Special thanks to my best friend, Sherria Ayuandini, who gave me some great insights on the issue and provided one of the major arguments for this piece.
When it comes to identifying the root cause of terrorism, many are compelled to point fingers on poverty and lack of education. The argument, in a nutshell, goes somewhat as follows: Poor, uneducated people are easily lured to promises of heaven and blowing other people up to attain them.
However, such theory does not stand its ground when confronted with facts. Marc Sageman of Foreign Policy Research Institute compiled the background data of around 400 Al-Qaeda members and discovered that three quarters of his sample belonged to the middle or upper class. He further noted that, “[T]he vast majority –90 percent—came from caring, intact families. Sixty-three percent had gone to college, as compared with the 5-6 percent that’s usual for the third world. These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways.”
Economists Efraim Benmelech of Harvard University and Claude Berrebi of RAND Corporation also came to the same conclusion when they gathered data on Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel from 2000 to 2005. They discovered that education is very much valued in the “terrorism market.” Better educated individuals are more likely to be successful in carrying out large-scale terrorist attacks and have lower chances of getting caught.
It should also be noted that the alleged leader of the 9/11 attack, Mohammed Atta, had a graduate degree, while both Azahari and Noordin Top, masterminds of the major terrorist attacks in the last decade in Indonesia, were skilled engineers and scientists. None of them were poor; all three came from affluent families.
Obviously, the majority of terrorists in the world don’t fit the poor and uneducated profile. As such, simply expanding education and eradicating poverty would unlikely affect terrorist recruitment. We need to look deeper. In that light, there are at least three issues that are often overlooked, each bearing a consequence in how public policies should be shaped and how we as the community should act in countering the seeds of terrorism.
First, it’s not a coincidence that many terrorist masterminds come from countries with repressive government, like the Arab states and, arguably, Malaysia. Repressive governments tend to bar legal venues of voicing dissent, thus making extreme demonstration of opposition more attractive. When the cost of legal dissent increases—due to threat of legal repercussions—the relative cost of illegal dissent is lowered. Hence terrorism becomes a viable venue.
Therefore, it’s within our interest to allow dissent. Specifically for Indonesia, we need to allow organizations like Hizbut Tahrir and the Islamic Defenders Front to exist. It doesn’t mean we should let them do whatever they want. They still have to be legally accountable for their actions; if and when they employ violence or thuggery, they have to pay for their actions to the fullest extent of the law. We should also continue voicing opposition to their radical stances and gospel of hatred. However, their right to association and voicing dissent should be recognized and upheld. Perhaps it’s worth to remind ourselves that virtually none of the major Indonesian terrorists are affiliated to these legal organizations.
Second, acts of terrorism and suicide bombing require the breaking of the fear of the pain involved in the act and the reservation of hurting other people. An effective way of doing this is by psychological enforcement, most notably by an authority or peers. A common trait shared by terrorists is that they have a figure of authority that they fully and unquestionably respect. It’s also very common for prospective terrorists to join a perverse cause through preexisting social bonds with people who are already terrorists or had decided to join.
So here’s what we need to understand: An education system that puts a very high premium on respect for authority and discourage freethinking would produce individuals that are highly susceptible to psychological enforcement. So while simply more education may not be effective in countering the roots of terrorism, how we educate matters significantly. We need to push, not discourage, our children to question the authorities—their teachers and parents—and the majority—their friends. We need to make them comfortable to be different and to disagree. This will make them significantly less vulnerable to “brainwashing” by radicalism.
Lastly, we should heed the statistics found by Mr. Sageman in his research: An overwhelming majority of the educated individuals in his sample of Al-Qaeda members are engineers, architects, civil engineers, and scientists. People with backgrounds in humanities are grossly underrepresented. Is there anything in humanities that make its students less susceptible to radical, narrow-minded, chauvinistic ideas? In short, the answer is yes.
Students of humanities make a conscious effort to learn different cultures, religions, and values. This leads them to respect people of all walks of life, even if they don’t necessarily agree with the values those other people hold. It’s this spirit of humanities that should be integrated in our education system. Indonesian youth needs to learn, and perhaps even experience, different values. The many live-in programs already conducted by various local NGOs, bringing in students of different religious and cultural backgrounds to stay with families in Aceh, Lombok and Papua, should be expanded. It’s high time for us to not only tolerate diversity, but embrace it.
At the end of the day, it’s really more complex than simply poverty and lack of education. If we’re really serious about addressing the root of terrorism, we need to uphold civil liberty, teach our children that it’s alright to question the authority, and expose them to different values. That’s going to be a challenge not only for the government, but for all of us—parents, teachers, and the community. But nobody ever said addressing the roots of terrorism is easy.
An edited version of this article (with some colorful comments, I might add) is available at Jakarta Globe.
Indonesian Policies and Quirks 
September 29, 2009 at 4:54 pm
All:
Allow me to expound my thoughts on this.
The root cause of terrorism is:
That humans do not consider seriously the covenant spelled out in so many religions, as well as in so many philosophical teachings:
“do not do harm to strangers”
The word “terrorism” in one dictionary is defined as:
“the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims”
Violence and intimidation are inherently harmful.
It is often done as an effect of another cause.
That cause, traced back, was also an effect of another cause.
Underneath those chain-reactions, it all started out when we *do harm* to strangers.
Doing harm to strangers breed terrorism.
This harm could be physical, mental, and emotional harm.
One sensible solution to reduce the possibility to do harm to strangers is *to seriously live and breathe bhinneka tunggal ika.*
Only then we will be able to eliminate terrorism, once and for all.
Salam,
Denny.
October 2, 2009 at 5:29 am
Hi Rivan,
My friend read your article and commented this:
the author claims that permitting the proliferation of vitriolic
sentiments is a potentially effective means of curbing terroristic
tendencies. he argues that, and i quote, “it’s in our interest to
allow dissent… [because we ought to acknowledge the] right to
association and voicing dissent.” concurrently, the author mentions
(perhaps as a preemptive strike against those who might disagree with
this claim) that dissenters must not be permitted to “do whatever they
want [since they are still held] legally accountable for their
actions.” i find this claim and correlation rather thin, if not
simplistic and outright flawed.
it is much like permitting the proliferation of a forest fire by
rascals (of course, in the name of freedom of expression which the
author alludes to) while national park guards and firefighters stand
by to keep the fire in check and dousing it in water when it goes out
of control. not only is this kind of approach counter-productive
(because it doesn’t prohibit the occurrence of a forest fire
disaster), it is also hypocritical because it masks the attempt to
control those who consider starting a fire with a sugar-coated
faux-reality that they are able to embrace and practice free speech
when in fact they are, in essence, constrained by conditions.
and the humanities argument, let’s save that for another day.
let me know what you think!
🙂
October 3, 2009 at 10:18 am
Hi Joey. Thanks for posting this. And please let your friend know that they’re more than welcome to post comments directly on my blog.
Two responses I wish to make. The first is a clarification of what my argument on allowing dissent really entails; and the second is in the form of a short discussion on a very popular logical fallacy called “false analogy” that your friend seems to enjoy employing.
First of all, I’d like to point out that I never made a claim that allowing dissent will automatically and effectively restrain terrorist activities. What I am saying is this: NOT allowing dissent will make illegal venues of voicing such dissent, which includes means that employ violence and terror, become much more viable. Thus, while ensuring legal venues for dissent does not necessarily and inevitably lead to zero terrorist activities, eliminating those legal venues will very likely increase significantly the likelihood of the use of violence and terror in demonstrating opposition.
Now your friend may like to believe that barring organizations like Hizbut Tahrir and FPI would automatically make their cause and ideology disappear; and that imprisoning every person who cite the scripture and demand the implementation of their version of sharia law would not turn them into martyrs and rouse throngs of their followers. If your friend sincerely believed this, I’d very much like to know where they live—I reckon it must be an extremely easy place to govern. Indonesia, and I believe much of the world, is no such place. The likeliest scenario to occur in these worldly states is as follows: If the authority closes all doors for opposition to the prevailing system and repress dissenting individuals, then resentment will build up, the cause will be perceived as even more worthy to fight for, and eventually the only alternative left to voice discontent, i.e. violence and terror, becomes increasingly more attractive. Hence our interest to allow legal dissent.
Your friend also appears to find it exceptionally difficult to tell the difference between “expressing freedom of expression” and “committing a criminal act,” so let me shed some light on this. The cardinal rule of freedom of expressions asserts that individuals have the right to express whatever idea and opinion using whatever media they choose, so long as that action does not incur direct and tangible harm on other individuals. Any action that does incur direct and tangible harm on others is the definition of a criminal act, which in any civilized society is punishable by law.
Some illustration may prove helpful: hoisting banners that say the president is incompetent is an exercise of freedom of expression; assassinating the president because he/she is incompetent is a criminal act. Taking part in a street demonstration opposing the selling of alcohol because it’s haram is an exercise of freedom of expression; burning down bars and restaurants that sell alcoholic beverages is a criminal act. Publicly claiming that Britney Spears is a bad parent is an exercise of freedom of expression; smacking her on the head with a club because she’s a bad parent is a criminal act. Now perhaps it may take a while for your friend to be able to tell the difference between the two, but I have faith that most of us do not share the same confusion.
Therefore, establishing the notion that people should be allowed to voice their sentiments—no matter how “vitriolic” they may be (I do like the word “vitriolic” by the way)—but must answer to the law if they commit a criminal act is not a mere “preemptive strike against those who might disagree with this claim,” as your friend aptly put it; it is indeed an exercise of common sense. Surely your friend cannot expect me to argue that criminal acts should NOT be punishable by law, which, challenging as it may sound, I’ll have to defer from doing.
Now this ties in quite nicely to the second part of my response, which deals specifically to the methodology your friend used to refute my argument: the use of analogy. Personally, analogy is my least favorite tool to argue or to refute an argument because it’s very shaky. No analogy is perfect—there is ALWAYS some degree of differences between two analogs—but at the same time, there’s ALWAYS some degree of similarity between any two objects, and as such you can use anything as an analog of anything else. And this can lead to quite a lot of false conclusion and nonsense. Try this: employees are like nails that bind all the different units of a company together; therefore, as nails must be hit on their heads to make them function, we must hit employees on their head for them to be useful. See?
Luckily, showing the fallacy in your friend’s analogy is not that difficult (at least for anyone who can tell the difference between exercising freedom of expression and committing a criminal act): Deliberately starting a forest fire directly incurs tangible harm on others by risking—and taking away—properties and lives of other people, destroying an entire ecological system, and creating environmental degradation of a massive scale. Hence, it’s a criminal act and not, no matter how hard one tries to argue otherwise, an exercise of freedom of expression. Meanwhile, Hizbut Tahrir demonstrating on the street demanding Indonesian democracy to be turned into an Islamic caliphate is the organization’s way of expressing their idea, no matter how absurd, using a media of their choice, without incurring direct and tangible harm on others—unless of course they decided to start a fire in a nearby forest to prove their point. And that’s where the analogy breaks down. Arson is a criminal act, while voicing dissent, like opposing democracy, is freedom of expression; the two are not analogous, at least not in the context we’re concerned with.
On the other hand, however, the forest arson analogy does bring up an interesting point. If we do choose to accept the analogy as valid, and that a massive forest fire is akin to a terrorist act that we wish to prevent, then perhaps your friend should be made aware of a method called “prescribed burning” or “controlled burning,” which has been proven to be effective in averting such catastrophe. Prescribed burning is basically a technique where firefighters and foresters deliberately torch down a huge patch of forest in order to deprive any potential forest fire of fuel. In the spring of 1999, two million acres of Florida pine forest was deliberately burned to the ground by the authority. That seemingly insane act saved hundreds of millions of acres of the same forest and might have prevented a massive forest fire. So if your friend decided to cling on that analogy, the conclusion would be that we should not only allow dissent, we should encourage it, in order to prevent massive scale of violence and terror due to repressed discontent, which is analogous to prescribed burning to prevent forest fire.
If nothing else, that last remark should prove the point that you can basically mold an analogy to prove whatever you want without necessarily proving a real point, rendering it an unreliable tool to make an argument. If I may make a suggestion to your friend if they still want to have a go at this particular argument, try breaking it down to its basic premises and either prove that one or more of the premises are wrong or that the resulting syllogism is flawed. That’d make a significantly better refutation.
Oh and I do look forward to your friend’s comment on “the humanities argument” that they’re saving for another day.
BTW, here are some links that you and your friend may find interesting to refer to.
On logical fallacies:
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/wanalogy.html
On prescribed burning:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-55183073.html
October 3, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I already forwarded the response to him. I also responded with similar logic of yours but you definitely had more time to elaborate and develop the rebuttals.
Keep writing Reev! I’m rolling you in my blogroll.
October 6, 2009 at 4:28 am
Two questions on your first and third points.
Re the first: You said that not allowing legal dissent makes radical venues more viable. Since our democracy have allowed Hizbut Tahrir and FPI to be in existence for quite some time, is there evidence for reduction in the number of terrorism acts and terrorist recruits in Indonesia? Or, if not, is there evidence that had Hizbut Tahrir and FPI been banned, we would have seen higher number of terrorism acts and terrorist recruits?
Re the third: Your claim on why education in the humanities makes students less susceptible to radical ideas may be suspect the classic “self-selection problem”; those who chose to study humanities might already be different in many ways from those who chose to study science and engineering. Is there evidence that controls for this potential problem?
October 9, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I think it would be difficult to obtain data on Indonesian terrorist recruitment activities because of the secretive nature of such activities. However, it is possible to obtain data of known terrorists or terrorist organizations and their nationalities, and attempt to find a correlation between number of terrorists or size of terrorist organizations and the degree of political freedom within the country. It’s probably as close as we can get in terms of empirical evidence.
Empirical evidence for the humanities vs engineering issue would be easier to obtain, by distributing identical surveys to university students (both humanities and engineering) as well as third year high school students. The surveys would be designed to arrive at an index that measures susceptibility to radical ideas (let’s call it the tolerance index). For the high school students, we’d also include a question on what they’d like to study in university. this way, we can prove both: a) whether or not there is a significant difference in tolerance index between humanities and science students, and b) whether the difference is due to self-selection or the education.
OR, we could scour the net and search for other people’s work on it. Hehe.
October 14, 2009 at 6:24 pm
most of all: the absence of LOVE is the root of all violence in the world
October 18, 2009 at 10:58 pm
i wrote an open rebuttal to this opinion of yours in the jakarta globe:
http://thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/your-letters-terrorism-and-the-islamic-defender-front/336230
feel free to have an exchange.
October 20, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Very good rebuttal, Mas Tirta. Do you mind if I copy and paste the content from the Globe here?
October 20, 2009 at 8:50 pm
please do so, i’d be more than happy.
October 21, 2009 at 10:03 am
The following is a rebuttal to the above article by Tirta Susilo. It was featured on Jakarta Globe’s “Your Letters” section on 18 October 2009.
Root of Terrorism Not Easy to Uncover
Rivandra Royono recently argued in these pages that poverty and lack of education are not the cause of terrorism (“The Root Cause of Terrorism?” Sept. 25). He referred to studies of Al Qaeda and Palestinian suicide bombers showing that a majority of them came from affluent families and went to universities, and he pointed out that some high-profile terrorists, such as Mohammed Atta and Azahari Husin, had graduate degrees.
Instead, Rivandra put forward three causes of terrorism. First is that terrorism is caused by state restriction of civil liberties; not allowing some groups to legally voice their dissent makes terrorism more viable. Second is psychological authority and peer pressure, because terrorists need a figure to respect and peers to reinforce one another. Third is a lack of education in the humanities, since most Al Qaeda members with degrees were educated in science and engineering.
On a first pass, Rivandra’s ideas make good sense. But careful examinations show that his arguments are unsubstantiated, and his suggestions misleading.
Consider his take that poverty and lack of education are not correlated with terrorism. While this is true for groups like Al Qaeda and Hamas, it is not true for Jemaah Islamiyah, the group most relevant to terrorism in Indonesia. Analysis of JI attacks from 1999 to 2005 by terrorism expert Scott Atran and colleagues show that about 78 percent of the 180 people implicated in the attacks worked as unskilled laborers, and 77 percent had at most a high school education.
In contrast to Rivandra’s suggestion, eradicating poverty and raising education may play a role in fighting terrorism in Indonesia.
What about the restriction of civil liberties? There is indeed a significant correlation between countries that ban legal dissent and countries that produce Islamic terrorist groups.
But Rivandra’s interpretation of this data is problematic because the same correlation is also present for many dissenting groups that have nothing to do with terrorism.
Countries that restrict civil liberties produce all sorts of nonconformist groups: some that are terrorist, others that are not. Thus restriction of civil liberties neither explains nor predicts terrorism.
The same problem occurs for Rivandra’s second idea that terrorists succumb to authority and peer pressure. It is well known in social psychology that adherence to authority and peer conformity are standard hallmarks of any group behavior, regardless of the resulting acts. Some groups give charitably, while others commit atrocities. In this light, one cannot argue for authority and peer pressure as a cause of terrorism.
Finally, observing that most Al Qaeda members have science and engineering degrees, Rivandra argued that lack of education in the humanities is causing the spread of radical ideas and terrorism.
But this argument suffers from the classic self-selection problem: Those who chose to study science and engineering in the first place might be different from those who chose to study humanities. Without further evidence, no inference could be made as to whether the lack of education in the humanities is responsible for terrorism.
At the end of his article, Rivandra correctly said that addressing the causes of terrorism was not easy. But neither is identifying the causes.
We need to let the evidence guide our logic and to proceed with care when offering opinions on an issue as important as terrorism.
Tirta Susilo
PhD candidate, Psychology Department,
Australian National University, Canberra
November 2, 2009 at 8:26 am
I submitted my response to Tirta’s rebuttal to Jakarta Globe, but apparently they’re not featuring it. So here it is:
Tirta Susilo’s rebuttal on the arguments I presented on these pages (Root Cause of Terrorism, 25 Sept) provides me with a good venue to further strengthen my proposition of ensuring civil liberties, encouraging free and critical thinking, and promoting cross-cultural learning, even if it’s solely to address terrorism.
First and foremost, it should be noted that the article—unlike Tirta implied—did not attempt to replace a popular hypothesis on the cause of terrorism with a new one. Rather, it attempted to put forward a set of public policies and community attitude that would very likely lower the possibility of Indonesia producing terrorists; something that simply eradicating poverty and expanding education would not be able to achieve.
Tirta pointed out that 78 percent of the 180 people implicated in JI-related attacks worked as unskilled laborers, 77 percent had at most a high school education, and thus hastily concluded that education and economic background played a role. He forgot to mention, however, that as a whole, about 80 percent of Indonesian workers are unskilled and more than 82 percent of Indonesians do not have a college degree (Directorate General of High Education, 2008). When the proportion of the poor and uneducated in the terrorist population is almost the same—even lower—that the proportion of that in the general population, we can safely conclude that poverty and education cannot be correlated with the propensity of an individual getting involved in terrorist activities. This conclusion is consistent with international studies, which Tirta seemed to concede as valid.
Meanwhile, economist Alan Krueger and his colleague Jitka Maleckova conducted a cross country analysis in 2003 using regression models and discovered that “at a given level of income, countries with greater civil liberties…are less likely to be a wellspring of international terrorists.” I never claimed that ensuring civil liberties would automatically lead to zero terrorist activities. I also never said—as Tirta misrepresented—that countries restricting legal dissent would automatically and exclusively produced terrorists. What I am saying is that closing doors to legal dissent would significantly raise the propensity of dissenters to employ violence, as supported by Krueger and Maleckova’s finding.
Another of Tirta’s misrepresentation is on my argument concerning authority and peer pressure. I never made a claim that authority and peer pressure would automatically and exclusively lead to individuals committing violence. My contention is that the two are requirements to break the inhibition to commit extreme carnage on a large group of people. Encouraging our youths to think independently and not be afraid to be different would make it that more difficult for an authority or peers to accustom them to violence. This is not to say that freethinkers can’t be terrorists; but they will always be an overwhelming minority in the terrorist population.
Lastly, even if there was an unidentified variable that simultaneously lead individuals to choose to study humanities and have a low propensity towards violence, then it is within our interest to identify it. One thing for sure, it won’t be level of education or economic background.
In the end, claiming that lack of civil liberties, conditioning individuals to easily succumb to authority and peer pressure, and lack of cross-cultural learning are the root causes of terrorism would be quite as reckless as—although significantly less misguided than—claiming that poverty and lack of education are. From the perspective of public policy, however, the poverty and lack of education hypothesis is not only contrary to existing facts, it also carries no added value, since poverty eradication and education improvement will almost certainly be some of the most prevailing public policies, regardless of their link to the cause of terrorism. On the other hand, we have absolutely nothing to lose, and so much to gain, from ensuring civil liberties, encouraging our people to think critically and not be afraid to have their own opinion, and promoting understanding of different cultures and values—policies that are sadly more difficult to sell.
November 4, 2009 at 6:37 am
thanks for responding to my criticisms. the following is my counter-response.
***
I appreciate Rivandra’s attempt to rebut my criticisms. Unfortunately, his effort falls short for two reasons. First, he accused me of misrepresentations I never made, and as such spent considerable space to discuss irrelevant issues I did not contend. Second, he failed (again) to proceed with care when making logical deductions and empirical inferences.
Rivandra started by clarifying that his original piece was not intended to replace the poor-and-uneducated hypothesis of terrorism with a set of new propositions. Rather, its purpose was to argue for a set of public policies that would very likely help combat terrorism in Indonesia.
I find this clarification baffling. First of all, I am not sure how the original piece did not attempt to get rid of the poor-and-uneducated hypothesis when its title clearly reads: “The Root Cause of Terrorism? It’s Not Poverty or Lack of Education.” (This is unlikely due to editorial matters, since the same title is used in Rivandra’s personal blog.) In fact, the first five paragraphs were spent to make the case that the poor-and-uneducated hypothesis is incorrect.
Moreover, the value of Rivandra’s suggested public policies hinges on his understanding of the causes of terrorism. It is this understanding that I previously criticised, because I believe it is impossible to put forward a set of good policies in the absence of good knowledge about the causes of the problem.
Turning to the rebuttal points, Rivandra began by arguing that I did not take into account the fact that the proportion of the poor and uneducated is roughly the same among JI terrorists and Indonesians at large. From this he concluded that poverty and lack of education are not correlated with being terrorists.
There is a logical slip here. The fact that the majority of Indonesians are poor and uneducated is irrelevant to the fact that the majority of JI terrorists and poor and uneducated. The correlation is still there: most JI terrorists are still poor and uneducated – and it is useful to know that they are not rich and educated. What cannot be concluded from the data is that poverty and lack of education are a cause of terrorism, a conclusion both of us never made (for different reasons).
(Rivandra argued that the poor-and-uneducated hypothesis is false because most of Al-Qaeda and Hamas members are well off and educated. I rebutted this interpretation in light of the JI data, and argued that the poor-and-uneducated hypothesis – which may or may not be correct – is still consistent in the Indonesian context. Hence my contention that eradicating poverty and expanding education may play a role in fighting terrorism in Indonesia.)
Rivandra then argued, contradicting his previous writing, that he did not say repressive governments make terrorism more viable. He instead stated: “…closing doors to legal dissent would significantly raise the propensity of dissenters to employ violence…” I welcome this change of view, and would like to emphasise again the very point I was making before: violence is not necessarily terrorism. Repressive governments produce all sorts of opposing and violent groups, so there must be something else that drives some groups to be terrorist.
Rivandra also seemed to concede the point that submissions to authority and peer pressure are not a common trait of terrorists. He clarified: “…the two [authority and peer pressure] are requirements to break the inhibition to commit extreme carnage on a large group of people.” He went on to argue for freethinking against submission to authority and peer pressure (for no apparent reasons these two psychological phenomena appear somewhat evil to him).
Here Rivandra failed to capture the essence of my criticism, that authority and peer pressure are neutral in terms of values. They are part and parcel of any group dynamics. Without solid evidence that terrorists exploit these phenomena to a greater degree than others (soldiers, athletes, boy scouts, etc), Rivandra’s admirable project of advancing freethinking is not going to be helpful in fighting terrorism. I am sure, for example, that Rivandra would not mind the effectiveness of military groups in responding to disasters, and would not encourage trained soldiers to question their leaders and their peers in those circumstances.
Finally, Rivandra conceded that his idea of humanities education being relevant to terrorism is victim to the self-selection problem. But he was again careless when he argued: “One thing for sure, it [the unidentified factor that simultaneously drives individuals to study humanities and to avoid violent acts] won’t be level of education or economic background.”
We do not know this. For instance, the fact that most Al-Qaeda and Hamas members who studied science and engineering came from middle- or upper-class families and had college degrees does not necessarily rule out the possibility that those who studied humanities came from even more affluent families and had more degrees. Only empirical data – not armchair logic – can settle the issue.
December 30, 2009 at 9:30 am
Hi Rivan .. and Tirta too (if you read this blog)
If I have never met you guys in person (although in separate different settings), I would surely think that the arguments above can only be settled by means of fist fight 🙂
Very tough indeed, I should say, as to who actually has the better and more solid arguments.
I thought that Rivan managed to clarify his stance by pointing out Tirta’s misrepresentation.
But, hey, Tirta came back and clarified that the misrepresentation was a false accusation and it made me read again Rivan’s original article.
In the final analysis, I should agree with Tirta that the issue can only be settled with empirical data. We could conduct a research to actually prove or disprove whether the cause of terrorism are poverty and/or lack of education.
But even if that research proves or disproves any of your arguments then a counter research can also be conducted to debunk the tested hypothesis. .. and so on and so forth…
Having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the blog nevertheless. Somehow, it reminds me of Pinker vs Gladwell on Gladwell’s new book.
Well done 🙂
December 31, 2009 at 4:03 am
Mr. Al-Hosen! How’re you doing? It’s good to hear from you again, Dhy. And a pleasure to have you dropping by.
I do enjoy my arguments with Tirta and am glad that you do too. Your Pinker-Gladwell comment was really flattering.
January 5, 2010 at 6:10 am
I’m doing OK 🙂
Well.. That was the first thing that crossed my mind when I read the article, Pinker vs Gladwell.
Looking forward to your next article!
April 8, 2010 at 3:41 pm
[…] The Root Cause of Terrorism? Not Poverty or Lack of Education … If you enjoyed this article please consider sharing […]