I can think of all sorts of useful applications for math that the ISIS fighters would need.
“Aden had fired 7 rounds from his first magazine and 23 rounds from his second. The magazines hold 30 rounds normally but were only loaded with 26 because of a weak spring. How many rounds does Aden have remaining before he meets Allah?”
Also, regarding physics and chemistry : it states that teachers of these subject must make sure to mention it all happens due to Allah’s laws. Does this still mean they have to describe in detail how chemistry actually works, such as “Allah has decreed that atoms with all orbitals filled are happier than atoms with unpaired electrons in their outer shell…” or can they just say “Allah decrees that nitrating solution adds nitrate groups…”
Actually I think the idea is to spend more time on important stuff like ISIS theories on how to read the Quran, and less time on unimportant stuff like math and social studies.
They are not training a race of mathematicians; they are raising a race of suicide bombers. As long as they can count backwards from ten, all is well.
The ISIS leadership and media interfaces are sophisticated and know their technology. They are also extremely proficient in war strategies and techniques. It is incorrect to call them medieval obscurantists in that sense.
Now for the cannon fodder, *those *dudes only need to know when and how to pull the trigger on their suicide vest, and hence the fatwas against science, maths and all the other good stuff to keep a pool of unwashed Abduls for the next suicide run.
In general Islamic fatwas and decrees are not for the elites/leadership per se. For example the ISIS will enforce strict male-female segregation for their subjects but will gladly indulge in gang-rapes themselves.
The hypocrisy bugs me. They hate anything western, or so they say, but they loves The Twitter. And AK-47s. And C4. And the internet. And, well, you name it. Things that were invented or at least manufactured in the western, infidel world.
If they wanted to run around the middle east on camels* or whatever, slicing each other with scimitars, well, I’d give them a bit more respect, at least for their commitment to their ideals.
But that’ll never happen.
*this is not a “camel jockey” joke, More of a Lawrence of Arabia reference.
I am getting sick of this meme. Especially from otherwise sensible posters. Al Qaeda militants are overwhelmingly recruited from the educated classes. Bin laden was an engineer. Al Zahwarhi is a doctor. Several of the London bombers had been to university. Baghdadi is college educated. And it makes sense. Al Qaeda and now ISIS, despite the popular media image of “forward to the past” actually have an ideology and agenda quite removed from the Orthodox. Indeed it needs educated and capable people to care enough about the issue to come up with such new ideas. Ignorant. Uneducated and poor people don’t have such ideas.
At the same time, these guys have not achieved what they did, which is defeating a large standing army and forcing the most powerful military force in the world out of Iraq by using prayers and insence. Make no mistake. These guys are crazy and the sooner they are blown seven ways to hell the better. But, that is not going to be achieved by making up bullshit stories (like the one linked in the OP) and name calling.
You started by mentioning Bin Laden and Zawahiri and the unnamed “guy” in the middle of this post is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Yes, that’s leadership. That said… there’s also Dzokhar Tsarnaev, and you’re right that Islamic radicalism has a tradition of education going back to Qutb, at least, so educated and disaffected people with money are at least a major component of their membership. Perhaps I interpreted “recruits” in a more specific and foot-soldiery way than you did.
Yeah, it doesn’t even really make sense. We can trace a lot of our modern formalization of algebra back to Islamic and Arabian scholars. (And, I’m pretty sure the scholars were what would now be called Sunni too, so no big schism there). Though I suppose you could concoct a reason they don’t like it because it’s an Arabic tradition and they’re not BFFs with Saudi Arabia, but that seems like stretching it a bit.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story contained reporting about ISIS and education. CNN has concerns about the interpretation of the information provided and we will update the story when we can verify what is happening.
LOL, And we laughed when Kim Jong-un fell for the Onion article naming him the sexiest man in the world.
Exactly. The leaders of the movements might be well-educated men. But the followers they are recruiting are the guys hanging out in refugee camps.
Now you might see some of the people leading missions in the west are also well-educated. But they are not typical followers. They’re specifically chosen for missions in the west because of their unusual background. So while the guys who hijack a plane in New York or blows up a subway station in London might be college educated, their counterparts who are committing similar missions in the Middle East are not.
Many suicide bombers are from the middle classes. As I heard once, a suicide bomber is likely someone who is socially and politically involved: i.e. someone who in the U.S. would be most likely to vote.
That article says “Some suicide bombers are educated, with college or university experience, and come from middle class homes.” I’m not disputing that there are some. But do you have any cite that terrorists in general or suicide bombers in particular have more education or better economic status than the average men in their society?
Considering which culture invented the zero, I don’t find this hard to believe.
The trick will be getting them out of school before the eighth grade, when they figure out that being trapped in a room with 72 virgins is not necessarily paradise.