是产生暴力激进分子的国家中尤其受欢迎的学科。但甘贝塔和赫托格纠正了工程专业的国家招生人数，得到了类似的结果。即使在西方出生或成长的伊斯兰恐怖分子中，近 60%具有工程背景。
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.
另一个可能的解释是工程师具有技术技能和建筑知识，使他们成为恐怖组织的吸引力招募对象。但最近的研究发现，工程师同样有可能在这些组织中担任领导角色，而不仅仅是从事爆炸物的实际操作。无论如何，他们的技术专长可能并不那么有用，因为恐怖袭击中使用的大多数方法都是基本的。的确，911 袭击中的 25 名劫机者中有 8 名是工程师，但最终起作用的是他们对开箱刀和飞行学校的经验，而不是花哨的学位。
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.
Gambetta 和 Hertog 提出，阿拉伯国家的一些工程师可能因为在自己的国家找不到合适的工作而变得激进。他们研究的毕业生在一个竞争激烈的技术项目毕业后，本应该能够获得高地位的就业保证。但现代化和发展的承诺经常受到镇压和腐败的阻碍，许多 80 年代的年轻工程师失业并感到沮丧。沙特阿拉伯是一个例外，那里的工程师在不断扩张的经济中很容易找到工作。恰巧的是，沙特阿拉伯也是这项研究发现工程师在激进运动中没有被过分代表的唯一阿拉伯国家。
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.
许多前工程学生持激进暴力政治立场的原因还有其他吗？工程师更有可能参与恐怖主义行为吗？为了回答这个问题，甘贝塔和赫托格更新了一项最初于 1972 年发表的研究，当时两位名叫西摩·利普塞特和卡尔·拉德的研究人员调查了他们的美国学者同行的意识形态倾向。根据原始论文，工程师自称“强烈保守”和“虔诚宗教”的比例比其他领域的教授更高。甘贝塔和赫托格在 1984 年收集的数据上重复了这项分析，以更好地与他们的恐怖分子样本相匹配。他们发现类似的结果，46%的（美国男性）工程师自称既保守又虔诚，而科学家中这一比例为 22%。
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.
冈贝塔和赫托格谈到了工程师中的一种特定心态，他们鄙视模棱两可和妥协。他们可能更热衷于为他们的社会带来秩序，并认为伊斯兰激进主义提出的严格宗教法是实现这些目标的最佳途径。在网上发帖中，阿卜杜勒穆塔利布表达了对他的世俗生活方式和更极端宗教观念之间冲突的担忧。“如何平衡？”他写道。
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.
恐怖组织似乎已经意识到了这种倾向——显然在阿卜杜勒穆塔利布身上，但也在工程师中普遍存在。英国情报部门 2005 年的一份报告指出，伊斯兰极端分子经常出没于大学校园，寻找“好奇”学生，他们可能容易受到他们的信息的影响。特别是，报告指出，他们针对工程师。