TeleRead has emphasized the need to enrich the Net with literature–not just upload “practical” technical information. Balance, please. And now we’ve run across some possible new fodder for this argument. In his best-seller American Jihad, terrorism investigator Steven Emerson quotes his colleague and friend Khalid Duran as saying that engineers and other university graduates without education in the humanities can be extra-vulnerable to recruitment by Muslim extremist groups.
Exactly how does this fit in with TeleRead? Again and again we’ve advocated the establishment of well-stocked national digital libraries in developing countries, which, like the rest of the world, will be benefitting from the falling costs of technology. The idea shouldn’t be to Americanize the planet; rather, to strengthen local cultures and instill new pride–as opposed to just spreading technical information alone.
In American Jihad, Emerson quotes Duran: “Engineers don’t exercise their fantasy and imagination. Eerything is precise and mathematical. They don’t study what we call ‘the humanities.’ Consequently when it comes to issues that involve religion and personal emotion, they tend to see things in very stark terms. The Muslim Brotherhood has become very conscious of this. They’ve set up special programs in the universities to try to recruit students in the humanities, but they never have any luck. Having an education in literature or politics or sociology seems to inoculate you against the appeals of fundamentalism.”
Emerson’s critics dismiss him as a biased Western journalist–we won’t take sides, here since we’re not anti-terrorism experts–but Duran himself is a Moslem highly educated in his religion. And none other than Prince Hassan of Jordan has reportedly endorsed Diram’s book Children of Abraham: An Introduction to Islam for Jews.
Caveats: The heel-clicking engineer is hardly a Muslim or Third World phenomenon alone. Consider all the blond-haired, blue-eyed technical people in Europe who gave us the like of Dachau. Too, it would be reckless to smear most engineers and other technies as robotic–clearly that wasn’t Duran’s intention. More importantly, while Duran’s thesis is helpful as possible fodder for us boosters of the liberal arts, one must also consider that unemployed intellectuals in developing countries have been among the most ardent revolutionaries.
But then again, if jobless intellectuals can be prime candidates for violent causes, this could suggest even more need for national digital libraries to bolster local cultures. Perhaps no small part of the anger results from lack of opportunties of the kind that TeleReads could promote for Third World acadmics and writers if the online libraries were carefully integrated with local educational systems. Instant results expected? No! But digital libraries should be part of the long-range planning of educational systems everywhere, not just in the developed countries of the West.
Reader comments welcome.
