Have you heard the latest joke about doctors?

Again and again, some silly nut drives an explosives-laden car into a building and reminds us that the scourge of terrorism is far from over. Has the war on terrorism accomplished anything at all? The answer would be a resounding yes. To which I would add: more terrorism!

Isabel Hilton also snidely remarked:

The war against terrorism has proved a blessing to governments embroiled in long-running conflicts especially though not exclusively, where the rebels are Muslim. [1]

Meanwhile, the extremist form of Islam has been left relatively unmolested, despite the fact that all the writing on the wall point to very specific groups within the community itself. Although there are very few outward differences between mainstream Muslims and extremist Muslims, there is one key difference that might form a litmus test. The distinction lies between how both factions view the phenomenon known as the Saved Group within Islam [read my previous post, Salvation is just a family affair]. Without going into too much detail, very few mainstream Muslims believe that the Saved Group actually refers to a teeny-weeny minority that is presumably on the path of right belief while the others languish in near-polytheistic or innovated doctrines.

I am not saying that all those who believe in that particular interpretation are necessarily extremist, but it is certainly a useful starting point for rejecting Islam's cumulative tradition of mercy and tolerance. Extremist leaders use this device all the time. Reject tradition. Go back to the Quran and Sunna. The trouble is, the same groups agitating for just such 'returns' have very different ideas on how to go about it. If blood has not been shed on account of this, the whole situation would probably make up a chapter on Ripley's Believe It Or Not.

So the recent bunch of uncovered terrorists are medical doctors. The British government and press can't seem to get over that fact.

Omigod! Now they are doctors! Wake the prime minister, round up the Arabs and order armoured helicopters. Stop the presses and clear the schedules. The fiends from outer Asia are cunning. They could be poisoning hospital drips. They could be lacing paracetamol and putting anthrax in Elastoplast. Declare another bomb "imminent". Surround Heathrow with tanks, fortify Wimbledon, put blast blocks round Waterloo and ack-ack guns on Parliament Hill. Raise the threat level from critical to panic. On second thoughts make that totally hysterical. [Simon Jenkins, The Guardian]

Do you seriously think that only stupid people join terrorist ranks? Was 9-11 a stupid, bumbling plot? Why is there any surprise?

Mohammed Atta, one of the pilots who flew a plane into the World Trade Center, was a trained architect; Usama bin Laden is a civil engineer. Al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri is a surgeon. The latter must be an especially good one, considering how long Usama bin Laden has survived despite various ailments. Word has it that Dr Ayman also has a macabre sense of humor. In a swipe at Egyptian authorities for their alleged use of torture, he referred to an Egyptian newspaper article he read which mentioned a fax sent by a jailed dissident from his prison cell. He ruminated,

"Do prison cells in Egypt have fax machines? And I wonder, are they connected to the same line as the electric shock machine or do they have a separate line?"

No doubt, Islam's most vociferous, evangelical and activist spokespeople are now individuals highly trained in technical sciences. So part of the problem is caused by the way these engineers treat religious texts as operational manuals. Unfortunately, they are also living proof that extremist cells suffer no fools. In fact, the initiation into Islamic extremism must be a sophisticated and intellectually-appealing experience.

The indoctrination typically introduces another factor:

A powerful sense of kafir helps the believer to live in western exile in the necessary state of chronic persecution, from which his theology is born...It also confers a heroic glamour on the everyday alienation felt by the immigrants- especially in the male immigrant- who struggles to keep his head up in a foreign culture...Your corrosive solitude is the measure of your superiority to the kuffar, in their hellbound ignorance and corruption. [2]

What later distinguishes them from other Muslims is radicalization rather than piety. In the extremist worldview, however, they are the faithful ones while the rest of the world, including the majority of Muslims, are immersed in sin and laxity.

When is anybody going to read the writing on the wall?

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Notes:
[1] The Guardian, 15 December 2001
[2] Malise Ruthven, A Fury for God